Fallout TV Show Could Now Last Five Seasons After ‘Immensely Surprising’ Popularity, Say Creators
Fallout TV Show Could Now Last Five Seasons After 'Immensely Surprising' Popularity, Say Creators
Notes to writers and producers.
IF👏 YOU👏 MAKE👏 AN👏 ADAPTATION👏 THAT👏 IS👏 FAITHFUL👏 TO👏 THE👏 ORIGINAL,👏 YOU👏 WILL👏 MAKE👏 LOTS👏 OF👏 MONEY.👏
Witcher died when they started changing things
Rings of Power died when they started changing things
Game of Thrones died when they ran out of source material
Halo died when they started changing things
It has nothing to do with race, or gender, or whatever bullshit you hide behind for your ego trips. Take your ego out of the equation. Stop thinking "I can improve on this". No, you can't. People love this. Just write this. Stop thinking "oh, this would be so much better if I added--" NOPE. Stop. Even if you're extending the canon, consult the original authors. And if the original authors say "this doesn't really match the tone", then FUCKING REWRITE IT UNTIL IT MATCHES THE TONE.
First of all, I agree with everything you said.
PS: spoiler warning for Thee Body Problem, so just skip that paragraph.
However, I think that deviating from the source, or adding stuff, etc, wouldn't be so destructive, if the writing was actually good.
Three Body Problem adapted by D&D, still felt a bit meh, because they made a bunch of changes that were just terrible writing. They didn't understand the source material, so they made the VR stuff alien tech. They made the stars blink, not the cosmic background radiation. The dimension folding fuck up leading to a giant eye over... Earth?... Why did they think that made any sense? It happened on Trisolaris, and it was such a goosebump inducing thing... Did D&D just think it might look cool, and... Since you cannot easily show it without showing the aliens... They kinda went "let's just do it on earth", even though it made no fucking sense whatsoever, because, they wouldn't have any reason to play a fucking prank on earth. Shits and giggles weren't their thing... Gah.
The Witcher suffered because the writing was actually quite bad at times.
Game of Thrones... I mean... I don't know why Dumb and Dumber get their hands on any work whatsoever. They have shown they know nothing of the world and systems they write for, nor characters or development. It's just embarrassing.
Halo, I haven't watched. And Fallout, I just know that Nolan and Joy are absolutely amazing writers. The only concern I had was to what extent people like Tod could fuck things up.
I think what I'm trying to add is that: Good writers can tell very engaging adaptations within the existing constraints of lore, world and rules, but it doesn't need to be existing canon. You can always tell new stories, as long as it sticks to the established rules and world building people expect. Bad writers fail at that, and often need to add contemporary trends where it doesn't belong. The fundamental issue might just be a skill issue.
Good writing is hard. It requires a lot of effort. You need to be congruent with the world and rules you've built so far. Not everyone will notice everything that deviates. Noticing bad writing is catching a lie given the presented imagined premise. Some suspension of belief is of course necessary, or risk being an annoying pedant. But, don't pretend someone is a level headed strategist, who then sends half their army out of a defensive fortification... to fight an enemy who is known to make dead soldiers fight for them. So which is it, do the people in charge know what castles are for, or did they suddenly become dumb as bread to suit some contrived narrative, or perhaps lack thereof?.. Gah..
J. J. Abrams didn't deviate all that much from lore. But my God what a grade A moron he is when it comes to plots points. Thousands of extremely talented master craftsmen, all coming together to tell a story... that only works if you don't think about it at all. And you might wonder which franchise in particular I'm referring to, as both apply.
The Expanse TV adaptation is a master class in doing everything right. TV is a different medium, and you cannot tell the story in the same exact way. But the changes they did, still told the same story, and most changes just suited visual medium better. They even had to off a character because of real life reasons, which was a little bit abrupt, but even so, they managed to adapt to that just fine.
Wheel of Time... weird additions and focus on romantic relationships that detracted from the magnitude and seriousness of the story itself. Maybe I was just a bit too young when I read the books, but I certainly didn't remember it like that, and it made the characters feel weird, and... immature. Also, somewhat intellectually insulting. Personal sacrifice, and love (? I'm looking for a better word...) for someone, doesn't require romantic interest.
I'm rambling.
