'Fallout', the excellent adaptation of a video game | The truth

But let's go to the origins of the franchise because, before being a series, 'Fallout' was and remains a role-playing video game. Developed and published by Interplay Productions in 1997, the title, set in a post-apocalyptic and retro-futuristic world in the mid-22nd century, nine decades after a nuclear war, followed the steps of a resident of Vault 13, one of the hundreds of underground bunkers. scattered throughout the United States, which, after the failure of the chip that is responsible for recycling water, was tasked with going out into the Wasteland to look for a replacement. The success of the title was such that it gave rise to a video game saga, which was eventually acquired by Bethesda – now owned by Microsoft – jumped into three dimensions and is still in force – the last one, 'Fallout 76', came out in 2018. , and a 'Fallout 5' has already been announced, still without a publication date.

Each release throughout all these years has added elements to configure a universe as vast as it is rich in details and the series created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner takes advantage of all of this, which in this context develops a new story with three main characters whose paths will intertwine throughout the entire season.

Organized into eight episodes, the first of them, somewhat longer than the rest, serves as a presentation of Lucy, Maximus and the Ghoul, the three protagonists of the plot, but first it presents an almost idyllic postcard: a child's birthday party about 7 or 8 years old in the garden of a spectacular chalet that seems to have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We are in the mid-fifties, Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), a famous actor who has fallen on hard times, offers a show to the kids dressed as a cowboy, prancing with a lasso, on top of the horse his daughter, a little smaller than the rest, is riding. of the children, held by the reins. The sequence seems like a dream, but it is full of bitter twists and turns: a newspaper with a headline that loudly notes that the Reds are losing positions at the front; a mother abruptly turning off the television when the newsletter is about to start, and the clear discomfort of Howard, whose professional career has seen better moments. And then, disaster strikes.

The fiction then jumps 200 years into the future and begins by introducing Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), a young woman with an optimistic disposition who is dedicated to plumbing work in Vault 33. The first bars of the fiction describe what life is like under earth and the truth is that, beyond not having natural light, it is not bad at all: each inhabitant has their own Pip-Boy, an ancient personal assistant on their wrist, and everyone has a role in this perfectly measured social mechanism. So much so that even marriage requests must be accepted by the system, in order to find the perfect descendants to repopulate the surface when possible. It is precisely at the celebration of Lucy's wedding that a horror will be unleashed that will end with the kidnapping of her father, the Supervisor and head of the bunker. After the incident, Lucy will go out into the Wasteland in search of her father.

Before he makes that decision, the camera focuses on Maximus (Aaron Moten), a young man from the Brotherhood of Steel, a sectarian society destined to collect and preserve all technology before nuclear war was unleashed. The jewel in the crown of this organization is the T-60, a kind of Iron Man-type armor but much less sophisticated, worn by the knights of the brotherhood. Maximus is appointed squire to one of them and his first mission is to find a guy who apparently carries an artifact that could change the course of the planet. An assignment that will also reach the ears of the Ghoul, a famous bounty hunter who, due to radiation exposure, has become a kind of zombie who knows the Wasteland perfectly. While carrying out their mission, the three characters will end up crossing paths.

A luxury production

Jonathan Nolan, brother of the director of 'Oppenheimer' and responsible for the already canceled 'Westworld', signs the first three chapters of this epic adventure, with truly surprising production values. From the costumes, to the excellent sets that make up the city of El Vertedero or the shelters designed by Vault-Tec, the fictional company whose designs, including its mascot Vault-Boy, truffle the entire series and video games – a brilliant idea. to connect with a good part of the players out there -, passing through some desert exteriors that are overwhelming, precisely because they do not abuse CGI. Not in vain, a good part of the plot set in the Wasteland was recorded in an enclave that 'Mad Max: Fury Road' already used, the Namib Desert, on the coast of southern Africa. In fact, some of the most striking sequences, where houses and buildings are shown covered in sand, were filmed in and around Kolmanskop, a former diamond mining town that was abandoned in the middle of the last century. This effort to avoid the use of the computer is also palpable in the way in which violence is recreated and the many forays into gore that will not disgust the most sensitive. Latex and fake hemoglobin simulate severed and grotesque heads and impossible fractures.

The care put into every detail, together with some more than notable performances – Ella Purnell is spectacular -, lay a perfect foundation for this dystopian western that begins with a rather comic tone and, in its development, without stridency and without completely losing the sense of humor is approaching darkness and drama. It makes sense, because although in its first steps the series practices satire against that North American society of the fifties that seemed idyllic in the face of nuclear panic – the naivety with which Lucy goes out into the Wasteland is an example of this -, later it moves towards to reveal the complex past that led to the nuclear disaster and the mystery surrounding the all-powerful Vault-Tec. Along the way, fiction raises dilemmas about what freedom is, the structure of society, class struggle or the role of scientists. In short, 'Fallout' is, in addition to being an excellent adaptation of a video game, a fantastic series.