Amazon Prime has released the first non-trailer scene clip of its upcoming Fallout series. The @PrimeVideo account published the clip on X.com yesterday. The clip is just under two minutes long and features Ella Purnell playing vault dweller “Lucy” as she confronts Walton Goggins’ “The Ghoul,” over the accosting of a third party.
Many reactions on X were decidedly negative:
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The campy clip, complete with overly verbose dialogue from the vault dweller as she tries to explain her interference to the ghoul, was met with “#*$&ing vault dwellers…” from Dale Dickey’s character “June” as she lays in the dust, shaking her head in dismay.
There were a number of positive reactions to the clip, as well as some defenders pushing back against criticisms:
Todd Howard has been the executive producer of the video games Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 by Bethesda Game Studios. He is also an executive producer on the Amazon Prime Fallout series. In an interview last week with Games Radar, it was revealed that Howard had only one rule for the showrunners of the Prime series: Don’t contradict any major game endings.
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It appears the showrunners may be taking him at his word. There has been negative fan reaction with previous trailers and other media as gamers analyze the details of each shot. Fan concerns range from the vault administrator being a cyclops, to one settlement in the Prime series apparently in California bearing beyond-a-strong resemblance to the D.C.-area settlement of “Megaton” portrayed in Fallout 3, to various apparent continuity issues relating to the Brotherhood of Steel, a clannish paramilitary order focused on preserving advanced technology and using it to save mankind.
It does appear that the show is aiming for a more comedic, and perhaps less gritty, take on the Fallout universe. Vault dwellers have always been “fish-out-of-water” characters in the games’ setting, and it seems this may be played up strongly in the series. In the video games, the vaults were a series of social experiments conducted by “Vault-Tec,” the maker of the vaults, under the guise of providing nuclear-proof bomb shelters for the masses, or possibly the very few.
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The Fallout universe takes place in a retro-future alternate universe influenced by the forward-looking post-war culture of 1950s America as they dealt with the grim realities of a nuclear cold war. The “atompunk” setting features advanced technologies such as nuclear-powered automobiles, flying personal-servant robots, ray guns, powered armor, and of course, nuclear bombs.
The Fallout series premiers on Amazon Prime on April 11th, when all eight episodes will be available for streaming and/or binging.
Does the direction and comedy of Fallout from Amazon Prime Video work for you? Or does the show look like another bomb?
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Once again a great franchise going to be defiled…what we know so far: girl-boss (check), goofy humor contradicting the grim reality of fall-out…. are we supposed to think that a nuclear apocalypse is going to be fun? Worst to come soon… in the meantime, my score is
Hard Pass: score 8.5/10
Cancel Amazon Score: 8/10 – Not as infuriating as others…so far…but still puke level
Who am I kidding 🙂 …. I have been boycotting them since the Cockring of Power