Few things strike me as more post-doomsday-ish than humankind reaching a time when video game to film or TV series adaptations get good, but that’s where you and I are right now. The Fallout TV show rocks so much that it immediately prompted its watchers to scour the media wasteland to satiate their hunger for some sweet tales of the post-apocalyptic.
If you’re looking for games, that’s easy — just play any Fallout game. If you’re looking for movies, however, that might be more of a challenge, so I’ve come up with a list of the best post-apocalyptic movies Fallout fans can enjoy today.
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
Even though we can attribute the boom of the Post-Apocalyptic genre and landscape to the original Mad Max, its sequel, Mad Mad: Fury Road, is a much better film by every conceivable metric.
The funny thing about Fury Road is that it’s not as influential as the original film, but that’s not because it’s worse — it’s because its action is so groundbreaking that no one dared rip it off. Watch this one if you’d like to know what a fast-paced Fallout story would look like. I promise you that the only possible downside here is the inevitable disappointment at learning that no Fallout game features cars — yet.
Hardware (Richard Stanley, 1990)
Hardware is the least-known title on this list, which is a shame as it’s one of the most Fallout-like films out there. It tells the story of nuclear damnation, mad automatons, and Wasteland scavengers who come across cursed “treasure”.
Despite a hilariously small budget by today’s standards, Hardware manages to beautifully — if that’s the word to use here — recreate the “colors” of the wasteland and the decadence of a metropolis tainted by the consequences of flirting with nuclear powers. Do not sleep on this one if you want to see something bold, unique, and massively underrated.
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1984)
While it’s up for debate whether Stalker takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, there’s no debate on whether it plays like a post-apocalyptic movie. Stalker shows the journey of a few men searching for a literal miracle that will change their lives, but their adventure is anything but magical. Instead of beautiful landscapes, they must traverse what is only known as “the zone”, a mysterious and haunting place where they must face outer and inner adversities to get to their desired goal. It has little to do with the Fallout series, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a movie that plays out more like your favorite Fallout campaign.
The Road (John Hilcoat, 2009)
This easily makes the top 3 for bleakest entries on this list of already-bleak movies. The Road pulls no punches, as it depicts a father and son attempting to survive through a nuclear winter, mostly just out of their basic instinct to survive. This is the equivalent of going on a custom Fallout campaign with only two bullets, in a world where you can only count on one or two NPCs in the entire Wasteland.
Children Of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
Most post-apocalyptic movies tell the tales of characters living in the aftermath of a clear near-extinction event. Children Of Men shows a post-apocalyptic world where an apocalyptic event clearly took place, but it went over the heads of many. Few people notice just how doomed they are. In Children Of Men, the entire human population has become incapable of conceiving more babies. Nobody really knows why, or what to do about it. Children Of Men actually shares more elements with Half-Life 2 than with the Fallout series, but the main character’s journey is sure to entice fans of either series.
A Boy And His Dog (L.Q. Jones,1975)
If you’re into the Fallout series, the first five minutes of A Boy and his dog will immediately give away that this is where Black Isle Studios got the idea for Dog Meat, your dog companion in many of the games. It’s far from the best film on this list, but it’s an interesting adaptation of a comedically dark story by Harlan Ellison that predates even Mad Max in the “adventures in the post-apocalyptic wasteland” genre.
Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
Why would kids not have the right to enjoy the post-apocalypse as well? Wall-E isn’t just one of the greatest movies about the post-apocalypse. It’s one, if not the best of Pixar’s movies. It gets that distinction because it tells an incredibly heartwarming tale in the bleakest of scenarios that kids and older folk can enjoy together.
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (Yoshiaki Kawajiri 2000)
The only problem with putting Bloodlust in a list of best post-apocalyptic films is that it might strike many as too gorgeous to be post-apocalyptic. Luckily, Fury Road has already broken that barrier, so we can now talk about one of the coolest-looking anime of all time and address its wacky post-apocalyptic roots.
Bloodlust is actually the sequel to another movie, the original Vampire Hunter D, which also has a video game adaptation, but those weren’t very good. Bloodlust, however, is everything the original should have been and more, so if you’re looking for a beautiful tale of vampires in the post-apocalypse, you can do no better than this one.
Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000)
Okay, Battle Royale doesn’t take place in a post-apocalyptic Wasteland, so it isn’t exactly like Fallout. Still, it does take place in a dystopian time, as that’s the only kind of time when you can have a yearly TV show where an entire classroom has to go on a death match until only one student remains alive. Also, that’s kind of like Fallout 76’s Battle Royale mode, whose name came from, well, I’ll let you guess.
In all seriousness, though, this is a fantastically bleak film that any fan of the broad post-apocalyptic genre, of the Fallout series, or Battle Royale games in general should absolutely watch.
Threads (Mick Jackson, 1984)
Threads is the final boss of the post-apocalypse.
I left Threads for last not because it is the best, nor the one I’d like to recommend the most, but because it’s the one I’d recommend you look for if you’ve seen everything else in the genre and still want more. Threads tells not just the story of the post-apocalyptic nuclear holocaust, but the story of what takes place during it, and it’s likely even more dour than you can imagine.
