Just like in the games, one of the best parts of the Fallout TV series is when someone gets to stomp around in a big clunky set of power armor. In Fallout Season 1 that was usually Maximus, played by Aaron Moten, who stepped into a set of T-60 power armor to battle a rampaging Yao Guai and a ravenous Gulper. (And less successfully when he tried to take on The Ghoul.)
But at the end of Season 1, Hank MacLean, played by Kyle MacLachlan of Twin Peaks fame, also got to climb into some power armor, and he used it to stomp a path all the way to the outskirts of New Vegas for Fallout Season 2.
I recently got a chance to talk to both Kyle MacLachlan and Aaron Moten about the Fallout series, and I asked them about the show's T-60 power armor, how it works, and if it's a costume they can genuinely climb into and walk around in.
"I gotta tell you, it is such a thrill to have the power armor on," MacLachlan said. "I got to wear it in Season 1, and now again, in Season 2. It's heavy, but you do feel like you can do just about anything."
"It is something you can get in and walk around in. And it is amazing," Moten said. "It's beautiful. It's functional. We get to throw it through walls and put it in big bodies of water. It's a beautiful thing, but it is practically, it's really heavy. In order for it to withstand all the stuff that we want to do with it, it can't be made of styrofoam or too light a material."
The practicality of the show's T-60 armor even extends to the jet pack shown in Fallout Season 1's second episode, where a real jet pack was used (for the first time on film since 1965's Bond movie Thunderball) for a scene where Moten's character Maximus flies out of the town of Filly. (Naturally, Moten didn't do the flying himself, it was handled by a pilot from jetsuit manufacturer Gravity Industries.)
Moten said the top half of the power armor, including the helmet, weighs about 50 to 60 pounds, "so you feel it after five minutes. It's like you've got a 13-year-old hanging on your back. And the full suit that you have to be six foot five to wear is about 100 pounds, fully."
"It's impressive," MacLachlan added. "And the team that put that together, they're amazing. They're really special."
