Before I say anything about Fallout, I want to correct all the people who keep thinking West World's Jonathan Nolan created or wrote it. He just directed the first three episodes. That's it. This show was created by a TV comedy writer and a film writer whose credits are generally unexceptional.
Now, on to the review of the first episode, which is all I've watched.
While the brilliant videogame Fallout 3 established the premise and built the world quickly and threw you into an exciting world, the TV series starts as an episodic mess. There's a pre-apocalypse scene that's a decent beginning, followed by 15 tedious minutes of scene building, then some over-the-top violence, then a new, uninteresting character in an uninteresting place, then a tiny bit of plot movement, and finally a little more violence. At the end of over an hour of this, there was literally nothing in the story or the characters that made me want to watch more.
The movie is good looking. The 50s soundtrack does a nice job of capturing the lost-in-time aspect of the world. Ella Purnell seems like she might make a decent heroine.
But it is beyond me why people are so ecstatic about this series. I looked at reviews for episode 1, to see if maybe it was a low-rated episode compared to the rest, but nope, people really liked it. And I didn't understand what they see that I don't.
My recommendation is, play Fallout 3, which is amazing. (Or perhaps one of the others, but that's the only one I've played for reasons that have to relevance to this review.) But I can't recommend this show.
Now, on to the review of the first episode, which is all I've watched.
While the brilliant videogame Fallout 3 established the premise and built the world quickly and threw you into an exciting world, the TV series starts as an episodic mess. There's a pre-apocalypse scene that's a decent beginning, followed by 15 tedious minutes of scene building, then some over-the-top violence, then a new, uninteresting character in an uninteresting place, then a tiny bit of plot movement, and finally a little more violence. At the end of over an hour of this, there was literally nothing in the story or the characters that made me want to watch more.
The movie is good looking. The 50s soundtrack does a nice job of capturing the lost-in-time aspect of the world. Ella Purnell seems like she might make a decent heroine.
But it is beyond me why people are so ecstatic about this series. I looked at reviews for episode 1, to see if maybe it was a low-rated episode compared to the rest, but nope, people really liked it. And I didn't understand what they see that I don't.
My recommendation is, play Fallout 3, which is amazing. (Or perhaps one of the others, but that's the only one I've played for reasons that have to relevance to this review.) But I can't recommend this show.