Fallout: Season One - Amazon Exclusive Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray SteelBook

If you’ve been playing video games as long as I have, you’ve seen your share of video game-based films and series come and go. Unless they were Saturday morning cartoons, most attempts were generally terrible. Even films that have gone through some recent bizarre reappraisal process like Super Mario Bros. or Street Fighter were pretty damn bad, no matter how much campy entertainment to provided. That’s where the recent spate of successful video game films and series has been refreshing. They're actually good! Then along stomps Amazon Prime’s Fallout. A property that has a lot of history, tons of lore, and a mountain of expectation. To say Graham Wagner, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, and executive producer/director Jonathan Nolan crushed it is an understatement. 

As with just about every game in the series, we pick up the action long after the nuclear apocalypse with the friendly folks living deep down underground in the Vaults. In Vault 33, we’re introduced to Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), daughter of Overseer Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan). Lucy’s life in the Vault is perfect, right up until her wedding day. What should have been subterranean bliss becomes a nightmare when irradiated wastelanders from the surface posing as dwellers from Vault 32 murder dozens and kidnap Hank under the command of the mysterious Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury). To save her father, Lucy will go topside. But she doesn’t expect to meet the likes of a Knight Squire Maximus (Aaron Moten) or the ancient bounty hunter Ghoul (Walton Goggins), let alone all of the monstrous creatures and cannibals who call the wasteland “home.”

As much as I love a long-lasting open-world adventure with any number of playthrough possibilities, I have to admit that Bethesda’s long-running Fallout games have been more than a little intimidating. So much so, I didn’t really get into the scene until Fallout 3, New Vegas, and hit my burnout point with Fallout 4. Part of that is my nature as a pick-up-and-go gamer; I don’t like to be tied to a controller for very long. The other part is the undertaking of not only creating and designing my player, but getting the game going and learning the mechanics. That always feels like a daunting eight-hour commitment, and as I’ve gotten older, that time has become more of a precious commodity that I don’t get to spend on a single game. But they’re damn fun to play, and this first season is a loving tribute to all things Fallout. 

The flippant part of me will say the best part of Fallout: Season One is that we don’t have to spend hours of time creating our character! Instead, Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet introduce us to the plucky and adorable unflappable do-gooder Lucy, played to perfection by Ella Purnell. If you’ve never played any of the games and thought you might feel lost with the series, she’s your audience surrogate. She’s how we get to experience and understand the mechanics of life in the wasteland, and it’s a hoot. 

And while we get to ride along with Lucy on her adventure, we also follow Walton Goggins’ The Ghoul, or as he was once known, 200 years ago, as film star Cooper Howard. The material I was most excited to see unfold is the “how” of the apocalypse. Right down to the cartoon Pip-Boy’s iconic thumbs-up gesture, there’s a suitable nod, wink, and explanation to everything. Then we have Aaron Moten as Knight Squire Maximus caught between honor and duty to the Brotherhood and figuring out his own place within this wasteland. 

Best of all, you don’t need to have played the games to get it. Each episode is a journey, and the audience is tagging along for the ride. Exposition is dolled out with little bits and pieces and a few relevant flashbacks here and there. But even as we’re being told the hows and whys, the story is still unfolding and moving forward. And just when you thought it was all going to be wrapped up zip-quick, we’re left with a banger of a cliffhanger leading into Season 2. 

I’m usually reluctant about getting too excited about a new ongoing series, especially one based on a famous piece of intellectual property like Fallout. A great first season could be followed up by a genuinely shitty second season. So I tend to be a bit tepid in my praise. But I can’t hold back the excitement over Fallout. It was just too good right out of the gate. One episode to the next was an adventure. Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet and executive producer/director Jonathan Nolan seem to have the right team of writers and directors in play to ensure this series, for however long it lasts, is fully Vaul-Tec-approved. December and the premiere of Season Two can’t get here fast enough - which I guess is a good reason to rewatch this season all over again! 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Nuking our collections, Fallout: Season One drops an atom bomb on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray with Limited Edition SteelBook packaging from Amazon and WB/SDS. The season is spread over three Region Free BD100 discs. The discs are housed in a pretty attractive SteelBook case, each disc gets its own tray without being directly stacked on top of one another. Also included is a packet of art cards. Each disc loads to a static image main menu with standard navigation options.

