The HBO series The Last of Us has become one of the biggest viewing successes of the decade.
Lately, both streaming services and Hollywood have invested heavily in games, and there are several well-known and beloved game series on their way to the TV screen and the big screen.
The Last of Us is the first reality film series that has become a critical success, and actualizes the eternal question of how faithful one should be to the source material when moving from one medium to another.
The series creator is balancing on a knife’s edge when he has to adapt the narrative. For how much should one free the fan base, and what care should be taken for new viewers?
And dare one add new elements that (one hopes) can lift the experience?
controversy
The third episode in The Last of Us series has divided viewers. HBO has shown us the relationship between Bill and Frank, something that is only mentioned in a passing sentence in the game.
Almost all of the content in the episode is new. In this way, it is an interesting case for examining adaptation from medium to medium – even if The Last of Us itself is not actually one.
I will come back to this, because before we dive into our analysis, I have to confront the elephant in the room.
On the film website IMDB, 54.3 percent of viewers have given the episode ten out of ten possible points. 27.2 percent have given the episode one out of ten.
There are probably those who think mixing a romantic drama into a zombie series is weird. And that’s perfectly fine. The taste is like the butt, but there is no reason why so many give the episode a bad name.
The third episode deals with the relationship between Frank and Bill.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
We know that there are many conservative Americans who are responsible for the votes on IMDB, and it is not unusual for a cultural product to become a “review bomb” when it has an agenda about diversity.
It is revealed that this group reacts because the episode deals with homosexuality. They are mobilizing against what they believe is an expression of “woke” culture.
The surprising thing is that it is apparently part of this group that has played the game.
Because The Last of Us is not primarily a game about zombies. Rather, the apocalypse is a backdrop for a story about man’s ability to get together under extreme conditions, create relationships and find love, family and friendship in the impossible.
The game has a clear message that diversity is important. In the first game, both Frank and Bill, the main characters in the third episode, are gay. Main character Ellie is also gay.
This criticism is therefore easy to write off.
Broken with expectations
When we filter out one of the ten votes, the score for the episode is sky high. Nevertheless, I see, if I read some of the user reports that have given just one in ten, that there are a few perspectives that are repeated.
Many write that the episode does not contribute anything to the narrative, that it is a meaningless break that stops the flow and ruins what is basically a short series.
Common to the vast majority of user messages is frustration at being distracted from the action in the game.
And then I’m back to the discussion about the adaptation.
To understand why HBO has done what they have done, we should first delve into the strengths and weaknesses of different mediums.
In your shoes
The narratives in games often come from – or are adapted to – either films, animated films, series, books or cartoons. To make our analysis simple, I focus on text, film and games.
The differences are largely about how each medium conveys information and takes the consumer into the universe.
Games combine the strengths of several mediums. A game can use music, film sequences, dialogue and text in one.
The main strength of the medium is still what makes games unique; interactivity. The consumer of the cultural product is given agency, influence over the universe he enters, and has much greater freedom to change and control the narrative. You can do that to a small extent with other mediums.
This again has its advantages and disadvantages.
The developer of a game can create a greater relationship between consumer and character, with the consumer literally controlling the protagonist.
Me is Joel in the game. This increases our empathy for the character without the developer needing to make narrative technical moves.
At the same time, the developer does not always have control over how the consumer plays. The developer must contribute his breadcrumbs, but risks a player doing something completely different from what the developer intended.
Another important element of games is the possibility of repetition.
On film, Joel cannot slaughter 30 enemies with bombs and rifles over and over again. But it is something else when the consumer himself does the work.
Naughty Dog
In games, you often have a set of gameplay mechanisms, such as shooting, climbing, fighting and resource gathering, which the consumer repeats over and over during the X hours they play. The game often has features to reward you for this effort, either by making your character stronger or by advancing the story.
The same situations would quickly become commonplace in text and film.
Into the mind
A book, i.e. a fictional text, has different strengths and ways than films and games.
The book can convey thoughts, break a second down into hundreds of pages and capture the reader in the moment in a completely different way.
It also differs from the others in how the consumer handles the information in the story. Here everything happens in our own head. It is up to the reader’s imagination to fill in what is missing in the narrative, the descriptions, and the tone of voice of characters who speak.
There are far more shoe actors who can fit into the roles in a book. Finding the right person is a bigger challenge when adapting from a photorealistic game.
Naughty Dog
Our brain is the stage for the shoe game.
One reader can imagine a figure and a value in a completely different way than the author or another reader. There, the text adaptation overcomes a bit of the challenge of finding the right actors, which is much more difficult when, for example, we know how Joel and Ellie look and speak.
Our personal relationship with the text is also a strength in itself. The consumer of a book gets ownership of the story, which lives its own life inside us.
The Metro series is perhaps the foremost example of games that are directly adapted from books. Although the first game follows the first book closely, the book and the game represent very different ways of telling the story.
On the canvas
In the film, it is the director who decides how the narrative looks, what the pace is and what details should be hidden and shown.
The director can use different camera angles and music to build up a certain mood. And the director has a more patient audience than the game developer. In the game, the consumer sits and waits to regain control during the film sequence.
The film viewer does not. He knows he is a contributor. The interactivity is awake, but the story gets more room to grow. One can focus on the small details, and spend more time on strengthening the relationship between the figures.
Films and series have a greater commercial appeal than games and books, because they are more accessible. They require less investment of time and money from the consumer.
Many advantages
With this in mind, I can understand why and how HBO has adapted The Last of Us.
First of all, it is important to emphasize that there are relatively few differences between the game and the series other than the third episode. In any case, not beyond what I expect from the transition from game to series.
In the game, a large part of the time is spent on the various mechanisms, but everyone understands that the serial consumer did not want to see Joel crouching around in old houses looking for nails and tape.
The games are also linear. They rely heavily on film sequences to tell the story, and are much closer to film as a medium than many other game adaptations.
This makes the job easier for the series creators. Basically, they could have made a series just out of the cutscenes in the game.
It is this type of game that should adapt.
The changes from the narrative in the game are primarily supplements to what was already there, and it helps that Neil Druckmann from Naughty Dog himself is involved and pulling the levers.
The third episode depicts why one should not always follow the source material. The episode builds on the universe’s strengths, and gives fans something new and unexpected without taking away important elements from the game.
The important promise
Ultimately, adaptation is about quality.
Even more important than fan loyalty is that what you add – or change – elevates the cultural product.
It goes without saying, but it is a message that needs to be emphasized.
The other three big critics from the gaming world are the Netflix series Castlevania, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Arcane. These avoid the problems of adaptation. They do not adapt material from the game directly, but spin a new action based on certain elements from the same world.
Episode three from The Last of Us does the same. It starts from an established universe and tells a new story without having negative consequences for the rest of the source material.
Adaptation will always irritate some blood fans in one way or another, but here HBO has succeeded in both expanding The Last of Us world with new stories and surprising in a saturated genre.
It’s adaptation done right.
