Last night in Austin, Prime Video (with the help of locally-based powerhouse Fons PR) screened the first two hours of Prime Video’s Fallout to a packed crowd at the Bob Bullock IMAX theater. On a towering screen, I watched this pair of episodes unfold with something approaching awe: “Holy shit,” I kept thinking. “They really pulled it off.” Here, at long last, was the live action Fallout series I’ve been dreaming of for more years than I can count.
We do not run reviews here at FANGORIA, and official reviews are embargoed until the 10th, but I am free to share with you my “episodic reaction” to what I saw last night, and here it is: ferociously violent (so many limbs get blown or ripped off in this thing that I lost count), precisely as morbidly funny as it should be (they absolutely nailed the tone of the games), and more than willing to go very dark indeed, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s Fallout is off to a killer start, and I cannot wait to see the rest of it.
And here’s more good news: we can all see it starting tomorrow, one day earlier than expected. Last night, during the NCAA Championship Game, Prime Video revealed that it would be dropping Fallout on April 10th at 6PM Pacific. Theoretically, you could watch the entirety of Fallout tomorrow evening, should you be willing to stay up late and do a little damage to your sleep schedule.
For those unfamiliar with the series: Fallout takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, hundreds of years after an extensive nuclear exchange turned the world into a crumbling, irradiated version of its former self. Some of humanity has been able to survive on the surface (they don’t tend to last long, but it can be done), while others remained locked away, deep underground, in a series of Vaults. Should one leave their Vault for the surface, they can expect to encounter marauding bands of raiders, mutated monsters, cannibals, and all manner of other unspeakable horrors.
The Fallout TV series divides its time between three different characters: a Vault dweller who is compelled to travel to the world’s surface (that’d be Yellowjackets star Ella Purnell); a surface-dwelling military recruit by the name of Maximus (that’d be Aaron Moten); and, last but certainly not least, a fully irradiated character known as The Ghoul (Walton Goggins, missing a nose and dressed like Hell’s own gunslinger). Why these three cross paths and what they’re all after will be made clear within the show’s first two eps, and you’re gonna have a helluva time finding out the answers to those questions.
So, clear your schedules tomorrow evening, folks: your new favorite genre-hybrid series is en route, and kicks off tomorrow on Prime Video at 6PM Pacific. Bring plenty of popcorn (and Nuka Cola).
