The Last of Us, HBO

2023 - 1 - 10

The Last of Us

HBO's 'The Last Of Us' Show Reviews Are In, And They Are Stellar (Forbes)

Well, I had a feeling that a combination of HBO, Chernobyl writer Craig Mazin and game director Neil Druckmann would all combine to create a solid ...

Here, in The Last of Us, you have the same storyline, and in some places, the exact same script being used onscreen. “HBO’s “The Last of Us” places a lot of faith in its source material’s writing. What you’re hearing is a collective sigh of relief from fans who were worried that somehow, despite the talent involved, this would get screwed up. The mantra that it needed to be extremely faithful to the original seems to have panned out, and the result is an extremely high-quality series that looks to be a new flagship for HBO going forward. The apocalyptic landscape from the game—toppled skyscrapers overgrown with vines and fungus; a grey cement world gone to green—creates a strikingly distinct setting. The show stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie, two survivors navigating bandits and fungal-based zombies in a ruined America.

HBO's The Last Of Us Is A Safe Show That's Caught Between Big ... (Kotaku)

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey head up the cast of HBO's post-pandemic adaptation.

It feels at times like it wants to let the story breathe and expand and become something else, but also as if it’s afraid of alienating the kinds of viewers Druckmann nods to in the quote above—as if it knows it has to check off a list of expected story beats and that it can’t stray too far from what certain viewers expect. You can always play it if you just want that experience again, or, hell, watch one of those YouTube videos that just compiles all the cutscenes into a “movie.” Shouldn’t the purpose of an adaptation be, in some part, to adapt, to tailor for a different medium and to, perhaps, find new emotional notes, new thematic resonances, new life in a familiar story? What I ultimately find most fascinating about the existence of The Last of Us as a TV show is this tension at its core, this seemingly endless battle between types of media. The way the show dares to diverge from the game to alter our sense of their relationship is frankly exciting, and gives the entire series a very different (and better) thematic shape than it would otherwise have. In the game, of course, you play as Sarah, exploring the house a bit as signs of impending doom—a news broadcast, an explosion in the distance—continue to mount. In the game, Frank was the longtime partner of Bill, a curmudgeonly survivalist (played in the show by Nick Offerman), but before Joel and Ellie arrive, Frank has killed himself and left a rather bitter suicide note. Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian, Game of Thrones) as Joel and Bella Ramsey (Catherine Called Birdy, also Game of Thrones) as Ellie capably head up a uniformly excellent cast, and the high-stakes tension, desperation, and struggle to find something worth fighting for in a deadly world that typified the game are all effectively recreated here. First, let’s talk about the types of changes that feel more necessary in taking The Last of Us and turning it into television. If you’ve played the game, you may recall that very early on, Joel and his smuggling partner Tess brutally torture a jerk named Robert who sold them out on a deal, breaking his bones to get information out of him and ultimately executing him. The headband is comfortable to wear, will produce stereo sound, and is capable of noise-canceling. But the fact that a playthrough of The Last of Us takes about 15 hours has always made me associate it more with prestige TV than with movies. And now, the game that always felt like a product of the same pop culture era that gave us prestige TV such as Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones has become prestige TV.

'The Last of Us' Makes the Apocalypse Feel New Again (The Atlantic)

The HBO adaptation is well versed in the bleak clichés of the zombie genre, but it also offers something unexpected: empathy.

This is no ordinary grab bag of jump scares and grisly kills: The Last of Us respects its genre but works to defy its creakiest tropes. The Last of Us works hard to present a more sanguine view, including through Joel and Ellie’s deep bond—although franchise fans know that that connection will eventually grow complicated. This is especially true in the third episode, a mostly self-contained work that focuses on one of Joel’s survivalist allies, Bill (Nick Offerman), and his relationship with another survivalist named Frank (Murray Bartlett). Plenty of plot details in The Last of Us might feel conventional, but the show still offers a rich genre stew, with the kind of high-budget flavor that sets tentpole HBO productions apart from their straight-to-streaming counterparts. But what made The Last of Us even more immersive was how [it implicates players](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/the-last-of-us-limits-video-game-violence/613696/) in the lead character’s own morally dubious actions. [comes up](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/02/uncharted-video-game-movie-review/622815/) again and again as the medium grows in ambition: How do you translate a game that was itself clearly inspired by film and television?

