‘Fallout’ Trailer Breakdown - Welcome to the Wasteland (original) (raw)

Published Dec 7, 2023, 7:45 PM EST

Julio is a Senior Author for Collider. He studied History and International Relations at university, but found his calling in cultural journalism. When he isn't writing, Julio also teaches English at a nearby school. He has lived in São Paulo most of his life, where he covers CCXP and other big events. Having loved movies, music, and TV from an early age, he prides himself in knowing every minute detail about the things he loves. When he is older, he dreams of owning a movie theater in a small countryside town.

Summary

• Prime Video's live-action Fallout series takes place in the same universe as the games, set in the post-apocalyptic Wasteland in the year 2296.
• Walton Goggins' character, The Ghoul, has a mysterious past that may involve surviving the Great War and roaming the Wasteland.
• The Brotherhood of Steel, a paramilitary faction, and mutated creatures like ghouls, radroaches, and Yao Guai, play significant roles in the series' storyline.

Every gamer has a special place in their heart for Fallout, the ultimate post-nuclear role-playing game. Just last week at CCXP, Prime Video unveiled the first teaser for its live-action series that takes the franchise to streaming screens, and it looks great. Starring Ella Purnell as former Vault Dweller Lucy, the teaser shows us the start of her adventure when she leaves the safety of Vault 33 behind and ventures into the Wasteland for reasons unknown. The whole thing is packed with action and references to the original games, highlighting everything about them that made us fall in love with them in the first place — and, hopefully, that will make non-gaming audiences love it, too. So get your Pip-Boys ready and let's see what it's all about.

Release Date

April 10, 2024

Network

Amazon Prime Video

Showrunner

Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan

Directors

Frederick E. O. Toye, Wayne Che Yip, Stephen Williams, Liz Friedlander, Jonathan Nolan, Daniel Gray Longino, Clare Kilner

Writers

Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan

Franchise(s)

Fallout

In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Seasons

2

Prime Video’s ‘Fallout’ Takes Place in the Same Universe as the Games

One of the coolest things about the Fallout live-action series is that it's canon within the franchise. All four games, mobile apps, and whatnot all take place in the same continuity as the Prime Video show. It takes place in the year 2296, 219 years after the Great War broke out between the USA and China in 2077 and laid waste to society as we know it. Nukes were detonated everywhere and, thus, the continental USA became the Wasteland — we've yet to see what happened to the rest of the world, though.

Thinking in terms of a franchise timeline, the series is the latest chronological event to take place. The first game takes place in 2161 and the last happens in 2287, just 9 years before the events of the live-action series. All of them have the same premise: a Vault Dweller has to leave their comfortable life behind and venture into the Wasteland for their own reasons. Each Vault is cut off from the rest of the world, so there are all sorts of weird stuff happening inside, from death cults to deadly diseases.

Walton Goggins’ Character Has a Buried Past

Walton Goggins as The Ghoul looking back at a person offscreen in Prime Video's Fallout

Image via Prime Video

The trailer gives us a good look at Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, a bounty hunter-type of character who's deadly with a gun in his hand. He's experienced with this type of role, having played the antagonist Boyd Crowder in the modern Western series Justified and a bounty hunter in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, too. But the trailer also shows us Goggins in what is likely a flashback to the day the Great War happened (by the way, it only took 2 hours to destroy the world with nukes).

For those who attended CCXP23, Prime Video showed a short propaganda video on their stand that featured Goggins' as a movie star named Cooper Howard, promoting the Vaults as a product in a 1960s-themed commercial. Another video showed Howard on set filming a Western, wearing a very similar suit to the one he's wearing in the trailer, where he gets a little girl on his horse and tries to run away as nuclear blasts hit Los Angeles. In Fallout lore, ghouls were once humans who were subjected to so much radiation that their whole organism changed, from their skin peeling off to having an augmented life span. Could Howard have survived since the Great War and be roaming the Wasteland by the time the series takes place? It's not unlikely...

Aaron Moten's Maximus and the Brotherhood of Steel

Aaron Moten as Maximus, standing next to a power armor in Fallout

Image via Prime Video

Another character who seems to be central to Fallout's story is Maximus (Aaron Moten). We see him riding a Vertibird (an air vehicle with propellers) in a place that is probably a Brotherhood of Steel airbase. This group is a paramilitary faction that formed in the years after the Great War and consists of warriors who intend on finding high-tech items and making them accessible to the people in the Wasteland. Their symbol adorns the Vertibirds and the Power Armors seen in the trailer, the latter being a radiation-resistant suit that allows people to fight much stronger opponents.

In the games, aside from the Brotherhood of Steel, there exists another significant faction operating in the Wasteland — the remnants of the US government, known as The Enclave. Its members are now a sort of cult that tries to force upon kidnapped people the deadly Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV), which causes the infected to become stronger and faster, but also disformed and more aggressive.

Related

'Fallout's Jonathan Nolan Says Working With Bethesda Was a Match Made in Heaven

Nolan and Bethesda director Todd Howard bonded over a mutual drive to bring an original take to the 'Fallout' universe.

The Deadly Creatures That Wander the Wasteland

After the Great War, people who weren't lucky enough to secure a spot in one of the Vaults had to try and survive in the Wasteland, where radiation levels are off the charts. The radiation is so high, that many species mutated into deadly monsters — and they all wander the Wasteland. For example, there is a gigantic Axolotl that seems to have human fingers for teeth. Even inside the Vaults, some people have suffered the effects of radiation and mutated, like Chris Parnell's one-eyed Vault Dweller.

But the trailer focuses on four specific types of creatures: ghouls, radroaches, the Yao Guai, and a not-so-deadly-looking dog. As we've established, the ghouls are no longer humans — although they behave and relate to the world as if they were — and now gather mostly in the dead city of Necropolis. Radroaches are huge radioactive cockroaches that grew in size due to radiation and now pester and threaten the people who survive in the Wasteland. The Yao Guai are huge mutated bears that are descendants of black bears, but much more powerful and aggressive. Finally, dogs are also still around, and the one we see in the trailer is a nod to a famous Fallout dog named Dogmeat, a faithful companion to the main character of Fallout 4.

‘Fallout’s Classic Aesthetic Is Back

Most of the trailer is set to the tune of Nat King Cole's "I Don't Want to Know Tomorrow," a 1964 song that evokes a sort of nostalgic feeling. This is one of the most important things in Fallout, as, even though the franchise is set in the future, its post-apocalyptic setting reminds of a better time. The Vaults were all built by a company called Vault Tech, and there's even a billboard in the flashback scene with Walton Goggins' Cooper Howard in the trailer. Vault Tech adopted a retrofuturistic style when promoting its product, trying to evoke an atmosphere reminiscent of the 1960s (the height of the nuclear age). That's why bright colors are everywhere, all sorts of 1960s fixtures (like jukeboxes) are all around the Vaults, and the Dwellers wear bright blue and yellow jumpsuits. Even Vault Tech's mascot, Vault Boy, has a 1960s-inspired design.

Outside the Vaults, though, the vibe is much more bleak. The Wasteland evokes a Western feeling, and all the buildings feel old and dirty. The trailer shows The Ghoul entering a city with lots of signs and even the front of an airplane hanging on a wall, a sort of patched-together construction that is present in nearly all the Fallout cities and settlements. This poses an interesting contrast between the advanced tech used in the Vaults and by the Brotherhood of Steel and the fact that everything actually is centuries old.

Read our guide for everything you need to know about the Fallout video game adaptation.