Fallout review: Jonathan Nolan's post-apocalyptic game adaptation dazzles with its visuals, bores with its narrative

Director: Jonathan Nolan

Cast: Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Aaron Clifton Moten, Moises Arias, Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Emerson, Frances Turner

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video

Rating: 2.5 stars

Fallout is one of the most popular video game franchises of our times, a game so popular that Hollywood could not stay away for long from adapting it. And if The Last of Us has shown us anything, it is that apocalypse-based video games – if done right – are a good recipe for some Emmys. Naturally, there was great hype for the Fallout series given that Jonathan Nolan himself was directing it and it featured some accomplished actors. The end result is a confusing one, a show that deserves praise for the world it creates and its faithfulness to the source material, but one that never truly engages you, just superficially tickles every once in a while.

Fallout is set in an alternate Earth where nuclear fallout caused by the arms race during the Cold War caused apocalypse. Much of humanity lives in underground vaults even two centuries later, as the surface is irradiated and inhabited by lawless mutants. After a massacre at Vault 33, Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) must travel to the surface to find her abducted father. She finds an ally in Maximus, a pretend-knight in the Brotherhood of Steel, a band of mercenaries, as they both must find a fugitive to get what they want.

The premise is solid and the visuals stunning. But right from the start, there is something wrong with Fallout. The show never quite hits you or gets you fully immersed. A lot that happens on screen looks repetitive and that is largely due to the oversaturation in this post-apocalyptic genre. It is hard something new in this domain without going overboard. But Fallout has its strong mythology to help that cause, which has been quite well utilised by Jonathan Nolan. He creates a world that wants you to be invested, but then doesn’t quite satisfy that urge.

The characters come across as either too boring when predictable or too annoying when unpredictable. The narrative depends on gimmicks and tried-and-tested plot points. You can almost always predict what will come to pass 20 full minutes before it does. There is hardly any novelty, even for ones not familiar with the game or its story.

The show works best when dealing with the history of the fallout, the flashbacks to the 20^th century where we meet Cooper Howard (Walter Goggins) and see how he became the mutant Ghoul. His track and his discovery of the real cause behind the fallout is the most engaging and interesting part of the show. The other tracks seem to meander aimlessly in its shadow through the eight episodes with occasional glimmers of promise.

Ella Purnell plays the protagonist Lucy, and while her character does not demand too much of a ‘performance’, the actress does a decent job. She makes Lucy relatable but the writing does her no favours by making her naive to the point of dumbness. The audiences are getting smarter and when the protagonists of today’s shows are less smarter than the average viewer, it makes it for an annoying watch. That holds true for the other hero – Aaron Moten (who plays Maximus) as well. His arc is slightly more well-defined but more predictable too.

For a show about a post-apocalyptic society, Fallout throws very few surprises at the viewers. There are almost negligible moments that take you by surprise, let alone leave your jaw on the floor. The unpredictability, which needs to drive a sci-fi thriller like this, is absent here. And when it does come, it seldom follows any logic.

Fallout is somewhat salvaged by a subplot within the vaults where we learn the real reason behind the apocalypse as Norm and Chet (Moises Arias and Dave Register respectively) accidentally uncover the truth. These two actors and their chemistry make the vault plot at least interesting and even fun at times in what is otherwise a drag.

What comes as a relief is that aesthetically, Fallout is quite good. Given that Nolan – of Westworld fame – is at the helm here, it is no surprise that the production values are top notch. That makes it palatable despite the flaws, which means that if you do decide to bingewatch it, at least you won’t have a hard time watching. To me, Fallout is a missed opportunity, a promising setup that required much better execution. Given that there are murmurs of a second season, I sincerely hope the chink in the metaphorical armour can be ironed out by then.