I don’t like HBO’sThe Last of Us adaptation. I found the first season to be largely underwhelming,redeemed only by its third episodeand Pedro Pascal’s performance as Joel. With how much of a layup doing an adaptation of The Last of Us Part 1 seemed to be, and the way that Craig Mazin and HBO squandered it, I didn’t have much faith in the second season.
Well, we’re midway through it now, and I was right: I am not having a good time. The show misunderstands so much of what I appreciate aboutThe Last of Us Part 1and 2 to the point I started doubting why I even liked the games in the first place.
“Maybe the show isn’t a bad adaptation; maybe the truth is thatI’vechanged and that The Last of Us doesn’t resonate with me in the way that it used to,” I thought to myself. I wanted to get to the bottom of that thought, so I downloaded both games and got to work.
The Medium, The Message, The Last Of Us
The Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2 are absolute bangers. The stories they tell are emotionally intelligent and resonant and are brought to life through stunning performances, visuals, and thematic subtext. There’s a lot that goes unsaid, which is what made the series compelling in the first place.The debates surrounding Joel’s actions at the end of the first gameand Ellie’s actions throughout the entirety of the second are spawned because both games leave it to the player to decide who’s right, who’s wrong, and if those concepts even apply anymore to people living through the end of the world.
As soon as I started new playthroughs of both games, it became immediately apparent that something was missing from the HBO adaptation.It’s not uncommon for adaptations to make changes, but when making those adjustments for the medium, the adaptation needs to keep the spirit of the original intact, lest it risks losing the thing that drew people to the original to begin with.
I find the show lacks most of the nuance from the games in favor of much more directly laying out how characters feel.They talk with a therapistin the second season ordeliver clunky dialogue that makes sure no one can possibly get lostwhile watching. It technically tells the story of The Last of Us, but misunderstands that the medium by which it’s told in the games is the message.
When A Game Speaks For Itself
If you, like me, have been let down by the way The Last of Us has been brought to television, I implore you to revisit the games. My playthrough started with me and my fiancée pointing at the screen every few cutscenes to say, “See?!Thisis how you write and direct nuanced characters,” while comparing moments to the ones from the show.
But after a few hours, we stopped caring so much about what the show had to say andhow it compared to the gamebecause we were starting to get lost in the story once more. There were no more discussions about the show; they were replaced by discussions about the game itself because the game is worth talking about and has nuanced moments that invite dissection and analysis that goes beyond simply saying, “Wow, they did that way worse on HBO.”
As much asthe show erodes the meaning of The Last of Usuntil it becomes a sanded-down version of itself, it can’t take away from what makes the games great. The games still exist and are worth playing whenever you need to be reminded of what superb acting performances can add to a game. Maybe this Sunday I’ll skip watching the new episode and keep working my way through Seattle instead.
