Is THE LAST OF US, the best video game TV Show ever?
I have talked about video games adaptations at length on this channel. When done properly it is an awesome experience to step into the shoes of Batman in Arkham Asylum, play though the tell tales series of the walking dead, or even experience la video game platformer based on our favourite Disney cartoon.
You would think that the material, concepts, lore and stories seen in video games would be prime material for the silver and big screens, but that is seldom the case. Yes we have seen rare gems in the form of the Netflix adaptation of the Witcher (though this draws more from the original novels than the games), The original Resident Evil movie (to a certain degree) but for every mildly enjoyable video game adaptation, there is a Doom, street fighter and Super Mario Brothers around the corner.
After so many disappointments is it any wonder why most of us will look at the next upcoming video game to movie or tv adaptation and hold our breath with a “Yeah ill believe it when I see it attitude”
Then there came the Last of us, and five episodes in, not only has the show been a faithful adaptation of the original Naughty dog release, it is a show more broadly symbolic of the current state of science fiction horror that it brings up so many questions that just beg answering.
So this is why the Last of us, is the best video game adaptation.
First off This video essay will contain major spoilers for both the last of us game and HBO series.
Now right off the bat I want to make one thing clear, I have not played through all of the Last of us Game. Due to my PS3 self destructing in 2013 and me switching over to XBOX One shortly after. Yet I have always kept a keen eye on the game, and for this video have obviously well researched the character development, themes, and events of the story and I managed to play enough of the original game to be captivated by what it had to offer.
Very few games will effect me emotionally, but “the last of us” is one of them where I had to take a step back and re-evaluate everything, before picking up the controller. For me this began with the death of Sarah. The game does such a good job at introducing the character, putting the player in control of her in the first part of the game up until the events of her death at the beginning of the outbreak.
You are brought into the world of the “last of us” with the innocence of a child. An innocence which is questioned and returned to again and again throughout both the game and the series, and the fact that we know from pre released material, previews and trailers that this is a story between Joal and Ellie, we are immediately met with a sense of foreboding by being introduced to Sarah, to the point that when her inevitable death actually occurs and we are faced with the 20 year time jump. We feel the severance and intensity of Joal’s grief. We immediately understand the change in character and we as the audience share in the devastation of a father who has lost a child.
Now this is a personal opinion, but for me over the past 20 years western culture has become absorbed in violent media, it often seemed like many shows would take the path of the most action packed or violent outcome for tv show and movie characters just to get that kick out of the audience. Yes we all loved seeming the George A Romero trend of zombie films continue in the 2000s and the bloodier the better. We ate up the post apocalyptic. We did not want hopeful science fiction, fantasy or horror, we needed to exorcise our demons so to speak. We didn’t care if our characters had the depth of a toddlers swimming pool as long as we were told who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. We coined terms such as “Walking dead villain” to describe antagonists that had no real motive other than to be shockingly brutal, often extending scenes of brutality to uncomfortable lengths, to a point where we asked if the showrunners were actively trying to traumatise the audience.
In HBOs the last of us, every act of violence seen comes coupled with a question and depiction of real world suffering, that asks the audience to question our own morality, it is a show that to me is representing an audience looking back on our obsession with violence in media over the past 20 years and asking ourselves the question “What the hell have we been doing to ourselves?”The outbreak taking place in 2003 is almost symbolic of a time where we were very much traumatised after the events of 911 and the subsequent wars in afganistan and Iraq.