opinion | As early as mid-January, our editor Michael Hille is certain: in 2023 there will be no more series that is as captivating and impressive as “The Last of Us”. Not only is it the best zombie dystopian series he’s seen, it’s also the first good video game adaptation.
TV Spielfilm may receive a commission from the dealer for links on this page, eg for those marked with .
More info
It’s actually a fixed law: Video game adaptations don’t work. You just need names like “Resident Evil”, “Uncharted”, “Tomb Raider” or “Assassin’s Creed”, and both gamers and cineastes quickly get a stomach ache. It was therefore entirely justified that many took a very critical look at the US provider HBO, when they announced they were going to adapt “The Last of Us” as a series For the uninitiated: The Last of Us is considered to be pretty much the best video game of all timerevolutionized the gaming world when it was released in 2013 and was probably the first video game narrative that could compete with big cinema blockbusters in terms of content, emotionally and aesthetically.
To be on the safe side, Craig Mazin, who wrote “Chernobyl”, which is probably the best series of recent years, was hired for the scripts of the nine episodes, which retell the entire game, and put him together with Neil Druckmann – the author of the gaming template. But can this duo break the curse on all video game adaptations? The press got to see all 9 episodes of the first season in advance and the reviews are unanimous worldwide: “The Last of Us” is also available as a series (with us at WOW to see) a masterpiecea notable success, and will serve as the blueprint for any gaming adaptation in the future.
For non-gamers: What is “The Last of Us” about?
HBO / Sky Germany
Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal star in The Last of Us.
It’s been 20 years since a Most of humanity wiped out by a pandemic – not by a virus, but by a fungus whose latest mutation can spread to humans. Anyone who is infected develops a form of rabies, up to and including uncontrolled cannibalism. In the USA there are only a few quarantine zones in which the military uses brutal means to maintain order. Calling themselves Fireflies, some freedom fighters fight for fairer circumstances. Bitter Joel Miller lives in Boston (Pedro Pascal), who runs criminal businesses together with his partner Tess (Anna Torv) and is respected and feared by those around him.
One day, the Fireflies contact him with a mission: smuggle 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of town and safe through no man’s land strewn with infected escort. He reluctantly agrees, but when something goes wrong on the trip, the brief assignment turns into an odyssey across the country. At the various stations he and Ellie head for, including Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and a sealed-off ghost town where odd conspiracy theorist Bill (Nick Offerman) and his partner Frank (Murray Bartlett) live, the cheeky teenager slowly warms up Heart of the traumatized Joel. On their odyssey, they quickly realize that there are other dangers: gunmen who want to survive at all costs, as well as mutant beings created by the fungusthat react to the slightest noise. And the beginning emotional bond with Ellie presents Joel with a private problem: For the first time in 20 years, he has something to lose…
“The Last of Us” shows how to film video games
HBO / Sky Germany
Joel and Ellie roam the no man’s land that was once the United States.
Video game adaptations are very difficult for one simple reason: Story-based games like “The Last of Us” or “God of War” work emotionally because the players themselves are in the characters, they control, move and act – and thus a there is a very close bond with the characters. A film or a series can only offer a top view, looking at the actions of the characters from the outside. Although “The Last of Us” was more than predestined for a film adaptation despite its structure and its cinematic cutscenes, it was certainly no picnic to accept this challenge and implement it worthy. Yet Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have made the impossible possible.
Those who know the game will find that they stay very close to the template most of the time. Fans will even be able to say long dialogues word for word, “The Last of Us” has been adapted so perfectly true to the original. After two episodes, it even seems as if the makers have only removed individual playable sections and otherwise the game “filmed”. But that’s not the case: Mazin and Druckmann take a lot of liberties, add new things, put events in a new context and thus even enrich the story of the original.
“The Last of Us” also offers a lot of new things for gamers
HBO / Sky Germany
Pedro Pascal has experience of protecting children from various dangers from his time as “The Mandalorian”.
Anyone who knows the game will hold their breath, sometimes impressed, as soon as they realize how cleverly the series deals with its great role model. For example, in one segment of the game, Joel and Ellie meet siblings Sam and Henry, who briefly join them. In the game it’s quite simple: Sam and Henry want to survive, and it’s easier to survive in a group of four than in two. However, in the series, the new character Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) who hunts down the brothers for personal reasons. Such smart extensions do the series also a pleasure for gamblers.
Mazin and Druckmann also take up the changed world situation – and add scenes from the time the pandemic began, which deliberately pick up on our current experiences and fears caused by the spread of Covid-19. With this contemporary prior knowledge, the new sequences get under your skin in a frightening way, while the world shown here functions entirely without these references. “The Last of Us” was already as a game one of the great dystopias of our time, comparable to the film masterpiece “Children of Men” or the novel “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. It’s about a world in which people were violently torn from the corset of civilization – even those who didn’t transform themselves through the fungus are now archaic beings fighting for survival.
As with the game: “The Last of Us” lives on Joel and Ellie
HBO / Sky Germany
One heart and one soul: Ellie and Joel.
Violence is omnipresent in this world, empathy can cost you your life. Joel is not a hero, and while he regains his humanity through Ellie, the show makes no bones about his broken, disturbing inside. and Ellie may still be a child, but she is by no means naïve or innocent, also prone to acts of violence and sadism. She was born in this lost world and has never known anything else. All this is carried by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey with two almost unbelievable acting performances. Pascal has never been better in his impressive careercredibly embodies a man who has looked into every abyss and whose most human features are just a facade.
Ramsey is a sensation – she plays both the teenage girl’s darker side with immense intensity, as well as Ellie’s doe-eyed fascination with what seemed perfectly normal before the pandemic, like glowing shop windows or riding (and buckled up) in a car. The chemistry of these two exceptional actors even elevates the series even above the original game, because even if we now look at them from the outside: Real people with real emotions on their faces still have the edge over the best animations in the world. If you don’t feel for the two, you don’t have a heart in your chest.
With WOW: “The Last of Us” you have to have experienced it
Optically and visually, “The Last of Us” leaves nothing to be desired. The effects and sets can easily be compared to those of “House of the Dragon” or “Westworld”, in its scariest scenes, “The Last of Us” is scarier than “The Walking Dead” ever was. There is little action thoughmost of the time is the series adaptation a calm and concentrated character drama about the deepest abysses of the human soul – and the search for the light deep in the darkness. In fact, the best episode is one in which Joel and Ellie don’t play a role and tells the story of the supporting characters Bill and Frank – an episode that is almost entirely unbased on the game. She gets like this poignant and stirringthat viewers will be talking about for months to come. Rarely has a TV series left you so shed tears.
“The Last of Us” is a gift, already that Streaming highlight 2023 and raises the bar for all video game adaptations, horror series and dystopias to new heights. Who’s hooked now: From January 16, a new episode of “The Last of Us” will appear every Monday on WOW in the stream and at 8:15 p.m. on Sky Atlantic.
