Whenever someone has the courage to adapt a video game to television or film, they have a few inherent components working against them from the outset.
First and foremost is that the core fanbase is your biggest rival because, yes, the showrunner has a vision for the adaptation, but the gamer inhabited that character. Depending on the level of video game depth and quality, there’s a decent chance that said character has become part of their personal identity. Thus, they are intensely protective of the property.
To a non-gamer, this might seem preposterous. Can you really have different experiences with PacMan? Games have come so far in the last two decades that they’re almost unrecognizable to someone who isn’t familiar with the medium. The best ones not only transport you to a unique world, but they make you learn about yourself as you take the trip. So, yes, for those of us who played The Last of Us 1 & 2, we were all Joel. We were all Ellie. But my Ellie might have focused on melee tactics while yours preferred ranged kills with the hunting rifle. My Ellie might have avoided fights wherever possible while your Ellie might have maxed out the damage on her pipe. In each case, the gamer takes away something unique. I promise you that my Femshep or Ezio or Arthur Morgan was different than yours.
More importantly, the video game medium has a bizarre demand quotient. If a TV show or a movie sucks, people turn it off and never think of it again. If a game sucks, people go on the offensive. They post on message boards. They email gaming companies. They litter social media with complaints.
If a TV show or a movie sucks, people turn it off and never think of it again. If a game sucks, people go on the offensive.
Now imagine if that game is beloved, like The Last of Us. Imagine if it’s universally considered a gaming masterpiece. If video games are famous paintings, The Last of Us is the Mona Lisa or The Sistine Chapel. Everyone knows it.
That’s why it’s painful when you love a game and they cast a complete null set like Mark Wahlberg to play the lead.
So what are the chances in 2023 of bringing a beloved, cherished, protected property like that to the small screen without stirring up a hornet’s nest of vitriol? Judging from the reception of HBO’s The Last of Us premiere, pretty damn good.
The Last of Us pilot was a jaw-dropping clinic in how to adapt a video game. It pivoted effortlessly between canon and non-canon additive touches, completely mindful of the medium.
For example, it set up an opening scene where a scientist in the 1960’s outlines how a warming globe might allow a fungal mutation that could affect mankind. This wasn’t in the game, so why include it in the show? Because the germane takeaway was that this isn’t a viral or a bacterial thing. It’s a fungus, and fungi are…different. Because the result of the fungal contamination/mutation influences the game and show aesthetic so prominently, showrunner Craig Mazin clearly thought it important to establish that right from the get-go.
Then we jump ahead to 2003, and lo! The earth has put another log on the fire. Wouldn’t you know it? Temps go up and wham! An outbreak of said fungus throttles civilization.
Then, as in the game, we jump ahead two decades and see the lasting result of that calamity. Humanity has not recovered. Boston is a fortified city. The military runs everything. The land beyond the high walls is a badlands of contamination, bandits, slavers, and worse.
The show captures all of this magnificently. It looks right, which is no small feat. But more importantly, it looks right to newbie non-gamers and gamers alike. Gamers look at the executions by FEDRA (the militaristic Federal Disaster Response Agency, created to respond to the cordyceps brain infection) and we think: “oh yeah. I lived that.” Regular viewers look at it and say, “oh man, I see what this is.” It works either way.
But what about Joel and Ellie? They’re not MY Joel and Ellie! And Tess was pretty in the game! Now she’s hard and weathered! You’re going to see some reactions like that, but the show was surprisingly loyal to the original material.
Pedro Pascal captures Joel exceedingly well, in both looks and affect. Bella Ramsey isn’t a spot on match for game-Ellie, but she captures Ellie’s attitude and physicality seamlessly. I was worried at first that she’d have a difficult time living up to game-Ellie and now I think it may be the other way around.
What Worked
- Almost everything. The shot-for-shot reenactment of the breakout scene with Tommy and Joel and Sarah in the pickup truck in 2003 was outstanding. That’s where the show decided to just surf the perfection of a flawless gaming sequence and repurpose it for TV.
- The opening credits, which used a cordyceps outbreak as a cityscape and a map. So good.
- The casting. Every choice was fantastic, from the leads to characters like Marlene and Kim.
For me, one notable performance was Nico Parker as Sarah Miller. Watching her was like when you see a backup QB come into the game and they rise to the challenge and the announcer says “this quarterback just earned himself a TON of money.” That’s how it felt. I’m excited to see Nico Parker’s trajectory from here on. And this is extra sweet:
- Scarcity: “I need that bag back.” The show set up the scarcity economy perfectly. It’s been twenty years and humans have pilfered everything we think of as ‘easy to get’ in our current world. Cigarettes are now hand-wrapped. There are lines everywhere for basic things. Plastic bags have reusable value. One used car battery garners the amount of attention as a cocaine deal today. Simple tools like a hatchet are scarce enough to be items Joel hides under loose floorboards like treasure. This is a major component of the game, and the show nailed it.
