\n<\/p>\n
The scream was just right \u2014 bloodcurdling, if also very funny \u2014 and the practical effects crew had finally found the proper volume and trajectory of the water cannon. The idea was to film what might happen if you ripped a man from the throat of a mutant salamander, exploding its guts like a giant water balloon.<\/p>\n
All that remained was to decide what color of bile to slather on the actor (Johnny Pemberton) and on the salamander\u2019s many teeth, which nuclear radiation had transformed into rows of humanlike fingers.<\/p>\n
Based on observations made during a visit to the Brooklyn set of \u201cFallout\u201d in early 2023, Amazon had spared no expense to make the show, the latest genre-bending series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of \u201cWestworld.\u201d So it was no surprise when Nolan, on set to direct that chilly afternoon, was presented with not one but some half-dozen buckets of bile to choose from, in a variety of revolting hues. He settled on a pukey pinkish yellow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the closest thing to comedy that I\u2019ve worked on,\u201d he said later by phone. With writing credits on films like \u201cMemento,\u201d \u201cThe Dark Knight\u201d and \u201cThe Prestige,\u201d Nolan has tended to skew dark. Comically exploding monster guts \u2014 this was new territory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lot of fun,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A fun apocalypse? Amid all the doom and gloom of most sci-fi spectacles and social media feeds? Yes, please.<\/p>\n
\u201cFallout\u201d premieres Wednesday on Prime Video, and at first it may sound familiar to viewers of a certain postapocalyptic HBO hit from last year, \u201cThe Last of Us.\u201d Imagine: a sprawling, expensive adaptation of a beloved videogame franchise that features an unlikely duo \u2014 a nihilistic old gunslinger with a tortured past and a tough young woman whose mission overlaps with his. Together, they travel a lawless America plagued by criminals, fanatics, killer mutants and trigger-happy survivors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But where \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d had a decidedly serious and heartfelt tone, \u201cFallout,\u201d in keeping with its source material, is satirical and self-aware, rich with ironic detail. Sets and costumes lovingly blend B-movie conventions from multiple genres, including westerns, horror and Atomic Age sci-fi. The violence is comically over-the-top.<\/p>\n
That unlikely duo? The man (Walton Goggins) is a disfigured former western star who, among other things, puts the woman (Ella Purnell) on a leash and tries to hawk her organs. Their overlapping mission? To find a severed head.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI am still wrapping my head around it to be quite honest with you,\u201d Goggins said during a brief production break on set. He was dressed in the kind of immaculate Hollywood cowboy duds \u2014 think golden fringe and a tidy matching neckerchief \u2014 that a real cowboy might spit a beer on.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s \u2018The Good, the Bad and the Ugly\u2019 meets. \u2026\u201d He paused, searched for the perfect comparison. \u201cIt\u2019s \u2018Strangelove\u2019 meets the \u2018Star Wars\u2019 bar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until recently, live-action video game adaptations were mostly a losing proposition for television. \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d by most accounts broke the streak<\/a>. A commercial and critical darling, it earned eight Primetime Emmys<\/a> in January, and its 24 total nominations included one for best drama.<\/p>\n Such success seemed remote five years ago, when Nolan had his first conversations with Bethesda Game Studios, the company that owns the Fallout franchise. An avid gamer, Nolan had long been a fan. The original game, which debuted in 1997, established the premise: In an alternative America, the postwar optimism and kitschy aesthetics of the Eisenhower Era never ended, only evolved. There was no Vietnam, no Watergate, no Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Then in 2077, a nuclear war between the United States and China wiped out modern civilization worldwide.<\/p>\n Those who could afford it retreated into vast underground networks of shelters, known as vaults, until it was safe to come out. The game begins in 2161 when a \u201cvault-dweller,\u201d who has never known anything but the Beaver Cleaver-ish culture preserved underground, ventures into the irradiated wastelands around Los Angeles on a vital mission. (Later games travel to other cities and times.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Several Fallout adaptations had been aborted or turned down over the years, said Todd Howard, Bethesda\u2019s executive producer, who is also an executive producer of the show. After seeing and loving \u201cWestworld,\u201d however, Howard approached Nolan and Joy. He had heard Nolan was a gamer.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had clearly played a lot,\u201d Howard said \u2014 Fallout 3 especially. \u201cHe could speak to it with authenticity and had a view of what made it tick.\u201d (\u201cFallout 3 was a game that you could play comfortably for 50 to 100 hours,\u201d Nolan said.)<\/p>\n Bethesda\u2019s priorities were twofold: A TV series had to stay true to the lore of the games but also be written like a whole new chapter, same as any game sequel.