![]() ![]() It has been fascinating to watch the TV adaptation of The Last of Us as someone intimately familiar with the original game. In some sense, it improves on the experience, actualizing what the game was trying to approximate. The three-minute sequence doesn’t just remain faithful to the original. None of that factors into the TV adaptation, which gets to cut straight to the heart of the story’s emotional endgame. There’s a tedium to the interaction being demanded of you coming at some meaningful cost to the narrative momentum. Much like that opening, you can feel the strain of the game’s elemental storytelling tools in this sequence: Turn the wrong corner or take too much time, and you’re caught and have to start over. Mirroring the game’s opening sequence, in which Joel tries to flee the outbreak with an injured Sarah in his arms, you control him carrying Ellie’s unconscious body as he navigates the dangers of armed Fireflies descending on your position. The possibility of losing persists even after retrieving Ellie. (No smooth thing given that The Last of Us’s combat mechanics were passable at best - even for the era.) And since this is a game, it’s a climax with a fail state: You may die several times trying to reach the operating room, blunting that urgent sense of narrative momentum. But as a player, you have to deal with the fact that this narrative climax plays out as what is basically a standard level: As you’ve endured countless times before, you’re made to hide, craft, outmaneuver, bait, and murder in cold blood as you try to reach Ellie before she’s killed. What was so conversation-stirring about this sequence in 2013, beyond the severity of Joel’s decision, was the unique tension between how you may feel about his choice and what you’re made to do in order to beat the game. That decision streamlines what, in the source material, feels simultaneously fascinating and tedious. It’s an effective sequence owing, in large part, to its economy: From the moment Joel gains the upper hand over his captors to reach the operating theater, the whole thing only takes about three minutes. Any sense of danger evaporates as we follow Joel reaping carnage through the building almost mechanically. The gaze detaches from his perspective, pulling back to evoke a dreamlike quality. ![]() In the HBO series, Joel’s shoot-out through the hospital is depicted as a haze. Confronted with the trolley problem, Joel bets against the world - and against Ellie’s own autonomy. When the surgeon resists in the operating theater, Joel instantly shoots him in the face, killing possibly the last person with the necessary expertise to save humanity. Haunted by losing a daughter once before, Joel rejects the situation and slaughters his way through the hospital. Separated from Ellie, Joel is informed that the cost of extracting a vaccine will be her life. Of course, a straightforward outcome was never in the cards. After surviving a melting pot of horrors, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) finally arrive in Salt Lake City, where a Firefly outpost and potential cure await. Of the many tweaks made by HBO’s The Last of Us to its source material, the climactic hospital sequence in finale “Look for the Light” is the shrewdest. Divorced from the game-play mechanics, the TV adaptation gets to cut straight to the heart of The Last of Us’s emotional endgame.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |