‘Radioactive Dreams’: The movie that inspired ‘Fallout’
Iconic video game franchise Fallout is preparing to make the jump into live-action in a blockbuster-sized streaming series, with the console saga having originally launched back in 1997 before evolving into the massive action-packed RPGs fans know and love.
However, the inspirations for the post-apocalyptic Wasteland that’s always served as the backdrop to the mythology are rooted in the world of cinema, specifically writer and director Albert Pyun’s Radioactive Dreams. The filmmaker may have been known for his work in the realm of low-budget B-tier genre fare, but Fallout 4 wouldn’t have generated an eye-watering $750million in revenue within 24 hours of releasing in 2015 if it wasn’t for his movie.
It’s not exactly a subtle homage, either, considering Radioactive Dreams focuses on John Stockwell’s Philip Chandler and Michael Dudikoff’s Marlowe Hammer, two youngsters who grow up in a radioactive fallout shelter obsessing over 1950s fiction before making their way out of their cavernous surroundings and into the real world to investigate what’s happened to the surface following a nuclear war.
Radioactive Dreams had already directly inspired the 1988 game Wasteland, with Fallout executive producer Brian Fargo explaining to PC Gamer that his obsession with the apocalypse would then feed into his next creation. “Shortly after finishing the Wasteland game, Interplay became a publisher and we no longer created games for other people,” he said. “I tried to get EA to license me the rights back, but I was unable to succeed despite trying for many years. I finally decided we’d do our own post-apocalyptic game and call it Fallout.”
The 1950s atomic-era aesthetic has been integral to Fallout since well before the third game expanded it into a large-scale adventure that could be played in first or third-person, and that combination of retrofuturism and nostalgia comes straight from Radioactive Dreams, not just because the two main characters derive their individual names from Raymond Chandler’s famous noir creation Philip Marlowe.
Once the kids leave the shelter and begin exploring the world, they run into radioactive enemies, cannibals, and violent gangs, all of which have become staples of the Fallout universe. As it relates to the third game in particular, the main characters in Radioactive Dreams are both searching for their fathers, who end up being revealed as harbouring dangerous secrets, identical to the storyline of the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3.
Essentially, the cult classic sci-fi that admirably recouped its budget twice over from cinemas in 1985 would go on to serve as the template for one video game, which would then serve as the template for another, which would go on to launch a money-spinning property that’s finally come full circle and made its way back into live-action through Prime Video’s Fallout series.