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very important to us not to have a show that translated one particular game story but that told something original,\u201d Howard said. \u201cThe main character in the Fallout series is the world of Fallout.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon signed on to produce in 2020, part of an overall deal with Nolan and Joy\u2019s production company, Kilter Films. To begin building the Fallout world, Kilter brought in two creator-showrunners: One, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, had written scripts for big adaptations before, including \u201cTomb Raider\u201d (2018) and \u201cCaptain Marvel\u201d (2019); the other, Graham Wagner, was a TV comedy writer, with credits on \u201cBaskets,\u201d \u201cSilicon Valley\u201d and 50 episodes of \u201cPortlandia.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For them it was a \u201cbest of both worlds\u201d situation. They had been given a trove of intellectual property to start with, already popular among millions. But they also had freedom to simply craft a good story without worrying so much about satisfying gamer fan police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe fans of the games want to hear us say that we take the I.P. seriously,\u201d Wagner said in a joint interview with Robertson-Dworet. \u201cOf course we do, because we like it. But you don\u2019t want to let that burden make it feel like a job. Because then everyone\u2019s watching you do a job, and then it just feels like work.\u201d<\/p>\n Robertson-Dworet later added, laughing: \u201cWe talk a lot about the [expletive] we\u2019re going to eat for the show. It\u2019s going to be either too woke, too fascist, not fascist enough. \u2026 \u201d She trailed off. The possibilities were endless.<\/p>\n In a separate video call, Kyle MacLachlan, who plays a guest role in the show, didn\u2019t seem worried. And he knows something about protective fan bases. (See: David Lynch\u2019s \u201cDune.\u201d Or David Lynch\u2019s \u201cTwin Peaks: The Return.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s evident, when you look at the sets and the production value and the tone of the show, that they\u2019re making a big effort to try to incorporate the reality of that world,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a perfect place to put a story.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For all the new material, fans of the game will find plenty that is familiar about the story. The show\u2019s other male lead, Aaron Moten, plays an initiate of the Brotherhood of Steel, a fanatical warrior faction found in all of the games. (They suit up in Iron Man-like robotic armor that, 219 years after the end of modern civilization, is prone to breaking down.) Though Purnell\u2019s character arrives over 130 years after the events of the first game, she draws heavily from it.<\/p>\n \u201cShe goes up to the wasteland, and she finds out that everything she ever believed is a lie,\u201d Purnell said on a video call with Moten. \u201cIt makes her start to question everything,\u201d she added. \u201cAnd she has to make that choice, right? Adapt or die. Who\u2019s she going to be?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n However fans respond to \u201cFallout,\u201d no one can doubt the creators\u2019 commitment. Back in Brooklyn in early 2023, a set tour with the show\u2019s production designer, Howard Cummings, offered a glimpse of the massive scope. Indoors, a mazelike series of corridors and chambers amounted to a multilevel reproduction of the vaults. Outdoors, a ramshackle junk city included whole buses and the front end of a 747 jet, trucked in from California. The New York production alone had 35 welders working at once, Cummings said.<\/p>\n This was to say nothing of the location shoots in the Utah desert, or on the Skeleton Coast in Namibia<\/a>, a stand-in for a postapocalyptic Pacific Palisades, all shot on widescreen film instead of digital. (\u201cThe power of dragging yourself to a beautiful and remote place to capture that beauty on film, it still works,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cIt always works.\u201d) Or of the 360-degree virtual soundstage, made up of thousands of LED tiles \u2014 for when you need the location to come to you.<\/p>\n \u201cNew York didn\u2019t have one,\u201d Cummings said. \u201cBut it does now!\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, \u201cFallout\u201d looks great. Still, all the money in Amazon\u2019s coffers can\u2019t make a show good, and the streamer, which declined to share budget numbers, has reportedly spent hundreds of millions of dollars on large-scale series, like \u201cCitadel\u201d<\/a> and \u201cThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,\u201d<\/a> that have yet to make much of an impact with viewers or critics. Amid the glut of heavier end-times material out there, it seemed like a refreshing start, at least, that the \u201cFallout\u201d creators\u2019 goal was to entertain viewers, not pile onto them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nolan called making it an \u201cexpiating\u201d experience: Coming out of a pandemic, amid global instability and a deterioration of political discourse, you had to laugh sometimes, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the only way to make it through.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n