The declaration "Fallout sucks" is not worthy of a post on its own, but I'm more curious about the state of media in general due to my generally ascetic lifestyle. I don't stream, I don't watch new movies, and other than a few games on Steam and my PS2 I don't game anymore either. I gave the new Fallout a shot through rather Frobisherian means and could only last two and a half episodes before Shift-Deleting the files from my computer.
My main complaint? The acting. The stiff, uninspired, stilted acting. The show up to the point that I quit felt like a comedy sketch done very poorly. I understand that they were trying to capture the lampooned 50s feel of Fallout as a whole yet they failed in that execution, mainly due to the acting.
I honestly can't think of one good acting performance. Maybe Titus, and only because Rapaport just played him like he plays everybody?
The thing is, I'm seeing praise for the show and I don't understand it so I'm wondering if those giving praise are used to wading through outhouse troughs and view this as a breath of fresh air? Are my expectations too high? Is this a me problem?
I think people are saying good things about it, because historically video game adaptations have been completely awful.
So it's merely a "It didn't suck as much as I expected" when they say it's good.
But it's not good. It's just not shitty enough to hate train it.
The power armor looks very plastic. I don't know what can be done about that other than chroming the plastic bits or something, but it'd probably be too shiny for the lighting. They also don't walk right. Which is honestly hard to get done right. And probably from having to walk without much practice in something with all those bits and bobs glued onto a frame they walk around in.
The acting is very one dimensional. Likely intentional so that they can be latched on to by everyone who has a few of the traits so they can self insert, as they do.
The only good part appears to be the Ghoul character played by Walter Goggins ( I wonder if he and David Goggins ever met to see who the better Goggins is... sorry, it's just a dumb name comparison thing.) that I can never remember the name of. Cooper I think? Anyway, they gave him a fairly interesting back story and I think he's probably the only sane person around, given how everyone else is.
They looked at the lore and thought "Nah, we can do better" and just pitched out the vast majority of it and built up whatever they needed with the ashes of what was left. In doing so, they've doomed the show to never move beyond what they're borrowing from, and breaking away from at the same time. It's a bizarre choice. One of the tenets of good writing is to build up, not break down, but I digress. We wouldn't be here bitching if the writing was well thought out and good.
The show is merely okay. It's being canonized by people who bought the franchise, took a big steaming dump on it themselves, and did the same thing these writers are doing. "Yeah, that exists, but it exists this way now, because faulty, badly thought out reason here. We own it now okay? No time to explain how ghouls work when there's super mutants around." Or whatever the fuck Pete Hines said when cornered by someone who knew more than he did and genuinely cared. But I digress ... again.
Maybe I'll save myself from watching the rest of the season. I can put money down on the fact that at least one of the recap youtubers have likely done the legwork for me, and I can just condense watch it that way. So I don't have to deal with the moment to moment boringness that happens in a show like this.
Every time someone praises it, I just care a little less about it honestly. It's fine, it can exist. I don't have to spend any more time on it. It's popular, and people like it, and it is an Amazon product we're talking about, so they'll bait and switch it to ass suck mode in season 2 where the girl can suddenly reprogram turrets and robco robots and shit like that, make her own plasma weapons, etc, without ever having been seen doing any of the work to have that knowledge.