A successful video game, a powerful duo and a crazy post-apocalyptic western universe… falloutthe new series by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner broadcast this Thursday on Prime Video, has everything to rise among the great works alongside Westworld, The Last of Us Or The Boys. Inspired by a cult video game, fallout follows three characters – Lucy (Ella Purnell), The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) and Maximus (Aaron Moten) – two hundred years after the nuclear apocalypse that plunged the world into desolation and terror.
The community of luxurious fallout shelters to which Lucy belongs has escaped radiation, but the young woman decides to leave her peaceful community to find her father. In this chaotic western, mutants, irradiated creatures, flesh-eating drug addicts coexist. It’s funny, it squirts and it makes you shiver. We explain to you why this series is a guaranteed triumph.
The “Westworld” duo
Considered one of the biggest small screen phenomena of recent years, Westworld established itself in the world of SF series by diving into the deviant psyche of demiurges facing their creature. In four seasons, this work by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy has brilliantly illustrated the philosophical question of the place of artificial intelligence in future societies. Here they are back in the credits of fallout in a retrofuturistic setting from the 1950s. This time, the creative duo – husband and wife in the city – are responsible for the production of this faraway western where morality has not survived radiation. Jonathan Nolan, famous for co-writing Interstellar with his brother, Christopher, directed the first three episodes of this gem.
A cult video game
Video games and series have not always gone well together. We remember the disappointing adaptations of Super Mario Bros.at the cinema in 1993, or resident Evil on Netflix in 2022. But The Last of Us definitely folded the game, as the saying goes. “It helped us enormously that this series came out first, that it was so brilliant and so well received, because it takes a lot of pressure off,” Jonathan Nolan explained to a handful of journalists, including AFP, at the festival Canneseries in Cannes, where fallout was broadcast out of competition. The success of The Last of Us sets a precedent. But, unlike the HBO success carried by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, fallout distanced itself from the video game that inspired it, creating new characters and a new plot. Rest assured, she kept the same tone: a tasty mix of drama, emotion and humor.
A western (again!)
It’s difficult to miss the aesthetic of westerns in recent years, as the genre has become fashionable again since then. Westworldin 2016. The series set its plot in an amusement park where the robots tirelessly relive the same scenes in a typical setting of the far west. More recently, we saw the arrival of cardboard Yellowstone with Kevin Costner, 1923 with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren or The English with Emily Blunt. Even Beyoncé got in on the act with her latest country album Cowboy Carter whose title Texas Hold ’em dominates the ranking.
Fallout reconnects with the aesthetic of the great arid and desolate plains of the American West. We can see the remains of saloons and ranches. The characters are in a state of emergency, alone facing the brutality of a wild world. The ghoul, a zombie with a gaunt face, is dressed like a cowboy. He embodies the archetype of the bandit. Trigger-happy, solitary and immoral, he survives by devouring his peers. “I’m a fan of spaghetti westerns, it’s something that speaks to me. It’s a style that has its own benchmarks, its own rhythm, its luminosity, its energy,” insisted Jonathan Nolan in an interview with Nice morning this Sunday.
Trash, trash, trash… and humor
Brains squirting out, limbs cut off, bodies crushed… The fights of fallout are graphic, there’s lots of blood and it’s extremely funny. The series adopts the visual hyperbolization of gore so dear to The Boys, Bloody and cynical superhero satire created by Eric Kripke. A riot of bloodbaths and scenes so outrageous that they force laughter from the viewer.
With so many assets in his hands, it’s hard to imagine that fallout does not mark popular culture as much as the work from which it is inspired. To consume without moderation.