TL;DR: Good writing good. Bad writing bad. Bad writing != not 100% aligned with source material. Contemporary tropes for no good reason = bad writing. JJ, please stick to directing. D&D... Maybe take up painting? Pretty please?
I guess it's entirely possible that there's just an epidemic of bad writing.
When there's an existing beloved IP, it already had good writing. Being faithful to that = good writing. Not YOUR writing, but good writing.
It's theoretically possible to deviate from that existing good IP and still have good writing...it's just not very likely. Don't bet on it. Stick to the existing good writing.
I was to about to say the same in less eloquent way. It is worth noting though that The Expanse had both writers of the books heavily involved in the adaptation. You could also see that they drew from Game of Thrones did things, especially with consolidating characters.
I also wouldn't be so fast to judge some series that are far from being over like Rings of Power and Wheel of Time. First one is meh but not offensive. WoT needed heavy cuts to the story because of how long it is but it's still very watchable.
An additional problem (maybe the biggest problem imho) is Amazon and Netflix et al refusing to give them more than 8 episodes per season. For things with a huge amount of source material (e.g. Wheel of Time) this forces the writers to make big changes in order to try to tell a big story in a too short amount of time. Combine this with inexperienced writers or writers who think they can do a better job than the source material, and you've got a recipe for failure, in my opinion.
The Wheel of Time, for example, had many small moments that were amazing, almost perfect, but overall the show ends up being disappointing when so many other parts fail completely.
I stopped watching three body problem after the "universe blinking" nonsense. Watch the chinese version -- mich more faithful (except the cultural revolution and anything bad about china)
Absolutely - Nolan and Joy are incredible, Expanse is master class. However, (and I hate to defend them after GOT ending) D&D aren't the worst - but they are nowhere near these two. The first few seasons of GOT is still fantastic TV. 3 Body Problem had a few issues of missteps in adaptation, but I thought they largely did a good job with the pacing, tone and changes so far. I'd still say it's a good and entertaining show, just not as tight as Fallout or Expanse, since I can point out a few things that don't make a lot of sense.
There are exceptions. The Boys, for instance, succeeded due to it not being a faithful adaptation.
Don't get me wrong, the books are fine for what they are, but the only people who'd enjoy (or even tolerate for more than a couple episodes without getting physically sick) a faithfully adapted Garth Ennis book are probably the same that think Homelander is the good guy, who thankfully seem to be a minority.
Or another one: I very much doubt a faithfully adapted Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep film could have achieved the cult classic status of Blade Runner; as much of a staple of science fiction as Philip K. Dick is, he's a bit of an acquired taste, and most viewers would probably fall asleep halfway through a faithful adaptation, long after having lost any trace of the plot...
To be an exception, you need to know what you are doing. The Boys adaptation works because it is consistent with the world they built. The writers took the material, said "this is neat" threw it in a blender and made something amazing.
Instructions unclear, people are getting tired of video game adaptations.
Fuckin’ A.
I agree so much with this. I would also add X-Men. The cartoons have been so much better than the movies. The movies (yes all of them) might have a few good scenes, but they toned down the comic bookness of it. They as a whole suck.
The cartoons stay killing. Still has the best Phoenix adaptation. The new X-Men 97 shows it can adapt a lot more storylines without skipping a beat.
I mean X-Men TAS/97, Evolution, and Wolverine and the X-Men. All good in their own way. I prefer my 90s baby, but they are all better than the movies.
The thing is Deadpool proved you can make it work. Let's hope Disney learned this lesson too.
What I didn't like about the X-Men movies is they just kept the same and continues the story. And that's a big gripe I have with Marvel too.
Let comics do their thing, have new stories and new arcs instead of some 20+ hour cinematic universe. Its comics, they don't all have the same continuity. And stop telling origin stories, we know how the superheroes became superheroes, and even if the audience didn't, it doesn't matter to be able to tell a story with that character anyway.
Witcher lead left. Still getting 2 more seasons.
Rings of power is about to have a second season.
Got started to suck because D and D rushed 2 seasons to try to work for Disney, which was pulled.
Fallout is popular because it's good. All of the above changed a ton from the source. Only niche fanboys care how accurate something is and they don't move the needle on popularity.
Game of Thrones didn't suck because D&D rushed things. It started to go downhill as early as season 5, when they ran out of source material. People overlooked it initially because Game of Thrones had such a strong hype train. The last two seasons were just so blatantly bad that no one could ignore it anymore.
