‘The Last of Us’ showrunner Craig Mazin: ‘We haven’t made any decisions to please or agree with one or the other’

HBO has invested a lot of money to adapt the hit video game “The Last of Us” into real action. It is said to be losing more tickets than a few seasons of ‘Game of Thrones’. It’s a major bet that they wouldn’t leave in anyone’s hands. For this they turned to someone who has already given them great results in the past, and who is also one of the biggest fans of the Naughty Dog title: Craig Mazin. When many wondered if HBO would be able to return to the success of the series based on the novels by George RR Martin when it was about to end, Mazin released “Chernobyl”. The miniseries was an absolute phenomenon, both among the public and for critics and awards. The chain was still able to set quality standards on the small screen.

But ‘The Last of Us’ is another matter altogether. The game took sales and ratings by storm when it arrived on PlayStation 3 in 2013. It garnered a legion of fans who have remained loyal to Joel and Ellie ever since and who have expressed their fervor perhaps a little too loudly. . In 2020, a certain sector of the gaming community even threatened to kill Neil Druckmann (game creator and showrunner of the series alongside Mazin) for taking ‘The Last of Us: Part 2’. “All the passion they have, good or bad, comes from a love of the game. And that’s the root of it all! Sometimes love is dangerous, dark, violent, even hateful, because love is scary. Those who love the game are a little afraid of any adaptation and this turns into fear, and fear into hate, as Yoda would say.” a charming Craig Mazin tells us in the interview we had with him a few weeks before the series premiere.

Mazin has made it clear in many interviews that he is one of the biggest video game fans out there. He claims to have played it more than a dozen times and said he practically harassed Druckmann into taking over the series. He also understands the passion of a certain sector of the fandom, but says he was his only focus with the series “tell the story in the best possible way”without interference from what fans consider correct or not: “We have made every decision so that the viewer has the best possible experience. There was never an attempt to please or agree with one or the other”. But he doesn’t stop stressing that he is aware of the challenge of adapting such a beloved game and that they have done everything possible to live up to it: “It was a very complicated series to make because it’s so big and because it mattered a lot to us. Every detail, location, costumes… We obsessed over everything because it’s important to us. We’re still looking at everything with a magnifying glass in so that all the details are correct. It is part of our obsession to tell this story correctly”.

As Neil Druckmann explained to us in our interview with him, this job of translating the pixel into real action requires modification. For example, with the level of violence: “In the game, the gameplay is basically all about violence. One of the first conversations I had with Neil Druckmann was about how the violence should be more visceral and special on the show. It couldn’t just be noise. Violence on screen must be taken seriously, that’s why violence in the series hits hard” comments Mazin, who points out that the series will give us emotional blows that leave bruises: “There are many heartbreaking moments, and among them is all of humanity”.

But how can humanity be found in such a pessimistic scenario? Craig Mazin points out that, as always, laughter is the best flashlight in the dark: “For me, the humor and the light are part of the beauty of “The Last of Us”. That despite everything Ellie tries to make Joel laugh. If we stop being funny, it’s all over. In the most tragic moments in human history, there are always people who insist on being funny. That’s how we keep our humanity.”.

A new scene for “amateur epidemiologists”

‘The Last of Us’ was a very difficult project to make, but they definitely didn’t imagine that a real pandemic would end up being one of the obstacles. The showrunner explains that our experience with the coronavirus was the inspiration for the first scene of the series, which does not appear in the video game: “We created the first scene to make it clear that we know the pandemic existed. People are smart. They knew nothing about pandemics before, but now they do. Now we are all amateur epidemiologists. We wanted to acknowledge it and then say, “it’s okay, but there could be something worse””.

‘The Last of Us’ begins its broadcast on HBO Max Spain on Monday January 16th and premieres a new chapter every Monday.