The Last of Us Will Invade Your Psyche (Vulture)

A review of the HBO series The Last of Us, based on the video game and starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

But the series reminds us why postapocalyptic stories continue to invade our psyches: They remind us of the value of being alive and how terrifying it would be to stand among the few who still are. Like the dystopian prestige dramas The Leftovers and Station Eleven, The Last of Us is driven less by raw plot than by its study of relationships. Even if The Last of Us treads familiar ground, it is still a gripping and ambitious work that seems fated to become the premium cable network’s next Twitter-trending hit. The other lies in translating the inherently interactive experience of a game into something that feels unique to television. [reportedly exceeding](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/can-the-last-of-us-break-the-curse-of-bad-video-game-adaptations) each of the first five seasons of Game of Thrones, The Last of Us is punctuated by intense action sequences and elaborately rendered practical and visual effects. The nine-episode first season, which debuts on Sunday night, focuses on Joel (Pedro Pascal), a man who lost his daughter when the pandemic began in 2003, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenager whose immunity to the fungus could be instrumental in finding a cure in 2023.

'The Last of Us' HBO Adaptation Goes Way Beyond the PlayStation ... (CNET)

Writer Craig Mazin, Pedro Pascal and the rest of the cast reveal how the TV series expands the universe of the game while maintaining its powerful emotional ...

[in a companion podcast](https://listen.hbo.com/the-last-of-us-podcast?c=SMTUzoX5QN_06l-iR1z0HA&h=51504b5794522e818) that'll go behind the scenes of the show, HBO said Monday, with podcast episodes dropping each Sunday. "Ellie is aware that there's something up with this guy -- there's more to him, he's not just a grumpy asshole for the sake of it," the actor said. "It's amazing to step into an adaptation of a beloved source material that has such an emotional human story at the center of it, to make it all the more painful. "He desires what his brother has at the beginning, which is family -- to plant a seed and watch it grow," Luna told me over video chat. [Mazin](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0563301/) applied that same curiosity to [a real-life disaster](/science/chernobyl-miniseries-by-hbo-and-sky-prompts-searches-on-nuclear-explosion-fission/) when he created [2019's acclaimed HBO miniseries Chernobyl](/culture/entertainment/hbo-chernobyl-miniseries-was-bleak-grotesque-and-absolutely-necessary/). "I absolutely did revisit the preparation. [HBO TV series The Last of Us](/culture/entertainment/the-last-of-us-review-the-greatest-video-game-adaptation-ever-made/) isn't the Clickers, Bloaters or any of the other horrors of [the legendary Sony PlayStation game](/tech/gaming/the-last-of-us-part-1-is-a-expensive-way-to-revisit-naughty-dog-masterpiece/) the series is based on. "Practically speaking, it didn't change much other than giving us a slightly different palette of props, set design and car choice. It's something, unfortunately, so many of us can relate to," Pascal told me on Zoom. Because the game took place the year it came out, Mazin and Druckmann agreed that the chronological repositioning made sense since it didn't fundamentally change the story. I thought it might be interesting to just say, 'Hey, look, in this parallel universe, this is happening right now.' So it was really just about helping people connect a little bit more," Mazin said. [HBO Max](https://hbomax.prf.hn/click/camref:1011lqSFd/pubref:cn-___COM_CLICK_ID___-dtp___OPTOUT___/destination:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hbomax.com%2F).

"The Last Of Us" Makes For Gut-Wrenching TV (BuzzFeed News)

Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us. The Last of Us, HBO's TV adaptation of the bestselling 2013 video game of the same name ...