And witcher and rings of power and GOT are absolutely bombing.
Fallout (the show) is popular because it's good. Fallout (the show) is good because it religiously follows the tone of the original source. The original source was good.
That's the point. Fanboys exist for an IP because it was good in the first place. More accurate = more good, because the original was good. It's not just meaningless partisanship or fanboyism. You already have a good story. Just tell that story. Vary on that theme.
This is spot on. What I would add is that even lazy or easy writing can be saved by an understanding of the tone and background of the show.
My favourite example of this is The Big Bang Theory. A lot of people hate it because it's a show that glorified nerd culture in a poor way, but ultimately it's just a sitcom that exemplified that good people have their own struggles that aren't dissimilar from each other - whether it's a struggling actress making their way, a postdoc worker struggling to make their mark, or a genius that learns that ignoring personal growth will affect him professionally. It packs this into a basic plot for several seasons, and then writes an entire new prequel that is more of the same - except with enough tweaks to show that Sheldon's retelling of events was due to his own naiveté in what it's like to raise a family. It might not win Emmy's or be studied for decades after like The Wire, but the writers knew the material and knew how to stay faithful to the core story.
It is often so obvious when a show has an idea for a beginning and an end, but nothing in-between (Good Place), or when a show is basically just a bunch of ideas and no plot (Lost). I'd probably say that you need good writers, not necessarily good writing, to make a good show.
Rings of Power died when they started changing things
Died? It barely got one season.
Game of Thrones died when they ran out of source material
The best season of the TV show was season 6, when the writers could finally start paying plot lines off rather than stringing people along.
It's interesting that people are saying that this is so faithful, considering that they totally messed up the history of the California region. >!The series basically took place in NCR, but they just lazily disregarded the whole rebuilt NCR civilization and turned it into the east coast Bethesda wasteland. So what, did the NCR collapse back into wasteland in a decade or so too? Give me a break.!<
I don't think you get a $153m budget without expecting it to be popular.
A big budget doesn't guarantee success though. See LOTR series.
of course, but that's not the point. the point was making a popular show was absolutely their goal, not sure why they feel the need to posture about being "surprised".
By most metrics the Lord of the Rings show was very successful. Now none of those metrics mean much to you or me, but they do by the people who sign the checks I think.
Or "Citadel" for that matter, which apparently cost $300m
Second season comes out in August. Popular enough to keep spending money.
In the end, there's no way to show is a streaming show is popular. Unlike movies, it's all hidden.
I just hope it doesn't overstay its welcome like just about every show these days.
Amazon will cut the budget every consecutive season.
You can't tell me you're not excited for Days of Our Fallout featuring the inevitable Lucy, Cooper, Maximus love triangle. I personally can't wait for the day when show creators have Lucy, a woman scorned, running straight into the arms of Super Mutant BigDick. How can you live without the drama of each of the main characters acting irrational over a meaningless event that could have been avoided with a clear line of questioning?
Yup, I'm gonna need about 15 seasons of low-budgeted, poorly-written, Producer-vetted BS that Amazon will be sure to bring to the table
Planning 4 additional seasons worries me. That's a lot of story and actors to plan.
Make 5 seasons then end it. Nothing worse than shows that go on too long then start to become shit.
I feel like they really only had 2 great seasons. Now we'll have 4 mid ones instead. Greed fucking sucks
I can't upvote this enough. I love limited or mini series for this very reason. There are too many shows that just coast after creating an idea or mystery where even the writers themselves have no idea where it's actually going. These type of shows survive off cliffhangers and shock events and would continue on forever so long as people are watching. I really wish more shows would just end tieing up all loose ends before the final episode. If the show is that great they can start a new story arc either with the original characters or a spin off in the same world. Any show that requires a cliffhanger to keep people engaged isn't great to begin with and will likely end in viewer disappoint. That's just my opinion though.
I would be more worried that they give it the Westworld treatment.
As a huge Fallout fan since the aughts, I was pleasantly surprised. The show is faithful to it source material and nails tone the games are known for. Some cameos helped the with dark humor. Story was interesting too, especially the b plot about the vaults.
Nobody uses aughts the way they ought to anymore.
