‘The Last of Us’ is the best possible adaptation of a video game with a story that leaves its mark

I’ll be honest: I was very scared of the series of ‘The Last of Us’. I think I had my reasons, and none of them had to do with the alleged black legend of video game adaptations that has been invalidated for years by submissions that have succeeded in producing decent audiovisual products. My problem was precisely with the expectations that I could have on a narrative level. It’s possible that I’ve never brooded so much about the history of a video game, never debated so much and thought so much about a title like the one Naughty Dog launched on PlayStation 3 in 2013. An adventure playable to a level fantastic. But narratively… it’s light years away from pretty much the entire industry in recent years.

Joel and Ellie’s journey is such that it was both very easy and terribly difficult for HBO to come up with an adaptation. Easy because where movies or series based on video games tend to be weak is that they are unable to eliminate the feeling of passivity by not being a part of what is happening. That the video game lives longer because we are, literally, at the controls. ‘The Last of Us’ may ignore this issue because its main selling point is the script, the atmosphere, the music, the performances. Everything is easily extrapolated to the real action. Yet why, then, was a series needed when the video game has done it so well? Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin managed to dispel all my doubts with the opening scene of the first episode.

‘The Last of Us’ tells the story of Joel (Pedro Pascal), a man whose life falls apart when a global pandemic, the result of a mutation in the Cordyceps fungus, wipes out society as we know it. Many years after the massive outbreak of this fungus capable of controlling its host and transforming it into a creature that will stop at nothing to keep expanding to more victims, Joel lives in a destroyed Boston under tight military control. He works as a mercenary just to keep it going for another day. But his life changes again when he is assigned the mission of guarding a girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) outside the city limits and handing her over to the Fireflies, a terrorist group seeking to end the military’s control.. For him, the girl is mere merchandise. But to the world… who knows what she might become.

While at first those who haven’t played the game might think this is your typical zombie storyline, ‘The Last of Us’ is so much more: it’s an impressive journey into the bowels of what makes us human, and how easy it would be for us to lose that humanity under extreme conditions. Coming from a pandemic, we know that feeling perfectly. The applause on the balconies has not eclipsed the selfishness of lugging all the rolls of toilet paper, and there the next one succeeds. ‘The Last of Us’ is a terrifying ‘what if’, showing (now we understand this quite clairvoyantly) what we would be like if we hadn’t been able to control the coronavirus and the law of the jungle had prevailed. Since the beginning of the series, Joel has had to deal with difficult situations and much more difficult solutions. We see how in reality the survivors no longer live, but endure because that’s why we came to Earth. Hopeless. But without completely throwing in the towel.

“Your Watch Is Broken”

Pedro Pascal’s character is a clear reflection of the soul loss of this new civilization. He has nothing to live for, but neither does he give in to death, face Phaedra’s soldiers, or throw himself into the jaws of deformed clickers. Along the way, yes, he became someone capable of killing for a few more rations at the end of the day. On the other is Ellie, a girl who has already been born into this rotten world and who must balance the curiosity of any girl her age with the weight of her mere existence. Together they create a parent-child relationship that has become one of the few highlights we’ve seen in the game. Pascal and Ramsey impressively emulate that growing complicity, that need for human connection that both need, that feeling of no longer being alone in the face of all this.. Ramsey stands out in particular, who manages to give us a direct and charismatic Ellie like the pixelated version was, who knows how to curse or finish a joke with perfect timing, and who manages to infect us with the innocence that this world does not yet have the made it lose… Joel and Ellie are a major reason for the success of the video game and their flesh-and-blood versions absolutely live up to it.

I said before that the series managed to surprise me from the first scene and is that it is a mission statement for, in fact, those of us who come from the video game. ‘The Last of Us’ has as showrunner the man behind that series who was ‘Chernobyl’ and one of the fathers of the video game. He couldn’t be in better hands. That first scene is the perfect fusion of the two: Craig Mazin’s know-how meets Neil Druckmann’s incredible storytelling. Together they tell players early on that of course they’ll recognize the journey, but the series will take them much further.. Stripped of the need to pause to introduce brawls, ambushes or puzzles, the chapter scripts take the opportunity to expand the video game universe (at times, perhaps too much, with which I liked the ambiguity in certain aspects of the story), and especially everything to the characters Ellie and Joel cross paths with.

