The series of the week: Fallout | It’s the apocalypse again

Après le succès monstre de The Last of Us, une autre série de jeux vidéo fort populaire passe de la console à la télévision en continu. La Presse s’est entretenue avec trois des acteurs de Fallout et son cocréateur, Jonathan Nolan, frère d’un certain Christopher.

Les jeux

Tout comme The Last of Us, Fallout se déroule dans un monde postapocalyptique. Les premiers volets de ce dernier remontent toutefois à plus longtemps, avec la sortie sur PC et Mac de Fallout et de sa suite, en 1997 et 1998, respectivement. Dix ans plus tard, le troisième chapitre, cette fois également offert sur la PlayStation 3 et la Xbox 360, a été fort bien accueilli par les joueurs et la critique. En plus de Fallout 4, sept jeux dérivés ont depuis été lancés sur diverses plateformes. L’histoire : à la suite d’une guerre nucléaire qui a dévasté la planète, deux classes se sont formées, ceux qui survivent tant bien que mal à la surface et ceux qui habitent des abris souterrains. Les évènements se déroulent des dizaines d’années après la guerre. Des générations d’humains ont donc grandi sans avoir vu la désolation du monde. Alors que d’autres s’y sont adaptés, parfois de manière horrifiante. « Le ton des jeux est ce que nous avons d’abord tenté de reproduire, indique Jonathan Nolan. On y retrouve autant le côté sombre de l’humanité et subversif de la société que l’humour et l’émotion, tout ça dans un emballage rétrofuturiste. »

La série

L’action de Fallout sur Prime Video débute donc en 2296, 219 ans après le conflit qui a détruit le monde. Toutefois, il ne s’agit pas de notre monde. « Ces États-Unis n’ont pas vécu le Watergate ou la guerre du Viêtnam. Ils n’ont jamais vécu cette époque de recueillement et de réflexion collective. Ils ont poursuivi sur l’élan de l’ère [du président Dwight D.] Eisenhower,” says Jonathan Nolan, who directed the first three episodes. The technology is more advanced than ours, but its aesthetics are from another era. Even more striking is the music. Songs by Buddy Holly, The Ink Spots, The Andrew Sisters and LaVern Baker punctuate the series and provide a nice contrast with the aridity of the landscape. Another of the games’ particularities fallout is that they take place in an open world. “You not only choose the direction in which you go, but also the direction in which your moral compass points,” summarizes the man who is also behind the dystopian Westworld. For us, the best way to represent this world of possibilities and its moral dilemmas was to represent it through diverse characters. »

Characters

fallout offers three main points of view. Lucy MacLean, played by Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets), has spent her entire life in Vault 33. Following the kidnapping of her father (Kyle MacLachlan), the friendly leader of the place, she decides to leave her cozy nest to go looking for him. During the audition process, producers described Lucy to the British actress as a cross between Leslie Knope (the enthusiastic Amy Poehler in Parks and Recreation) and Ned Flanders (impeccable neighbor of the Simpson family). “I immediately imagined what it would be like and wanted to bring it to life,” says Ella Purnell. For Lucy, it’s also a strange passage into adulthood. She’s been sheltered her whole life, she’s naive, and then suddenly she has to learn very quickly. » Aaron Morten plays Maximus, a squire in the Brotherhood of Steel, a group with cultist overtones born from the ashes of the American army. “It’s the most physically demanding role I’ve played,” says the actor seen in Emancipation. My character starts with a certain view of the world and his perspective changes as he discovers the Wasteland [la surface détruite]. We can recognize ourselves in him. » Walton Goggings (Justified, The Shield) personifies The Ghoul, a man disfigured by radiation, kept alive for more than two centuries thanks to a cocktail of potions. He haunts Los Angeles like a ghost from the Wild West.

Our opinion

Transpose the particular tone of the games fallout to a television story was a major challenge. The offbeat humor, vast desolation, intense action, terrifying characters and creatures, and the resilience and darkness of humanity are all well integrated into the series, but with varying degrees of success. The whole thing can be chaotic and the frequent breaks in tone sometimes harm immersion in this universe which should be more disturbing than crazy. The aesthetics are a success and the images, often in broad daylight, are superb. The action, however, is unimpressive. The three main characters are interesting – Lucy stands out – and skillfully manage to convey the different realities of this dystopian world.

On Prime Video

A few words about Dune

Kyle MacLachlan, who plays Hank MacLean, “devoted father” to Lucy and Norm as well as the “impervious to negativity” leader of Vault 33, played a completely different character 40 years ago: Paul Atreides in Dune, by David Lynch. We asked him what he thought of Denis Villeneuve’s version. “I only saw the first one, but I really liked it. I’m a big fan of the book, which I read when I was 15. I already imagined myself as Paul, and then, in 1983, I got the chance to play him, which is pretty weird. Before seeing Denis’s, I was worried that ours would lose its value or be erased, but after my viewing, I was reassured to know that they could coexist. »