The Last of Us HBO

One of the most cinematic games of all time is Sony and Naughty Dog's "The Last of Us," which launched in 2013 and became an instant critical and commercial hit ...

In many ways, it's a perfect story for where we are in 2023, picking up the pieces of the last few years and finding what's important to us again. I wanted a little more building, and the show rushes the final two episodes in a way that made me wonder if that's where most of the compression happened when it lost a chapter from the initial ten episodes that Mazin said would happen back in July 2021. In terms of storytelling and design, the show will be very familiar to gamers, almost too much at times. After a chilling prologue in which an expert on a talk show offers his belief that the world-ending pandemic will be fungal and not viral, "The Last of Us" opens properly in 2003, hours before society's collapse. [Pedro Pascal](/cast-and-crew/pedro-pascal)), an Austin-based contractor, and his brother Tommy ( [Gabriel Luna](/cast-and-crew/gabriel-luna)). It's a fascinating deconstruction of the game that leans on character and storytelling instead of action, and it does so in a way that's confidently grounded.

The HBO adaptation is well versed in the bleak clichés of the zombie genre, but it also offers something unexpected: empathy.

This is no ordinary grab bag of jump scares and grisly kills: The Last of Us respects its genre but works to defy its creakiest tropes. The Last of Us works hard to present a more sanguine view, including through Joel and Ellie’s deep bond—although franchise fans know that that connection will eventually grow complicated. This is especially true in the third episode, a mostly self-contained work that focuses on one of Joel’s survivalist allies, Bill (Nick Offerman), and his relationship with another survivalist named Frank (Murray Bartlett). Plenty of plot details in The Last of Us might feel conventional, but the show still offers a rich genre stew, with the kind of high-budget flavor that sets tentpole HBO productions apart from their straight-to-streaming counterparts. But what made The Last of Us even more immersive was how [it implicates players](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/the-last-of-us-limits-video-game-violence/613696/) in the lead character’s own morally dubious actions. [comes up](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/02/uncharted-video-game-movie-review/622815/) again and again as the medium grows in ambition: How do you translate a game that was itself clearly inspired by film and television?

A review of the HBO series The Last of Us, based on the video game and starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

But the series reminds us why postapocalyptic stories continue to invade our psyches: They remind us of the value of being alive and how terrifying it would be to stand among the few who still are. Like the dystopian prestige dramas The Leftovers and Station Eleven, The Last of Us is driven less by raw plot than by its study of relationships. Even if The Last of Us treads familiar ground, it is still a gripping and ambitious work that seems fated to become the premium cable network’s next Twitter-trending hit. The other lies in translating the inherently interactive experience of a game into something that feels unique to television. [reportedly exceeding](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/can-the-last-of-us-break-the-curse-of-bad-video-game-adaptations) each of the first five seasons of Game of Thrones, The Last of Us is punctuated by intense action sequences and elaborately rendered practical and visual effects. The nine-episode first season, which debuts on Sunday night, focuses on Joel (Pedro Pascal), a man who lost his daughter when the pandemic began in 2003, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenager whose immunity to the fungus could be instrumental in finding a cure in 2023.

The HBO TV series adaptation of The Last of Us is faithful to its already strong source material, though the unique additions shine most.

But there are several other new touches that add a lot to the story and characterisation of these already well-established characters, touches that make this version of The Last of Us feel believable, unique, and engaging as a standalone piece of media – a show about finding something to live for when all hope is lost. This could be a personal experience, a result of being so familiar with the game, but when considering the overall arc of the HBO version, it feels as if the series could have used just a bit more time to explore the growth of Joel and Ellie’s relationship. The HBO adaptation of The Last of Us also diverges from the original game’s version of events to reimagine a number of secondary plotlines, mostly in the middle episodes that credit Craig Maizin as their sole writer. The HBO adaptation of The Last of Us covers the events of the game now known as Compared to the video game, Joel is a more emotionally complex (and eventually, more emotionally open) character in the series, which is fortunate, given we spend less time with the character overall. Regardless, The Last of Us feels like a worthwhile exploration of the original narrative, and succeeds in creating a unique identity for itself.

Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann co-created HBO's new drama "The Last of Us," starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

But for all that the fall was not the fault of humanity in this telling of our demise, I hope, in seasons to come, to see still more of the world beyond our heroes’ relationship. (The Bartlett episode in particular makes a strong case for itself as a successor of sorts to “Black Mirror” at its best. That we come to understand them as well as we do without this layer of detail — indeed, with the show seeming eventually to be rushing away from its protagonists — is an achievement. Adapted from the popular video game of the same title by “Chernobyl’s” [Craig Mazin](https://variety.com/t/craig-mazin/) and the game’s designer, Neil Druckmann, “The Last of Us” can lean too hard on action sequences, which emphasizes the uncanny surreality of the infected. [Pedro Pascal](https://variety.com/t/pedro-pascal/)) that buoys “The Last of Us” through its run. Here, as in “Chernobyl,” we watch as characters slowly, then all at once, come into awareness that the world around them is falling apart.

Ever since HBO picked up The Last of Us game-turned-TV series adaptation in 2020, there has been cautious optimism that the hit game's captivating narrative ...

