Finding the fun in an apocalypse
The scream was just right — bloodcurdling, if also very funny — 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.
All that remained was to decide what color of bile to slather on the actor (Johnny Pemberton) and on the salamander’s many teeth, which nuclear radiation had transformed into rows of humanlike fingers.
Based on observations made during a visit to the Brooklyn set of “Fallout” 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 “Westworld.” 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.
“This is the closest thing to comedy that I’ve worked on,” he said later by phone. With writing credits on films like “Memento,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Prestige,” Nolan has tended to skew dark. Comically exploding monster guts — this was new territory.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said.
A fun apocalypse? Amid all the doom and gloom of most sci-fi spectacles and social media
feeds? Yes, please.
“Fallout” premiered Wednesday on Prime Video, and at first it may sound familiar to viewers of a certain postapocalyptic HBO hit from last year, “The Last of Us.” Imagine: a sprawling, expensive adaptation of a beloved video game franchise that features an unlikely duo — 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.
But where “The Last of Us” had a decidedly serious and heartfelt tone, “Fallout,” in keeping with its source material, is satirical and selfaware, 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 overthe-top.
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.
“I am still wrapping my head around it to be quite honest with you,” Goggins said during a brief production break on set. He was dressed in the kind of immaculate Hollywood cowboy duds — think golden fringe and a tidy matching neckerchief — that a real cowboy might spit a beer on.
“It’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ meets. …” He paused, searched for the perfect comparison. “It’s ‘Strangelove’ meets the ‘Star Wars’ bar.”
Until recently, live-action video game adaptations were mostly a losing proposition for television. “The Last of Us” by most accounts broke the streak. A commercial and critical darling, it earned eight Primetime Emmys in January, and its 24 total nominations included one for best drama.
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.
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 “vaultdweller,” 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.)
Several Fallout adaptations had been aborted or turned down over the years, said Todd Howard, Bethesda’s executive producer, who is also an executive producer of the show. After seeing and loving “Westworld,” however, Howard approached Nolan and Joy. He had heard Nolan was a gamer.
“He had clearly played a lot,” Howard said — Fallout 3 especially. “He could speak to it with authenticity and had a view of what made it tick.” (“Fallout 3 was a game that you could play comfortably for 50 to 100 hours,” Nolan said.)