I have mixed feelings about HBO’s adaptation of HBO’s heralded “The Last of Us” video game.
Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how great it is, and then I see through the matted rust and it seems both cheap and ostentatious.
Big spoilers ahead, obviously…
Why is it one of the best
chemistry between the lead: There hasn’t been a duo like Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) since Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) ripped it off in “Breaking Bad” That’s good. TV, unlike movies, is completely dependent on the main characters having great chemistry and this is purely magic.
Production values: This show is beautiful to watch with its high quality sets and fascinating world building. It’s the kind of landscape you want to take your time and walk around in.
fast paced: Wow, this season moves fast in both time and geography. The program covers nearly 30 years from the outbreak to current events and from Boston to Salt Lake City geographically. It’s mostly walking, but it never feels rushed.
Creatures: I love the different animals from horses to giraffes that inhabit this world. To me, it makes no sense that if giraffes were hanging out there wouldn’t be so many wolves, dogs and cats, coyotes – damn, even other exotic animals like lions, tiger and bear. It lends an element of mysticism to storytelling.
Fascinating behind-the-scenes stories: I like this the most… the little details about how the virus started, how Ellie came to be, how different characters met and fell in love. They are truly a pleasure.
… however, there are times when I feel like I’ve been thrown out of my illusion into something that seems ridiculous… this is a terrible mistake.
Why is it one of the worst
Battle boss: In video games, you face ever more difficult challenges as a “boss”. In “The Last of Us,” we go from Kansas City boss (leader of the Kansas City “Firefly” protest movement) Kathleen Coghlan (Melanie Lynskey) to David (Scott Shepherd), where Ellie has her big battle.
The only problem is (and probably because I don’t play this game) I don’t understand or care who David is. Yes, he is a cannibal (but that’s nothing new to zombie/virus stories) and clearly a pedophile, which I admit I didn’t immediately recognize immediate, but his death was not the only predictable, inevitable victory.
I’ve played enough video games that my conditioned response is, “Okay, who’s next…”
Over-reliance on inside information: “Game of Thrones” gradually introduced us to its world, and there are plenty of online resources to assist with viewing, but we have less with “We”. When the show is at its worst, it’s like a bunch of clips from another show, better strung together to estimate a story with depth.
It sometimes feels like watching someone play a video game: This is a common complaint, but the “getting the ladder” scene left me scrambling for my controller. That is the fundamental difference between movies/TV and video games… controllers… as they affect different parts of the brain.
Without a doubt, one could argue that the best episode has nothing to do with video games and it’s the love story between Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett).
That’s not the next generation of storytelling: The problem is that “The Last of Us” is still around legendary (see Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”) and so even if you break the structure in a Tarantino fashion it’s still the same story.
Ellie may be a different kind of hero while Joel is pretty standard, but it will repeat the same beats over and over. Most video games are hero stories, and if Disney and Marvel have proven anything then we’re all excluded from hero stories.
It’s completely redundant and derivative: How many zombie/virus stories do we need? I admit that I love the father/daughter trapped in the zombie world, but the biggest minus to “The Last of Us” is that the zombies are so far unrelated and barely appear. onscreen except for an ex machina moment where Joel and Ellie are saved by a horde of zombies.
You could ditch the zombies and tell this story like a live-action TV series with Joel losing his daughter and then finding his paternity come to life with a stranger in trouble. In other words, if you love monster stories like I do, the five minutes or so when zombies are part of the show is a huge disappointment.
The show’s impressive ratings are almost warranted for a second season, but if the series ends now, with Joel the big bad guy, the ultimate “father” with his love will become the force the most destructive in the universe (his saving of Ellie prevents a cure from being discovered) well, that would be perfect.
It might even cross the scales in favor of the show to become one of the best movies ever made.