That said, does The Last of Us stand up for those that have not had the pleasure of enjoying its video game counterpart? At the heart of its emotional storytelling is the relationship between Ellie and Joel. The pacing is more than brisk to keep the viewer engaged and invested, with action-heavy episodes delivered in equal measure to more character-focused ones that contain multitudes of emotional storytelling. The post-apocalyptic and horror vibes are strong with The Last of Us, as HBO goes all in on setting the mood quite nicely for most of the series’ runtime, illustrating a world gone up in flames and now populated by flesh-eating infected and the infinitely more dangerous Clickers. Right from the start, the HBO series prepares viewers for the inevitable losses suffered by mankind against an overwhelming enemy, warning us about the potential of fungal mutation and the impossibility of a cure way back in 1968. Ever since HBO picked up The Last of Us game-turned-TV series adaptation in 2020, there has been cautious optimism that the hit game’s captivating narrative could be brought to life without losing any of its tension, drama, and of course, action.

The Last of Us Binge. Bella Ramsey and Anna Torv (right) in The Last of Us. Don't damn The Last of Us with faint praise. Yes, HBO's adaptation of ...

It does benefit from an accomplished cast, headlined by Iain Glen and Martin Compston, who provide a sense of authenticity and breaking point duress to the workers’ increasingly fearful struggle with inexplicable forces, but the six-episode limited series can never truly distinguish itself from a crowded field. Created by Dave Filoni (Star Wars Rebels, The Mandalorian), the most prolific voice inside the television strand of Lucasfilm, this animated offshoot of long-running series The Clone Wars has a sturdy, practical bent as it follows a group of disavowed Clone troopers trying to shelter a clone child and stay one step ahead of the Empire. Past greats such as Maria Sharapova contribute, while the slow-motion match footage and cinematic crowd shots create a sense of place, but these first five episodes (the final five are released in June) only feel intermittently engaging and rarely revelatory. Right to its bittersweet coda, The Last of Us leaves the undead in the background to test what it is to be alive. The assumption is you know little about tennis – “six games wins a set,” the first episode explains – and there’s little discussion of playing styles or tactics. A few lines of dialogue in the game becomes a moving episode exploring the union of paranoid survivalist Bill (Nick Offerman) and survivor Frank (Murray Bartlett).

Hollywood has mostly failed to adapt successful video games into satisfying series and films. In an interview, the creators of this new zombie thriller ...

That’s kind of how it works with Joel and Ellie, and that’s kind of how I think it’s going to work with the part of the audience that, like you and like me, has such an attachment to the Ellie that Neil and Ashley created in the game. In “The Last of Us” — or really any game where you’re playing somebody that has guns, and you’re fighting against other people that have guns — you’re going to get shot. Unlike a live actress, who you realize is a person and might see in other things, you don’t see Ellie anywhere else, so she almost seems to belong to the story. [Chernobyl](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/arts/television/emmy-awards-live-updates.html),” the Emmy-award winning mini-series, while Druckmann and his studio, [Naughty Dog](https://www.naughtydog.com/), are considered the benchmarks for narrative storytelling in games — fans are hoping “The Last of Us” will be different. In the game we have long action sequences to get you into a flow state, which gets you to better connect with the character — you see yourself as that character. Here’s the bad reason: Somebody in a room who doesn’t know anything about playing video games looks at a PDF of how many copies are sold, and they go, “Well, let’s just do that. DRUCKMANN The most important thing was to keep the soul of it, what it’s about: these relationships. Their journey across the United States, past zombies and cannibals, raises questions about the limits of love and the atrocities a parent will commit in the name of protecting a child. “The Last of Us,” for instance, is less about the actual outbreak than the father-daughter relationship between a smuggler named Joel (played by A decade later, an HBO series based on the game is set to be released, [on Sunday](https://www.hbomax.com/series/the-last-of-us), to a public that has grown all too familiar with the possibility of a germ apocalypse. So we get that out of the way pretty quickly.” After one of them describes something like Covid-19, the other silences both the fictional crowd and us when he expounds upon the ways in which a warmed-up planet could lead to something much, much worse.

As a gamer (and an editor at The Washington Post's video game vertical), I'm familiar with the premise and even some pivotal plot points of the games, though I ...

There’s the original PlayStation 3 game, a remastered version for PlayStation 4 titled “The Last of Us Remastered” and If you want to play “The Last of Us,” you’ve got a few options — and one more coming in March, if you’re willing to wait. The game’s 2020 sequel, “The Last of Us Part II,” explores the fallout from decisions made in the original game; the TV show’s first season follows the plot of the first game. Still, having watched a few episodes of the show, there’s no indication that playing the series is an important prerequisite to enjoy the HBO adaptation. In “The Last of Us” (both the game and the show) a fungal infection ravages the world, taking over human hosts and turning them into unusually floral zombies. For those interested in the new prestige drama, but maybe less interested in video games, there’s good news: You don’t need to play the games to understand the show.

HBO's new post-apocalyptic series is based on a video game with tens of millions of fans. For them and for newcomers, here's what to expect.

The game has been lauded for its diversity of characters in a medium often dominated by macho male protagonists, and that hasn’t been lost in translation. Without the action-first requirements of a video game, Druckmann and Mazin seem freed to deepen the dominant themes. Early signs suggest the answer is “very,” with the show including most of the major characters and plot points. The big question for fans of the video game is, how faithful will the series be to its source material? [announced](https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/06/screen-gems-to-distribute-sam-raimi-produced-the-last-of-us-movie) that it would be distributing a Sam Raimi-produced film version of the game, with Kaitlyn Dever and the “Game of Thrones” star Maisie Williams as early contenders to play the female lead. Fans of the game series will also recognize the brothers Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Woodard); Ellie’s former ally Riley (Storm Reid); and the malevolent David (Scott Shepherd), a cult leader with dark secrets of his own.

It is a big-budget adaptation of the award-winning Sony PlayStation title of the same name. Read more at straitstimes.com.