About The Last of Us

Spoiler alert: the game is better.

It only took ten years, but I have finally played Naughty Dog’s highly acclaimed 2013 video game, The Last of Us. I’ve been meaning to play the game for a while now (I bought the 2014 remaster around the time The Last of Us Part II was released in 2020), but the impetus for me finally doing so was, of course, the HBO TV adaptation.

The game is simply fantastic. While not exactly the revolutionary masterpiece it has been built up as over the years, it is nonetheless a solidly crafted piece of action/adventure entertainment. Being something of a contrarian, I tend to avoid things that are relentlessly hyped up (unless I’m there to jump on the hype train as it rolls out of the station) because, for me, almost nothing ever lives up to the expectations that society sets. So I actively avoided playing The Last of Us for all these years until I started watching the TV show and my hand was forced.

Unfortunately, the game is so good that, once I finished it, the flaws of the show became much more apparent.

Before we go any further, let me state unequivocally that I am not one of those source material is always better hardliners. For instance, I hold the incendiary and heretical position that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films are superior to the books (the Hobbit films, on the other hand, are…not great). While I admire Tolkien for his imagination and respect him for what he was able to accomplish, a compelling writer the man was not.

Self edification aside, The Last of Us TV show, compared to The Last of Us game, is…fine. My main criticisms are:

1. The direction is frequently shoddy, relying far too much on that bane of modern cinematography, the dreaded handheld shaky cam.

2. The writers needlessly focus heavily on several side characters, thus distracting from the two main characters, Joel and Ellie.

This last part is detrimental mainly because Joel and Ellie’s emotional connection is the crux of the whole story. The show would have benefited greatly from sticking to HBO’s standard ten episode per season format, particularly considering that the majority of two entire episodes are unnecessarily protracted flashbacks. Many, if not all, of the emotional gut punches that hit so hard in the game fall completely flat because Joel and Ellie’s relationship isn’t given enough time to develop over the course of an unevenly paced season. Out of nine episodes, I can think of three, maybe four, that were more or less paced just about right.

Speaking of Ellie, rather than the feisty and endearing teenage girl from the game, the show instead gives us yet another version of the bratty and obnoxious strong woman stereotype that plagues so much of the modern media landscape. It is incredibly difficult to empathize with TV show Ellie because she is so relentlessly unlikable. This is especially disconcerting when taking into account the fact that one of the showrunners, Neil Druckmann, wrote the video game, thus having already written the perfect version of the character.

While it falls short of the legacy of its source material, there is still plenty to like about the show. There are respectable attempts at world-building and refining the existing lore throughout the season. Pedro Pascal is pretty good (though not ideal) as Joel. What little action the show carries over from the game is generally tense, gritty, and well executed. That being said, Joel’s hospital rampage in the last episode feels rushed and poorly conceived.

And for those who know how the story goes and may be wondering whose side I come down on, Joel was unequivocally in the right.

---

If you enjoyed reading my Thoughts, consider showing your appreciation by helping to make my dream of quitting my day job a reality.

---