The Last of Us is one of the best video games of all time. Accordingly, many fans are looking forward to the HBO adaptation, which starts this Monday. We’ve already watched the series.
When the video game “The Last of Us” was released for the Playstation in 2013, the world was different. Corona was first and foremost a beer and the word pandemic eke out an existence on the periphery of our vocabulary. Ten years later, the US service HBO is releasing the material as a nine-part TV series and the topic of an infection spreading rapidly around the world could not be more topical.
However, “The Last of Us” is not about a virus, but about a fungus, the parasitic Cordyceps. He’s real and he’s a merciless killer. However, its target group usually has more legs than us, for example it infests ants. Once in the host, the Cordyceps influences the behavior of its involuntary host, for example letting it climb a high blade of grass so that predators can find it there. The fungus actually wants to make itself comfortable in their bodies – to put it very simply. Most of the time, however, it simply kills its host after a while and sprouts from its head to start the cycle all over again with fresh spores. Best material for horror films, then.
Cordyceps does not affect humans. But in “The Last of Us” the killer fungus has made this evolutionary leap and ended the world as we know it today. Those infected become aggressive, biting and scratching their fellow human beings, the infection spreads rapidly, and soon the entire globe is doomed. There is no vaccine, no antidote, no hope, as the intro to the new series makes it clear to us.
So far, so typical zombie horror.
“The Last of Us” is a game like a painting
But “The Last of Us” is much more than a dull horror spectacle. The video game is considered one of the best of all time, mainly because of the lovingly told story. This is Ellie and Joel’s. She, the 14-year-old girl, is miraculously immune to the plague and humanity’s only hope. Broken by the violent death of his daughter, he is a badass 50-something smuggler who ruthlessly fights his way through post-apocalyptic America, doing whatever it takes to survive in this hostile world. The game tells her journey 20 years after the plague began and how Ellie brings back meaning to Joel and unearths the buried humanity in the grumpy old man.
That at least is the stuff of the original game from 2013, meanwhile there is a sequel. HBO is processing the plot of the first part – for now.
But the station is really big. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie are top shelf and worth every penny. Both deliver outstanding performances, with Ramsey particularly standing out as Ellie. She wonderfully manages the mixture of humor, childlike playfulness and tough aggression that has won her a place in the hearts of millions of video game fans worldwide.
Bella Ramsey gives a breathtaking performance as Ellie (left, here with Anna Torv as Tess) in “The Last of Us”.
© HBO / Sky Germany, WOW
With Craig Maison, the maker of the hit series Chernobyl is realizing the material, together with Neil Druckmann, the inventor of the video game. This clearly shows how much HBO thinks of the original version of the video game company Naughty Dog.
The series stays very close to the original throughout its nine episodes. And rightly so. Back then, Druckmann created a game like a painting, with great attention to detail, long, well-choreographed video sequences and moving dialogues. Entire exchanges of words were adopted exactly for the series, even the cuts from the video sequences of the game made it into the HBO series in the same way.
HBO makes “The Last of Us” less brutal and dark
But the biggest difference between the game and the series quickly becomes clear. Apparently, the template was a bit too brutal and dark for the makers. HBO’s “The Last of Us” is a slightly softer version in many ways. Infected use the makers very sparingly. This eliminates a lot of the blunt, blood-curdling violence. Joel has to fight, choke and shoot his way through the post-apocalypse a lot less. Flamethrowers, bows and arrows and shotguns, faithful companions in Naughty Dog’s world, do not even appear in the series. There, Joel goes into battle with a revolver and a hunting rifle. But there is hardly any fighting. That makes sense too. In the game, the person behind the controller has to be busy and constantly needs opponents. The series does not have this constraint.
Joel is also different in character than in the game. There he was an extremely bitter man, murdering and torturing himself ruthlessly throughout the day. Except for his smuggler partner Tess, he had no sympathy for anyone and right at the beginning we get to know him as an ice-cold killer who breaks his opponent’s arm because he doesn’t want to talk. In the series, he and Tess are now lovers, which is at most hinted at in the game. Although he describes Ellie as a “goods” to be smuggled, he is softer and more open-minded in the dialogues than in the game right from the start. He worries about his brother Tommy right from the start of the series and wants to travel across the country to see if he’s okay. In the game, the brothers are actually at odds and the later visit is accidental and a means to an end.