Edit: Apparently I have not used Ought to the way I should have. TIL
That article is confusing, the title suggests there's a difference in how "should" and "ought" are used, but besides the fact that "ought" sometimes comes with "to" there doesn't seem to be one.
The usage of ought is perfectly cromulent. I'd've cut the sentence before the "to" -it's punchier that way. Dictionaries are descriptive and not prescriptive. Fuck the man; write beautiful words.
:)
When the dude wiped his dick on the curtains, I knew it truly was a fallout show.
Also, best subtitle ever:
*wipes
Do the episodes get better after the first few, or is this just not for me?
I'm universally hated for this opinion on Lemmy, but the whole season is a solid “meh”. But it is a consistent “meh”. If you didn't care about the characters and plot points in the first two episodes, they're not gonna get any better. There are two or three outrageously bad scenes later in the season, like truly atrocious writing and awful acting, but they come and go very fast, you won't notice if you are not paying attention, and they end up not affecting the plot ending.
Okie doke
I wonder how many creators are taking less money to get better support at outlets other than cancel-happy HBO and Netflix? Five seasons is a great deal if it works out for them.
I can't be bothered to watch any series on netflix that are not finished with a proper ending for this exact reason. Fuck them for not giving shows actual endings and just cancelling them.
Same! Netflix has trained me not to even watch new shows until the show has a proper finale. Fuck em for making so many throw away shows just to pump thier numbers.
Same goes for Google, it doesn't matter what miraculous app/hardware they dream up with, cause those fucks are no better when it comes to abandoning thier work. It's all pump and dump after the quartler numbers are out.
Enshittification is getting out of control.
Sometimes it's the enjoyment of what happens in a show that makes it enjoyable, or the just the actors giving a great performance with what they get, regardless of when executives want to cancel it cough firefly cough. I do agree it sucks but sometimes it's still worth the watch is all. Maybe they'll realize errors if enough people watch the better stuff even if unfinished in the future, but doubtful. Also I'm a Stephen King reader so used to not so great endings heh but the middle parts can be awesome at least.
Part of that is on the show runners and writers. Netflix makes decisions off of viewership and other metrics, it's the show runners that decide to have seasons end on cliffhangers
Watched the first season before Amazon added ads to their streaming. It was pretty decent. Not decent enough to watch ads or pay more.
I have Amazon prime and I watched it pirated anyways to dodge the ads. Service issue.
More than decent enough to watch it for free, though.
It's not like Amazon and Bethesda / Microsoft are going to miss the money... 🤷♂️
If they could commit to just five seasons it could be a really good show, but if they plan to try to keep it going and milk it, it'll be complete garbage by season 3
They started with an already well detailed, quite deep, world (including already having various stories), which already had quite a number of fans (thanks to it being in a series of Role Playing Games - which is pretty much the kind of games closest to a TV Series or Movie), didn't fuck it up by writting a bad script, didn't fuck it up by getting bad actors and didn't fuck it up by being cheap on FX.
It's not exactly surprising that it was a success..
It's maybe a little optimist at this point to expect at least 5 seasons - mainly because that's plenty of time to fuck it up, especially around the point when the initial story either wraps up or gets boring, which is were plenty of great TV Series turn to shit - but yeah, so far so good.
I wish for the Horizon (Zero Dawn) series to have that kind of luck with good story/writing, acting, and FX... then I always remember that it's Netflix making it and get disappointed every time.
If the other seasons are as good as the first season I'm all for this. Adaptations of game franchises can be hit or miss but this was really well done.
I think it would’ve been even bigger if they released it weekly.
Almost no show needs to go past 3 seasons. It's almost always a bad idea.
This is like when the show runner for The Handmaid's Tale said he'd love for it to be 10 seasons long when it stopped being good after one.
So basically they never planned a proper ending for it? I think this is the post that makes me decide to skip it, sorry.
EDIT: Maybe they'll structure it so the ending episodes call back to a problem from the start and all the seasons in between were just side quests, lol.
I didn't skip the first one, but the shitty open ending convinced me I wouldn't be watching the next series.
Absolutely guaran-fuckin-teed it has a first episode that's an amazing work of art, then ten filler episodes that are the visual equivalent of wallpaper paste, then a last episode that teases the next series.
So done with American series, they're nothing but cash cows.