All eight episodes spread over three BD100 discs ensure that every episode gets to enjoy the full 2160p Dolby Vision ride. Details are razor sharp and crisp, letting you soak in all of the impressive production design and world-building details. I was most impressed by the number of practical sets, costumes, and makeup FX work in this film. Walton Goggins’ The Ghoul makeup is an especially impressive blend of actual makeup with a little CGI to remove a couple of nostrils. The small details of the Vaults and the surface world feel lived in and real. My only gripe is with some of the big VFX shots and CGI work for scene extensions. There are times when they just look and feel too flat, but that’s something I felt from watching each episode on streaming, too. The Dolby Vision grade is right on point, giving the range of colors and skin tones healthy saturation levels. At least the characters that are supposed to look healthy do! Black levels are strong, getting nicely into the deep inky places with appreciable shadow gradience, so there’s almost always a notable sense of depth.

Keeping up with the visuals, each episode is given a banger of a Dolby Atmos track. Dialog is never an issue in any episode. The series score by Ramin Djawadi is an excellent accompaniment to each episode, playing up the weight of any given scene, no matter how goofy or dramatic or action-packed. Depending on the location in question, the soundscape can be pretty wildly dynamic. In the Vault, the surround channels are filled by the sounds of people shuffling around and milling about, doors opening and closing, or the persistent hum of electronics and ventilation systems. On the surface, you get the whipping winds blowing grit and sand, allowing the space to feel more open and expansive. In either setting, there are some clever uses for height channels to give that sense of location without just being used for incidental or echo effects. Then you get the Brotherhood and the Knights with their mechanized armor. Between their helicopter rotors and the stomping of heavy steel, the channels get quite a workout while the LFE thumps away with each footstep. Great audio for every episode. 

It was also really nice to see a full slate of interesting extras given for this release. Between making-of featurettes and looks at the cast and the makeup or visual effects, there’s some really juicy pieces to gnaw on. The meatiest extra of the pack is the really cool Inside Episode 1 Video Commentary with Jonathan Nolan and Walton Goggins. Instead of just listening to these two during the episode, we get to see them react and interact with each other while the episode plays in a small box, like watching something in PiP mode. I’d have loved to see more episodes given that treatment with different cast members but this is a nice unique extra features treat. The weird thing about this extra is that it’s the same audio commentary that’s present for the actual episode on disc one. So I don’t fully understand the redundancy there, but if you’re going to enjoy the commentary, I’d say slip in Disc Three and watch the guys in action. 

Disc One

• Audio Commentary - Episode One “The End” featuring Jonathan Nolan and Walton Goggins

Disc Three

• Inside Episode One “The End” (HD 1:08:03) featuring Jonathan Nolan and Walton Goggins
• Inside Season One (HD 18:02)
• Creating the Wasteland (HD 3:46)
• Safe and Sound (HD 2:37)
• Set Your Sights on 2296 (HD 2:23)
• The Costumes of Fallout (HD 2:43)
• Writing for the Wasteland (HD 2:26)
• Meet the Filmmaker (and Fanatic) Jonathan Nolan (HD 3:04)
• Prosthetics & Makeup Gone Nuclear (HD 2:47)
• Becoming the Ghoul (HD 2:08)
• Console to Camera (HD 2:52)
• Welcome to the World of Fallout (HD 2:41)
• Vault Seller’s Survival Guide - Animated Shorts (HD 17:28)

I thoroughly enjoyed Fallout. Unlike the games, I didn’t need to spend hours of playtime to get into the main story, so that was refreshing. But truly, this first season went about as well as it could have, considering the long range of game universe lore. Rather than trying to stick to one game or the other, the showrunners and writers wisely decided to chart their own path, have this story sit within the same world as the games, but not be actually about any one given story. All of the creatures, all of the political factions get their due. If you’re not a fan of the games, that’s perfectly okey dokey because this series gets it right by not playing hard inside ball, everyone can enjoy the misadventures of Lucy MacLean. On 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, the episodes enjoy a splendid Dolby Vision transfer complete with an excellent Atmos audio mix. Bonus features are an exciting pack. I question the redundancy of the commentary, but the video version is a great experience, while the numerous short featurettes fill in some interesting tidbits about making the series. Whether you go SteelBook or the standard case set, consider Fallout: Season One - Highly Recommended entertainment.