HBO misses a great opportunity here. The charm of the game is that Joel is not a “good guy”. He’s a ruthless guy, scarred by the bad things that happened to him – and that he did himself. You only warm up to him as the story progresses, he goes through a significant change. Ellie revives his human side and guides him back into the light. While this journey is hinted at in the series, it is much less pronounced.
The game’s supporting characters get their big moments
Elsewhere, the deviation from the original is all the more successful. The best thing about the series, even for fans of the game: it gives the sidekicks a depth that the game never could. Best example is Bill. On the Playstation an odd survivor with a pronounced paranoia, good for a few funny sayings, deadly zombie traps and a bit of trouble with Ellie. In the series, the owlet gets his own episode, which accompanies his life for years. His love story with Frank, also only hinted at in the game, is beautifully and movingly told. Definitely one of the best episodes of the first season.
Anyway, “The Last of Us” from HBO is not a new “The Walking Dead”, not a zombie splatter series with chopped off heads. The zombies, the “runners” (just lost their minds) and “clickers” (blind, mushroom-covered monsters who orientate themselves with clicking noises) hardly appear at all. Violence is used sparingly. Instead, the makers focus on the characters and their stories in a lost world. The open threads of the game are picked up and cleverly continued. The series also provides an explanation of how the Cordyceps outbreak could have happened. And even the question of why Ellie is immune has an answer on HBO.
There is a lot for fans of the game
So that the fans of the game also get their money’s worth, the makers have installed all kinds of things for them. Gamers call them Easter Eggs. For example, the open red tool boxes in the background, a clear nod to the game, where you could collect upgrades to improve weapons. In general, you will find many scenarios of the Playstation one to one in the series.
And of course the actors. The video scenes on the Playstation were played by real actors, in blue rooms with strange suits, and then later digitized and edited. It’s called motion capture. These actors then lent their voices to Ellie, Joel and Co. The voice of Tommy, Joel’s brother, comes from actor Jeffrey Pierce. He now has a larger role in the series as the commando leader of a successful resistance army in Kansas City. Joel aka Troy Baker has a comparable role in a later group, and fan-favorite Ashley Johnson, who lends Ellie her unmistakably brash voice in the game, gets an emotional cameo as Ellie’s mother in one of the flashbacks.
Their journey takes Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) through a United States devastated by a fungal pandemic
© HBO / Sky Germany, WOW
Although the plot of the series is largely that of the first game, they did turn some adjustment screws in the “The Last of Us” universe. The biggest change: There are no more spurs. In the game, in many closed rooms, everyone – except for the immune Ellie – has to wear gas masks because the Cordyceps spreads there also via spores. This is completely omitted in the series. On the other hand, fungus networks stretch under cities, which attract infected people if you step on the wrong spot. HBO also turned the clock a bit. The eruption now occurs in 2003 instead of 2013. Accordingly, the whole story takes place ten years ago.
The conclusion: sensational cast and unexpected depth of character
The great acting performances of Pedro Pascal and especially Bella Ramsey definitely make the series a highlight of the still young year. Ramsey has brought the popular character Ellie into the series world with flying colors. The makers have rightly resisted the temptation to change too much. The game is a masterpiece and deserves to be adapted for TV as well.
But if intervention was made, it was mostly correct. This will shed more light on the game’s sidekicks and give them the attention they deserve but never got in the game in the form they deserve. Only Joel gives away a bit because his character journey is unnecessarily shortened. It could have started in a darker, more morally reprehensible place. Pedro Pascal would have gotten the curve from there as well.
The strength of the series lies precisely in the focus on the human stories between the characters. The actual violence in the game gives way to the threat of violence, the possibility, the tension in many places in the series. The atmosphere was sensationally transported. Post-apocalyptic USA serves as a great stage for great stories.
As a big fan of the video game, I have to say personally: I would have wished for one or two more clickers.
The first episode of “The Last Of Us” has been available on WOW since January 16, 2023 with the appropriate subscription. The other eight episodes will then be posted online every week on Monday night after they first air in the USA.