How much of that is a testament to the expert handling of the adaptation, or to the loving construction of the original game? The third episode of The Last of Us fleshes out the story of Bill (Nick Offerman, in a fantastic subversion of his own typecasting), a gruff, no-bullshit doomsday prepper (or survivalist, depending on who you ask). As for adapting The Last of Us, Druckmann was similarly reluctant to lose the core narrative of his game. But my favorite part of the show did turn out to be a new addition to the canonical story of the game. Their relationship is the narrative heart of the game, as well as the series. The Last of Us is very, very good. When he was building the original game, he insisted on a single narrative for The Last of Us, in stark contrast to the gaming world’s affection for “open world” formats, where players can roam where they choose. He received pressure from his bosses to turn the epic, bloody finale of The Last of Us into a choice between two endings, but he maintained that Joel’s character development made a dark, climactic turn inevitable. [widespread](https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/05/the-last-of-us-review) [critical](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2013/jun/05/the-last-of-us-ps3-video-game-review) [acclaim](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/06/13/the-last-of-us-review-this-is-the-end-beautiful-friend-ps3/?sh=2f433c462639) bordering on reverence for his attention to the craft of storytelling. The Last of Us is set in a postapocalyptic world in which a fungal pandemic turns infected people into zombies. Warcraft, the highest-grossing film adaptation of a video game since 2016, boasts nearly $440 million in box office revenue but didn’t even break even because of marketing and distribution costs. The pressure is on: The series is contending with the scrutiny of devoted fans; the shadow of a film adaptation shelved in 2016, and Hollywood’s decadeslong history of turning beloved video games into shows and movies that range from dull to embarrassing.

'The Last of Us' Review: HBO's Moving Video-Game Adaptation (Variety)

Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann co-created HBO's new drama "The Last of Us," starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

But for all that the fall was not the fault of humanity in this telling of our demise, I hope, in seasons to come, to see still more of the world beyond our heroes’ relationship. (The Bartlett episode in particular makes a strong case for itself as a successor of sorts to “Black Mirror” at its best. That we come to understand them as well as we do without this layer of detail — indeed, with the show seeming eventually to be rushing away from its protagonists — is an achievement. Adapted from the popular video game of the same title by “Chernobyl’s” [Craig Mazin](https://variety.com/t/craig-mazin/) and the game’s designer, Neil Druckmann, “The Last of Us” can lean too hard on action sequences, which emphasizes the uncanny surreality of the infected. [Pedro Pascal](https://variety.com/t/pedro-pascal/)) that buoys “The Last of Us” through its run. Here, as in “Chernobyl,” we watch as characters slowly, then all at once, come into awareness that the world around them is falling apart.

The Last Of Us (HBO Show) Review - Faithful, Additive, And Excellent (GameSpot)

The post-apocalyptic drama series stars Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) as Joel and Ellie, an unlikely duo traversing an ...

I can no longer look at some characters from the game without recalling their more expansive arcs in the show, and I think that's both a commendation for the show and a benefit to the property as a whole. The show is brought to life by a cast and crew that seems hellbent on living up to its name and their own already-glowing reputations. Ramsey, to their credit, similarly captures Ellie's vulgar defiance and sarcasm in a way that often becomes the comic relief on the show even as, like the game, comic relief is a rare thing to witness. It stands proudly as one of the best video game adaptations ever, and a clear signal that PlayStation is right to pursue a future where its already reputable video games are reborn on TV. But it does feel like a vital expansion of a fictional universe I love so much, and if it's given room to grow and tell the whole story, I could see it reaching the top tier of HBO shows in time. A strictly faithful series would feel limited, and perhaps only best enjoyed by those who have no prior experience with the game, but these additions to the story make The Last of Us feel like it's found the best-case scenario, where the adaptation is both faithful and reimagined in smart ways. Sometimes they're fun alterations made to surprise familiar viewers in an otherwise faithful scene, but the crowning achievements of The Last of Us on HBO come whenever the story pivots to spend extended time with characters who aren't Ellie and Joel. Often, the TV series delivers a scene that is nearly a shot-for-shot replica of the game, from the dialogue to even the cadence of its delivery. Players of a AAA action-adventure game sometimes don't expect or even want a long, slow ramp-up with characters who aren't the focus of the game or serve another gameplay function. The pair sets off on what is initially pitched as a cargo run, with the 14-year-old Ellie being the so-called cargo, and focuses on their relationship, as well as that of others they meet along the way. Was it beneficial to be so faithful, and thus largely predictable, to the millions who have played the game already? The Last of Us on HBO, co-run by Chernobyl's Craig Mazin and the game series' own Neil Druckmann, is a marvelous proof of concept for PlayStation--and really any brand seeking to bring its beloved games to prestige television.

The Last of Us, HBO

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