'Fallout' Nails Video Game Adaptations by Making the Apocalypse Fun

For decades, it seemed like Hollywood couldn't get a video game adaptation right. Movies like Double Dragon, Super Mario Bros., and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider were all critically panned, with their creators called out for either sticking too close to the source material, failing to capture the magic of the games, or casting actors who didn't really embrace the films' inherent campiness. In recent years, though, there's been a shift in game adaptations, with projects like The Last of Us and Werewolves Within achieving critical acclaim and--in the case of the former, at least--a boatload of awards nods. You could point to a number of reasons to try to explain why game adaptations are getting better (Pedro Pascal, for example), but Jonathan Nolan, co-creator of Amazon Prime Video's new series Fallout, says he thinks it's because games often have "more sophisticated, more interesting, and more daring" storytelling than is often found in film or TV. When Nolan first started playing Fallout 3 in 2009, while trying to write The Dark Knight Rises, he was taken aback.