The Last of Us is one of the greatest achievements in the world of art, certainly in video games, but the show fails to capture some of its most important elements, and this video aims to dissect why the show fails as an adaptation.
Help me make more videos:
http://www.patreon.com/filmradar
Tip Jar:
https://www.paypal.me/danielnetzel
Check out my website:
https://www.danielnetzel.com/
Follow me:
http://www.patreon.com/filmradar
http://www.facebook.com/thefilmradar
http://www.twitter.com/film_radar
source
"If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter." Who knew I'd end up making my longest video yet? But I had a lot on my mind after finishing the series, and I'd love to know how everyone else felt about the show.
I enjoyed the show but it was very sentimental. Perhaps what the two characters of Joel both answer is “if you do the right thing for purely self interest are you still doing the right thing?” That being said, I never played the game. It has something in common with modern games like GTA that you can’t choose to be good. Or conversely, you can’t decide if Bowser is a better ruler of the mushroom kingdom than Princess Toadstool if you are Mario. The player is at the behest of the designer. In these games, choosing violence is easy because you are disposed to defending oneself. The player still lacks agency. It’s amazing to me that a game that was a FPS for people that didn’t like FPS’s ended up adapted from cut scenes which is just the part that the player pushes the A button to skip over anyway. The cynic in me sees this as HBO’s attempt at grabbing survivalist porn IP to cash in on since WestWorld and GoT both went belly up. To do that, they needed a Joel that was a nuanced three dimensional being and not another sociopathic PUA-alpha killing machine (which is all one needs to play a game to shoot people and blow things up). The Last of Us tv show may be an audience friendly summation of the same narrative but at least it saved me from losing over an entire day of my life from playing the game, irrecoverably.
Brilliant video essay, couldn't agree more. Although I belong to the shameful minority of people who haven't played the game yet, I'm still in awe and amazement every time I see the gameplay videos on YouTube. And you were very spot on with that GOT comparison. Theoretically, the plot points do make sense, but in action they fall short because of the limited runtime. Best of luck for the future videos and warmest greetings from Iran❤
Omg thank you! I was trying to explain to my friends who haven't played the game why this show needed to be longer and bleaker, the world is supposed to feel scary and awul so that when you get to those brief moments of hope and peace they really make an impact. The pacing felt so wrong to me, it genuinely didn't seem like the post apocalypse was all that bad which makes the stakes far less intense. And ditto with the Joel and Ellie relationship the pay off of the final scene is very much not rewarding when the relationship was so rushed, he was way to soft at the beginning of the show for me, the great character arc for him fell flat because it felt more like emotional whiplash. He would be fine then snap, especially with the Ellie fight when he tried to dump her on his brother, that didn't feel like show Joel at all because his character was so different. The ending too. I wasn't mad at the show just let down. It didn't feel lazy and I could tell a lot of people involved really cared but all in all it fell apart for me.
While I understand your points, I also disagree a lot. I don't mind those changes, as my expectation upfront was to get a different take on the story. For example an exact copy of the Joel character would have been redundant. Anyway, those changes are dwarved by the greater problem I always have had with the ending (in the game and show), namely: strictly speaking, there is no moral dilemma with Joel's decision as the Firefly's plan of producing a vaccine is almost 100% sure to fail (lack of infrastructure, can't produce required reagents, the doctor has no basic knowledge of immunology). Even if for a moment we believe they could pull it off, obviously they should have taken a blood sample of Ellie first and extract the antigen and then do trial runs. They need her alive for fresh batches of antigen, in case something goes wrong during the process (e.g. the freezer where they would need to keep the samples loses power). Only if that method would have contineuously failed they could have done the brain procedure as a last resort, but I doubt this would change anything. No matter what, the chance is so tiny here that killing a person is never justified, even with their consent (btw. children cannot legally consent to surgery for a good reason). Joel's decision was therefore right, even though his motivation was a selfish reason, while he had no knowledge to realise that the Firefly's efforts are scientific non-sense. However, he overstepped the boundaries of what can be regarded as self-defense when rescuing Ellie. All in all, the ending itself never made sense to me, that's the main issue I have with the first season and the game likewise.
HBO was only committed to 9 episodes likely because of Pedro's schedule. Walter White, Tony Soprano, etc all had dozens of episodes to develop. If Mazin and Druckman had decided to spend the 9 episodes on just Joel/Ellie then they would have had a better developed character piece but lost all the scope that would justify the insane budget HBO obviously spent on this. I fully agree the shortcuts changed the show into a lesser version.
Thank you!
I generally agree with the sentiments espoused in the video but the arguments are rather overexaggerated. I prefer the game's cynical worldview but the show's more sentimental adaptation is not without merit. The adaptational changes ultimately engender a different feel to the story but it functionally remains the same. Sure, I didn't love every change that was made but the claim that the adaptation is a failure (and that it's remotely close to the disaster that was GoT S8) comes across as unnecessarily hyperbolic.
When people ask my why I didn’t like the tv show I’ll send them this video
I deeply agree with this video. Every bit of it.
Honestly, if the show had managed to (narratively) translate everything the game did it would still be the lesser version by virtue of the visuals not being able to stack up, and the musical score not being where it needs to. But more importantly the game had Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who have a quintessential chemistry with one another that Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey simply can't compete with. The unsung succes of The Last of Us (game) is really those two actors working so well together.
Season 1 felt like a missing opportunity. The cast was great, showrunners were great, they just should have given us a bit more like 10-12 episodes.
Yeah, I disagree with every point you've made here I think. As an adaptation, it's pretty much a complete success for me. They had to humanise Joel way more and bring out his vulnerability. Game-Joel always felt a rather blunt, robotic character for me. Plus they made many changes to the world to make it more realistic – quite simply, Joel and Ellie would have died a hundred times in reality with how ridiculously dangerous the game environment is. They are not superheroes like in the game, so the show focused far more on the emotional journey.
I think if they'd made the adaptation scene-for-scene, it would have just ended up being an outlandish, repetitive, predictable fantasy romp with very little sense of the characters being in real danger. In the show, when those moments do arrive they are packed with far more tension because of this.
Plus, seeing all that emotion in Pascal's eyes elevated the character of Joel into something much deeper for me. He's a fully formed 3-dimensional human being in the show and I feel rather let down now with how stunted Game-Joel is.
Neil Druckmann has ruined everything with his ego. I knew the show would suck because he was involved
Thanks for the video! Really loved your point of view!
Hah, great timing! I just made a video criticizing the same things. But, I also think it has technical problems as well.
nah
This definitely summed up the main reasons why I was disappointed with this show. Glad someone got these points out there.
I agree man, on a technical level, the show was great: vfx, score, set design, acting(in some cases), but I also have a few issues. Mainly that I felt that the overall first season didn’t feel as organic as it should’ve been, the separate stories or events were good on there own but as a whole I don’t think they fit well. As far as adaptions of video games go it’s really good, but I can’t say I’m in love with the show. I feel weird about it because it does a lot right but I’m just not into like a majority of people.
This is exactly how I felt when I finished the show the ending didn’t feel earned and the show could’ve definitely benefited with more time and more care given to the protagonists. A big issue I had was how obvious it was that David was a cannibal from the moment the episode began it was clear they were eating people and that David was crazy with zero ambiguity and no time to think maybe David was a good person something that was present in the game.