Prime Video’s Fallout Proves a Helldivers TV Show Would Work

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 22, 2024 11 Views 11 Min Read
Prime Video's Fallout Proves a Helldivers TV Show Would Work



Summary

  • Helldivers could be a great TV adaptation due to its shared satirical humor with successful shows like Fallout.
  • Fallout found success in a TV format and is set in an established world full of dark humor.
  • A Helldivers show should focus on political satire, offer original storylines, and capture the essence of the game’s tone.

Adapting video game IP is a popular trend in Hollywood at the moment but one title that is yet to be licensed is Arrowhead Games’ Helldivers. The franchise has seen a lot of success in 2024 thanks to the release of Helldivers 2 and while it may seem an unlikely choice for an adaptation, the impact of Prime Video’s Fallout series is a good indication that a Helldivers TV show could work.

Video game adaptations are some of the hottest titles in Hollywood these days, particularly Prime Video’s Fallout TV series. The series recently won Best Adaptation at The Game Awards and was one of the streamer’s biggest originals of the year. Bethesda’s Fallout franchise provided a strong foundation for adaptation with players long being enamored with the dark-humored post-apocalyptic world. On the surface, Helldivers doesn’t share too many similarities in plot or gameplay with Fallout, but both properties share something in common that makes them ideal for modern TV adaptations.

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Why Prime Video’s Fallout Succeeded

Fallout was a successful video game adaptation for several reasons. One of those was that it opted for the TV format rather than film, allowing the expansive world to be spread out across multiple episodes and different character’s points of view. Another clever strategic choice was to set the TV series in the same world as the games but using entirely new characters and a fresh storyline, rather than adapting any one specific game. Given that the Fallout games are so reliant on player choice and exploration, this would’ve been phenomenally difficult to translate on screen. But the Fallout creatives made the right choice, infusing the story with enough familiar character archetypes and elements of the Fallout world that it felt right at home in the series.

Another thing that Fallout replicated to a tee in the TV series was the series’ dark humor. Fallout is set in a world that is run by corporations and it tackles this with a healthy dose of satirical humor that reflects on the extremes of capitalism and consumerism. The Fallout TV adaptation isn’t afraid to double down on the games’ dark humor, by bringing up more taboo topics like incest, offsetting violent scenes with comedy, and even making some meta winks to the video game audience.

The Wasteland’s got its own Golden Rule: ‘Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullsh*t every goddamn time.’

A Shared Sensibility

Fallout’s Execution of Tone is A Great Reference For A Helldivers Show

The main commonality that both Helldivers and Fallout share is this unique tone and sense of humor. Similar to Fallout, Helldivers takes place in an exaggerated world, where satirical humor is used freely to comment on military propaganda and patriotism. In Helldivers 2, which Arrowhead released earlier in 2024, players are placed in the shoes of nameless faceless soldiers who are overly dedicated to the idea of democracy and fighting for the glory of Super Earth. The irony begins there. Helldivers fight blindly for liberty and freedom, despite having none themselves. Helldivers introduces the idea of “managed democracy”, a political system that provides the illusion of voting for one’s ideals, but in a system that is ultimately out of the voter’s control. In Helldivers, this has resulted in a world perpetually at war, who survive solely on the idea of democracy, without really knowing what it is.

This satirical sensibility is something evident in Fallout’s world as well. In Fallout, the vault dwellers believe they are the chosen ones tasked with sustaining humanity’s way of life and ideals until such a time as they can repopulate the Earth. However, this is all a capitalist lie that has been fed to them by the powers at Vault-Tec, which Lucy learns quickly upon experiencing the Wasteland way of life outside the vault. Even Fallout’s Brotherhood of Steel shares some similarities with the Helldivers soldiers, as they turn the recovery of old-world technology into a sacred quest, when in reality the items they’re searching for have little meaning or value.

A Helldivers Show Should Follow Fallout’s Lead

helldivers 2 from game rant's top 10 of 2024

While not a video game adaptation, another TV show that leans into this sense of humor is another Prime Video series, The Boys, which offers a satirical take on superhero pop culture. Fallout and The Boys are evidence that this satirical and dark type of humor is popular among audiences, who want to challenge the structures they experience around them Helldivers could easily be the next adaptation to contribute to that trend.

There’s been no discussion of a Helldivers film or TV adaptation at this time, but if Hollywood were looking for another project with tonal similarities, which could be the next Fallout or The Boys, Helldivers shouldn’t be ignored. Helldivers 2 is an online multiplayer game with no single-player narrative or campaign, meaning an adaptation would likely need to follow Fallout’s lead and create an original story set in the world of Helldivers with new characters. However, the adaptation’s success will rely on the execution of Helldivers’ themes, and it must find ways to provide an entertaining and witty exploration of political satire in Arrowhead’s action-packed sci-fi world.

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