Secondaries benefit most from the transition to the serial format. Those of us who already know Tommy (Gabriel Luna), Tess (Anna Torv), Marlene (Merle Dandridge) or Bill (Nick Offerman) will be able to find out much more about them and their stories, told with the same care as Ellie’s and Joel at the game. With them he takes the opportunity to show us other faces of this pandemic, coming with some of them to shed a little more light which is good for them in the face of so much darkness. And all this translates into the same lump in the throat that comes more than once during the game. There is one episode in particular that, since I’ve seen it, I have a hard time believing that I can try this year with another series as much and as strongly as that hour of the series managed to wake me up. Neil Druckmann can afford to change plot details because that’s what his father is for. But every change, every addition is there for a reason: to further elevate a sublime story of light, dark, heroes and villains, and how sometimes things aren’t so easy.

The series is also overwhelming in the technical section. The level of detail of the scenery is such that it makes me think that there are scenarios that hark back to those of video games, from the FEDRA poster warning of the curfew to the rubble and weeds that have transformed the concrete jungle of Boston from new into the domain of mother nature. That feeling of abandonment mixed with the hopeful touch of the greenery taking back control perfectly recreates the atmosphere of the video game. It’s a pleasure to see how practically everything is real, and the computer is used sparingly and thoughtfully. Clickers and other types of infected (the more time passes, the more deformed and bloodthirsty the hosts become) have a spectacular job of make-up and prosthetics, and are also used by impact and not as hordes and hordes that end up losing their grace for the second meeting with them. If you come for them, it’s not your series. The use of light or Gustavo Santaolalla’s wonderful guitar strumming draws on the source material, but if something works it doesn’t have to be played at all. There is a lot of money invested in this series, and the result is exactly what a title that has won more than two hundred Game of the Year awards deserves. It’s a full-blown blockbuster, but what shines brightest among so much money is still the script. Always, above all, the script.

“The Last of Us” became a phenomenon in 2013 because it had many elements to influence those who took control of it. But the important thing was the residue that remained with each new meeting of Joel and Ellie with other survivors. It’s not a “choose your own adventure” because Neil Druckmann and Naughty Dog knew exactly what they wanted to tell us. Druckmann knew this so well that now that he has the chance to tell it in another format, he’s able to squeeze even more every idea he poured into the video game.. Those of us who know the story will get a closer look at the development of the pandemic and those characters who didn’t get time in the game because that story was about Joel and Ellie. The series is not choral, Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal are the absolute protagonists, but the minutes (the first chapter is almost the length of a film) always serve to contribute, to enrich the story. And don’t worry, every mythical moment in the game is. Not only is the hand of its creator noticeable, but Craig Mazin is also one of the biggest fans of the title. What a good idea to just stick with the first video game and its DLC for the first season, getting to the point and not trying to stretch to stretch. This universe has a lot of potential, but if this is an adaptation of ‘The Last of Us’, so be it.

I kind of envy those of you getting into the series again. Get ready to experience an action-packed and suspenseful journey with two characters you will be hard-pressed to part with when it’s all over. In a path that is not at all easy. Be prepared to face the darker side of being human and to discuss it at length after each episode. They should be a weekly event. Be prepared to get a lot of kicks in the stomach until you understand why a world without hope is worth fighting for. Get ready for the zombie series where zombies are the least important (don’t underestimate any damn encounter with one of them when you least expect it). Get ready, even though I know it’s January, most likely for the series of the year.

The previews of “The Last of Us”. its first episode Monday, January 16 on HBO Max and will release a weekly chapter.

Note: 9

The best: it is the faithful adaptation, very expensive and with a soul that the video game deserved, and at the same time knows how to expand it and make the necessary changes to make the most of the story and the tone. The chemistry of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. The freshness of Ramsey’s Ellie. And Murray Bartlett was right: One of the chapters houses “one of the best hours of television.”

Worse: Pedro Pascal’s Joel is sometimes too cold. Some additions to Cordyceps don’t work as well as others. Like the video game, the series will awaken the worst in a certain sector of the public.