- Shots like this and the color palette of the show. Goddamn, the cinematography was unreal.
- The moment of parallel when Joel was holding Sarah and the beat where he was defending Ellie. It was a great example of visual storytelling.
- The first few moments with Joel and Ellie where he stepped on her knife and then kicked it away.
- The beat where Tess put Ellie in the apartment and she yells WHAT THE FUCK? All of Ellie’s swearing, really. It was note-perfect.
- In general, the handoff from Marlene to Joel worked splendidly. That could have been a major issue. Why would Marlene give up the most precious thing she has on a whim? So much about this scene worked, from yelling that Kim only has one ear to telling Joel and Tess to point the guns at her, not Ellie. Because the scarcity of the time was established so well, it tracked that Joel might actually consider taking on this ‘cargo’ if it meant he had access to a better vehicle. I’ll bet no one came out of the episode questioning that scene, but it could have been a huge problem if the rest of the story wasn’t laid out as well as it was.
- Did anyone else catch Brad Leland as the elderly next door neighbor, Mr. Adler? He played the one and only Buddy Garrity in Friday Night Lights.
- Everything Bella Ramsey, but I especially loved when she kicked the tray when we first met her.
- When the episode was over, there was a little season preview and the final sound cue was a clicker that sent chills down my spine.
What was changed
- Tess and Joel in bed? Hiyo! I did not see that coming. Tess, in general, had a bit of an overhaul for the television audience. In the game, Tess is the heavy, not Joel. Joel is just one of her various employees. Someone in the game steps to Joel and only backs away when they see he’s with Tess. For the purposes of the show, they flipped it, where Robert was worried about letting Tess go because of what Joel might do to him. I was fine with the changes because the writers clearly decided that Joel needed to be established quickly as the looming presence.
- The interview in the very beginning, as I said, wasn’t in the game. If you couldn’t quite place the actors, you might know them as Big Head from Silicon Valley and John Hannah from Four Weddings and a Funeral or The Mummy franchise.
- The pace and tenor of the opening. In the game, we’re in the shit right away. But for a TV show you have to establish the ho-hum grind of Tatooine in order to fully embrace the holy shit of the cantina in Mos Eisley. There was no game scene with Sarah in class, but it hit me hard. I was thinking, “oh god, she doesn’t know that this boring-ass school day is the last day of school she’ll ever have.” We didn’t even get to the attack until we were almost 24 minutes into the show.
- No spores. This is going to be an ongoing sector of the show to watch. HBO had publicized a while ago that there would be no spores in the air, instead opting for ‘tendrils’ which are observably grotesque. There are some key visual elements in the gameplay that will be lost without spores, not the least of which is a holy shit realization that you’re in danger. Something to watch.
What Didn’t Quite Work
- I’m going to be super nitpicky here, because the pilot was such a home run. But I’m concerned about the narrative of the fungus and the choice to not show spores. So, first, the scientist in the opening makes it clear that once the fungus takes over humans, you lose. He also says there’s no cure. No cure is even possible. That flies in the face of the overarching premise of the show, doesn’t it? Is he just talking about the tech at the time?
- I was worried about the 1960’s interview opening, because I thought it was slow and tedious and might turn off some viewers. I completely understand the expository need for it, but it wasn’t the highlight of the episode. That said, once past it, it was quickly forgotten.
- The fungus itself. Joel and Tess discover an infected in the subway who they refer to as “done”. What’s the ‘done’ process? What constitutes ‘done’? In the game, the older the infected the more stages of metamorphosis it experiences, and the deadlier it gets. Why would that particular infected be ‘done’?
- No spores also means we lose the scene with Dina in TLOU2 where her mask breaks. I liked that scene.
- The scene where the old lady gets infected behind Sarah as she’s looking at DVDs was so cool and scary, but um…how did she get infected again? If it’s an airborne fungal strain, why wouldn’t everyone get it? Why wouldn’t Sarah have also been infected just a few feet away? The guiding concept the show employs is that a bite from infected is the salient transfer mechanism. So…uhhhhh…hmmmm.
In Conclusion
Holy shit, I’m so psyched for the next eight weeks. Is it me or has a tiny slice of sanity returned when we can all sit down at 9 pm on a Sunday, see that HBO splash screen and have an appointment TV prestige show to watch? I know we’ve had The White Lotus and Succession, but somehow this feels better.
I’m very excited to see where The Last of Us goes from here, even though, in general, I already know. Something about the adaptation feels so fresh and creative that as much as it’s a known quantity, it expertly manages to feel new and exciting all over again.
