Summary

Video games are now better than most movies and TV shows, says Jonathan Nolan in exclusive interview.
Nolan reflects on the evolution of gaming, finding games more subversive and interesting than movies.
Growing up with video games from the start has been amazing, says Nolan, comparing experience to witnessing whole art form develop.

In an exclusive interview with MovieWeb, Fallout co-creator and the writer behind the likes of Westworld and The Dark Knight, Jonathan Nolan, declares that video games are now better than most movies and TV shows these days. As well as revealing how he first started playing Fallout and thinking about it as a live-action project while he was working on The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan reflected on the “evolution” of video games.

“I’ve got kids now, so I’ve had to hang up my spurs for the most part with games, but I used to love taking a bit of a brain cleanse in between projects. And the late 2000s was a moment in which I started to feel like, as a filmmaker, that when people would ask me ‘What was your favorite movie of the year? What was your favorite show of the year?’ As often as not, my answer would be a game. Gaming really started to take. And it’s crazy for me to watch the entire evolution of an art form, from my life starting with Pong, all the way up to something as sophisticated and elaborate as Fallout.”

Fallout 4/5 Release Date April 10, 2024 Seasons 1 Studio Amazon Studios, Kilter Films, Bethesda Game Studios Creator Geneva Robertson-Dworet

Continuing his comparison of movies and games, Nolan stated that the latter has become “more subversive, more interesting, more surprising” than what he often sees on the big screen.

“But in any given year, you started to feel like the games were more subversive, more interesting, more surprising. And I think that was my experience for Fallout 3… It’s dark, it’s violent, it’s funny, it’s goofy, it’s political, satirical, subversive. It’s all the things I like in one package, and that doesn’t usually work, right? It’s not usually all things to all people. But for me, these games, especially with the degree to which you could explore them, you really could pack all of these wonderful things in there. So we tried to in the series.”

Jonathan Nolan Remembers Playing Pong With His Brother, the Oscar-Winning Director Christopher Nolan

Reminiscing about his time playing Pong with his now Oscar-winning brother Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan explained how the experience of growing up with video games from their very conception has been, to him, “kind of amazing.”

“Chris and I had Pong, had the original Pong console you plugged into your cathode ray television. And so, it’s crazy… Chris was talking the other day at the Academy Awards about the fact that movies are really only a couple years old as a storytelling medium, which is f*cking wild to me that my career now spans a quarter of that medium. But with video games, if you’re our age, you’ve seen the whole thing, right from the very beginning… It’s like, how crazy would it be to #have experienced the entire lifespan of the novel, right? But here we get this incredible privilege to be able to watch this art form develop from something always sophisticated, always challenging, but to become something so rich and sophisticated is kind of amazing.”

4:39 Related Fallout’s Walton Goggins Unpacks The Ghoul and The White Lotus Season 3 The Justified star also shares a bizarre onset mishap that sent him to the doctor and teases checking into Season 3 of The White Lotus.

Based on one of the greatest video game series of all time, Fallout is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. You can check out the official synopsis below.

“200 years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind — and are shocked to discover an incredibly complex, gleefully weird and highly violent universe waiting for them.”

The first series has been met with hugely positive reviews so far, with MovieWeb’s own Greg Archer calling the show a “Slick Adaptation of the Popular Video Game.”

“Meanwhile, between its compelling premise, slick gadgetry, dystopian dysfunction, and engaging characters, Fallout is still one hell of a good time.”

Starring Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, and Kyle MacLachlan all episodes of the
Fallout
series are due to land on Prime Video on April 11.