It’s almost only two weeks until we finally get to enjoy HBO’s hyped The Last of Us starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay as Joel and Ellie. The trailers we have seen so far promise very well, but as is almost always the case, there will of course be some differences between the game and the film adaptation.
As you know, violence is often present in both games and not infrequently it is also very brutal and graphic. The series, on the other hand, will tone down the violence a bit and there are quite good reasons for doing this, and it is to give the story itself even more weight.
Neil Druckmann said this in a recent interview with SFX Magazine/Games Radar:
“We need a certain amount of action, or violence, that we could use for mechanics so you could connect with Joel and get into a flow state. Then you would really feel like you’re connected with this on-screen avatar and you’ re seeing the world through his eyes.
But that doesn’t exist in a passive medium. One of the things that I loved hearing from co-creator Craig Mazin and HBO very early on was, ‘Let’s take out all the violence except for the very essential.’ That allowed the violence to have even more impact than in the game, because when you hold on showing the threat and you’re seeing people’s reaction to a threat, that makes it scarier. And when we do reveal the infected and the Clickers, you get to see what brought down humanity and why everyone is so scared.”
We will see how well this works very soon, The Last of Us premieres on HBO Max on January 15th and, in addition to the already mentioned Pascal and Ramsay, there are, among others, Nick Offerman as Bill, Merle Dandridge as Marlene (who also played Marlene in the games) and Gabriel Luna as Joel’s brother Tommy to name but a few.
What do you think about the violence playing a slightly more subdued role in the series?