Has Amazon released anything that's made it a full five seasons?
Isn't Expanse 5 seasons?
Though they didn't start that project so maybe it doesn't count there.
Syfy produced 36 episodes over 3 seasons. Amazon bought the show from Syfy and produced 26 episodes over what was functionally 2.5 seasons. I might have been willing to give Bezos more credit if he hadn't nixed the show in its final arc.
I though the writing was so bad. Only the franchise carried it over being forgettable. I mean the black main character is so badly written, most of what he does doesn't make sense if you look further then some very flat character development. I hope they can improve and remove some of the cringe elements. I love Fallout, but it has a diffent humor, the show didn't manage to replicate much.
Classic. Downvoted comment expressing dislike of popular thing with no comments responding.
I've only watched one episode but I thought it was ok. There were multiple badly written cringe moments and I thought the director really dropped the ball by not focusing on Lucy in order to end the episode with the wasteland reveal. Cutting to the brotherhood half way through her story was a terrible decision in my opinion. The tension of what's waiting for Lucy in the wasteland is completely deflated before we get there because we've already seen that a society of some sort exists.
Overall there was a lot that I liked and I thought it could have been a lot worse. I like the opening even though I thought it was a bit overindulgent. I liked the casual inclusion of a non-binary character (made me reflect on Fallout's representation as a whole which I feel like is pretty bad in that department?). I appreciated the attention to detail, I don't really give a fuck if they stick to any established lore, I just want to that a lot of care and attention went into the world building. And I liked the fact that the violence was a good balance of cartoony and serious.
Anyways, fanpeople gonna fanpeep. People fucking hate when you dislike something they see as above criticsm. For example; Rogue One is a bad movie, Arcane is mid, BotW is mid. :^)
I watched 40% of the second episode, holy shit was that writing just awful. I stopped watching after they get attacked in the cave. One of the worst directed scenes I've ever watched. The tone is just all over the place, is it funny? Is it scary? What the fuck is the acolyte doing? What does he want?
That whole episode (up until I stopped watching) was just such a disaster. I don't know what any of the characters want or why I should care about them.
What is your sperm count?
Creators, "Now let's ruin it by going to the most fan-sacred places in the Fallout universe."
They already went the and the place has blown up...
(I'm not talking about the same place as the person I'm replying to in case it's not obvious enough)
The slooty armor vendors?!??!
Wait people are actually watching this I thought it was just getting morbbed
It's a pretty good TV adaptation of the games.
I thought so until the last episode. That one brought the rest of what they had done way down (for me).
Maybe stop listening to rage baiters on YT.
I haven't looked into it at all other than passing posts I don't care about
It's...ok. keep your expectations low and it's pretty watchable.
The HALO series was surprisingly good.
I didn't realize today was opposite day.
Hard pass.
Feel the same. Thought the 1st episode started strong and by the end I didn't care to see what happens next.
That fact they made the show about a pretty girl that just wants some dick instead of a show about the numerous tragic themes that fallout has instantly told me that they will milk this production for every last drop of money.
This is being produced be the real life Vault-Tek after all. Fucking Amazon.
incel intensifies
That fact they made the show about a pretty girl that just wants some dick instead of a show about the numerous tragic themes that fallout has ...
I legitimate cannot even fathom the basement dweller type of mental gymnastics needed to come to this conclusion after watching the show. lmao
Probably watched only the first 10 minutes and decided that's the entire show.
They'll fall into the trap of never creating a proper ending aren't they?
Well it is a fallout show
I'm imagining a series finally like a weird mixture of Clue and Fallout 4 where the last episode has four possible endings and three are basically the same and they're all shown.
The horse will be pâté.
A big theme I'm hoping to see in season 2 is to see what their take on New Vegas' ending would be in the show.
Todd Howard already said that they aim to be as ambiguous as possible and not canonize any of player's choices. It will probably be "yeah there was a big trouble here a couple of decades back but it's all ancient history now so who cares". And the town's leader will be some schmuck who hasn't even heard of Mr. House.
This series would be ripe for new plot and characters every season Fargo style. Too bad they'll never do it.
That seems the pattern, especially with comedies. I get the sense Netflix (any streaming platform really but especially newcomers Netflix and Amazon) seem to be quick to cancel a streaming show for any or no reason.
Yup