HBO’s The Last of Us, based on Naughty Dog’s 2000 video game of the same title, is the story of a world overrun by a fungal virus that turns the infected into zombies, but as in all zombie apocalypse fiction, the real monsters are shown to be the desperate surviving humans. Joel, living with the loss of his teenage daughter on outbreak day, is a smuggler in the surviving territory of Boston. He is tasked with delivering teenager Ellie to a safe house, which involves escorting her through controlled and infected territories. Ellie is mysteriously immune to the virus, and represents a final hope for the entirety of mankind. It is a classic quest complete with a perilous journey and enormously high stakes.
The game version of The Last of Us was extremely successful, but it has certainly had it's critics over the years. To many, it seemed that the power of the story was undermined by the medium with which it was being told. This criticism bases itself upon the disconnect between the two parallel Joels in the game. One is the Joel of the gameplay sections; the Joel the player controls and makes decisions for, and the other is the Joel of the cutscenes, or ‘story Joel’. Joel is introduced as a character with a history of violence, tortured by the actions of his past, surely to be redeemed through the events in the story - a familiar ark. Yet the game doesn’t fully achieve this, as while playing as Joel, the player becomes a violent survivalist, killing every human enemy and leaving a trail of blood behind them in each chapter. This stands in stark contrast with the redemptive ark the story is trying to tell of Joel becoming an affectionate, paternal guardian. The problem is not exclusive to The Last Of Us, it is one that plagues story focused video games.
The lack of alignment between the actions of the player and the events of the story is immersion breaking, which especially problematic when, as others have commented, the core gameplay loop can be quite repetitive, so story is usually the best motivator to keep playing. No matter the enjoyment of the game any individual might have, I think it’s clear that the interactive arts was never the best medium with which to tell the story of The Last of Us.
So naturally, I had high expectations when I heard that HBO would be taking it on as a TV series. The best component of the game has always been the story, and now it would be told in a singularly focussed way, free from the ‘two Joels’ paradox. HBO’s massive budget surely wouldn’t hurt either. In almost every way, my expectations were met, and in some cases exceeded. The Last of Us is consistently gripping, horrifying and heart-breaking, complete with some exceptional acting, cinematography and set and makeup design. Characters and encounters that were only tertiary in the game are fleshed out and explored in exactly the way I had hoped for, without compromising the essence of the original story. Bill and Frank’s episode comes to mind as a high point for this.
consistently gripping, horrifying and heart-breaking, complete with some exceptional acting, cinematography and set and makeup design.
In any discourse about The Last of Us, the main criticism that arises is of course about Joel’s final decision to save Ellie, kill the innocent doctors looking for a cure and single handily damn humanity for an entirely selfish reason. It certainly isolates the audience from empathising with Joel, and by the end of the story both Joel and Ellie have committed so many acts of extreme violence that it’s a little hard to hold any connection to either of them as protagonists. It’s a fair comment, and a problem that Naughty Dog seem to be aware of, as they kill off Joel in a particularly brutal fashion in the second instalment of the game, so much so that the scene of Joel’s death became just as controversial as the crime he was killed for. The TV series also tries to remedy this problem, as the story puts a lot more weight on Joel’s remorse, and Pedro Pascal’s depiction of the character is much more sympathetic than his videogame counterpart. But to me, it’s not a problem at all. The actions of the characters throughout the series are controversial and polarising, which only serves to portray them as complex and well written. No matter what you think about Joel, sometimes, it’s that division in the audience that denotes truly good drama.
Despite what I said about the story being told through the wrong medium, I wonder if I would have enjoyed The Last of Us if I wasn’t already excited about the story from playing the game. That is a question I can’t answer, but either way I give The Last of Us my full recommendation.
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