If we accept that as a fact The last of us, the 2013 PlayStation 3 video game from a studio called Naughty Dog, is a remarkable achievement in digital storytelling – and why not? There are all kinds of achievements — then its HBO adaptation is a long-awaited form of justification. Here, on the network that defines “prestige TV” in the minds of many viewers, is a live-action version of perhaps the most critically acclaimed story in video games, Cormac McCarthy with a joystick. Time folds in on itself: 2013’s good-natured banter compares the game to an HBO series; In 2023, the tongue-in-cheek chorus is now real, and animated performers are giving way to flesh-and-blood ones reenacting their programmed movements with dizzying veracity. The content singularity is upon us, and it’s actually quite entertaining.
The last of us follows Joel (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler who lives in a time after the world has succumbed to a mutated version of the Cordyceps Mushroom that turns humans into violent, zombie-like creatures. It’s a really unsettling twist on the traditional zombie a true group of parasitic fungi that infect insects and to imagine what would happen if it made the leap to being human. But much like the most successful zombie apocalypse story in recent memory, the Walking Dead, The last of us cares less about his signature monsters and more about what happens to humanity after society collapses.
The last of us‘ The investigation into post-apocalyptic America begins when Joel gets a job he doesn’t want and didn’t ask for: smuggling Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a mundane teenager, across the country to a Fireflies hideout Militia as opposed to what remains of the federal government. For reasons no one knows or understands, Ellie is immune Cordyceps Infection, and the Fireflies, led by the pragmatic Marlene (Merle Dandridge, one of the few actors to reprise her role from the video game), hope that Ellie is the key to healing the world.
This familiar dynamic forms the backbone of The last of us, in which a grumpy older man must protect a brave young girl and their relationship shifts from resentment to appreciation over time. As worn as this type of pairing is (doubly so for fans of the game), Pascal and Ramsey are tremendously good together on screen. Pascal’s Joel is more harried than gruff, and Ramsey infuses Ellie with a meaner touch that goes a long way to transcending what began in the video game as a conduit for fatherly feelings.
And yes, The last of us is a video game adaptation, perhaps the most faithful to the screen yet. In its first season – running for nine episodes, all of which I’ve seen – the series follows the outline of the PlayStation 3 game (and 4 and 5) exactly, taking entire scenes and lines of dialogue verbatim it digital acting became flesh again . What the series adds to the original narrative is a little more perspective: while the video game is limited to the subjective experiences of Ellie and Joel, the series occasionally takes the time to step away from them and show the viewer how life is for anyone other than Joel and Ellie aren’t getting through.
These moments are simply the best The last of us has to offer, fleeting as they are. (The series’ best episode is an hour devoted almost entirely to an off-screen relationship barely hinted at in the video game.) It’s all about explaining the people who populate this faithfully recreated world The last of us
What’s frustrating about this is that the HBO series’ additions to the story are what define it The last of us still feel worthwhile in 2023, a full decade after the video game made waves with its aesthetic embrace of prestige TV. The main plot of The last of usas reproduced in the series is about as bleak as you’d expect – a series of encounters where Joel and Ellie meet someone else, they have a heartbreaking story or a terrible secret, and then meet a horrible ending before ours heroes must set off.
But while we take the time to reflect on the denizens of the world that Joel and Ellie travel through, The last of us convinced in contrast to the other great cultural touchstone to which it is likely to be compared. not how the Walking Dead, it seriously considers the idea of community in the post-apocalypse. In fact, community is the ultimate goal of survival in The last of us, while Joel and Ellie constantly see how other people live – under the strict regime of FEDRA, which is the closest thing to a federal government; alone with her loved ones; in a socialist camp slowly approaching normality; in a religious cult that offers comfort from fear.
The last of us isn’t rigorous in exploring these ideas – the show, like its source material, has a pretty clear idea of what the “right” way of living in a community is – but it’s just enough to make the series more hopeful than most of his peers in post-apocalyptic fiction. How much of that hope is felt depends on the lens the viewer puts into the show, as (in a mistake strikingly similar to the source material) its queer/BIPOC characters are regularly violently killed. As a result, it is difficult to make a case for it The last of us beyond its novelty as a video game adaptation. In its own right, it’s one of dozens of zombie-filled wastelands that viewers from the US and beyond can stream. When you get to choose your own apocalypse, it’s hard to see why anyone would choose this one.
The secret too The last of usIts success as a video game wasn’t necessarily down to originality. Zombies were already old hat back in 2013 the Walking Dead was at the peak of its popularity with non-gaming audiences, and game publishers loved to flood the market with violent titles that featured surviving hordes of zombies or zombie-like creatures. The last of usSo the trick was to bring some humanity back into a medium that was often bent on supplanting it, anchoring its players in the characters they played and instilling guilt in them for the violence they wreaked on those who they didn’t. In context, it transcended its routine history and became a milestone for an entire industry. Its television adaptation arrives in a medium without such baggage. Here is the story of The last of us lives or dies like most works of art: in the way it is human and in the way it is not.
The last of us Premieres on HBO and HBO Max on Sunday, January 15.