The last of Us: how is the TV series that promises to be the best from a video game

The Last of Us is a video game that over the years, especially after the arrival of the second chapter, has acquired a very particular status and credit in the sector such as to make it a masterpiece (with all the appropriate distinctions for a now overused word) in where the final result is undoubtedly greater than its parts.

That’s why the TV series arriving on Sky Atlantic and on Now from 16 January in the subtitled version and from 23 January in the dubbed version is one of the most awaited and observed of the year: on the shoulders of this series gravitate not only the expectations of those who have enjoyed the game and are curious to see its adaptation (with the bayonet of the critical grafted and ready to strike at any unwelcome variation) but also those of duty break the curse of mediocrity of many videogame transpositionswhich almost never manage to fully render the atmospheres of a game.

In short, the goal of The Last of Us is to do for video games what Game of Thrones has done for fantasy, with all due respect to the fact that the word “video game” now includes completely different experiences, which certainly have no need to be cleared by television, while a fantasy book and, in the end, something linked to a specific genre and therefore much more reproducible, as demonstrated by the plethora of themed series released in recent years.

But let’s proceed in order: The Last of Us tells the story of Joel and Ellie, two people who find themselves together by chance in the midst of a catastrophe. Humanity, in fact, was almost completely annihilated by a fungus, the cordyceps that takes over the nervous system and turns humans into bloodthirsty beasts or worse. In this context, Joel, a man who has lost everything and who in the hell of this existence has found his brutal daily life of smuggling and violence, will have to escort Ellie, a much younger girl, who was born in this context and doesn’t know nothing of the world before, towards a goal, in search of salvation with an uncertain outcome.

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It will not have escaped the most attentive that the narrative system is nothing transcendental, we are talking about a well-known archetypewhich largely follows “The Road”, book by Cormac McCarthy from which a film with Viggo Mortensen was made, with a splash of “I am legend” and all the narrative devices typical of zombie-based films and TV series. What made The Last of Us an industry phenomenon is the care with which this story has been told, the narrative choices made, the relationship between the two characters, the dialogues, the care for the setting. All mixed with the ability of Naughty Dog, which also has the saga behind it Unchartedto set up a level action title from a technical and playful point of view.

And if the first chapter is all in all a fairly classic game in mixing action and story, it is with the second that things have become so interesting as to make it a touchstone for all mainstream video games, both from a technical and narrative point of view.

With these premises, the series dedicated to The Last of Us could only be welcomed with a certain curiosity. Both because it was involved one of the authors of the game, Neil Druckmannwith Craig Mazin at his side, who had already made himself known with the miniseries “Chernobyl”, and because the cast boasted names such as Pedro Pascal, Anna Torv, Nick Offerman and Bella Ramsay, who had made herself noticed in the few minutes on screen in Game of Thrones.

The final result did not disappoint expectations, but it wasn’t so automatic. Stripped of its playful part, The Last of Us risked being another zombie-based series or another show in which Pedro Pascal plays the curmudgeon who has to protect someone and it is absolutely not certain that a story that worked in the game makes likewise on the screen, it’s not enough to shoot a few lines and main scenes to make a movie. Instead, some choices of the narrative system have proved to be spot on and the “The Walking Dead but with mushroom monsters” effect was avoided.

The series, in fact, manages to thin out where it can by focusing on the emotional heart, instead expanding the story where the game, due to choices related to the need to make it an action title, had to run faster. The story, therefore, lingers much more on the world around the characters, on the brutality of a collapsing humanity, on the stories of some supporting actors before they cross their path with the protagonists. And all this is also done with courage, dodging easy choices and the temptation to lengthen the broth, indeed, the season lasts as long as the entire game and perhaps one more episode could have been there. The result is episodes full of very intense moments that peer beyond the game, without ever forgetting the fundamental turning points of the original story, some essential jokes, directorial quotes and a almost identical scenery. The paradox of a faithful adaptation, but with its own dignity, which not only follows exactly what worked and does not forget that video games and TV series are different tools, which tell things differently, to audiences who sometimes they intersect but sometimes not.

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For example, the infection process of the cordyceps (which, we remind you, actually exists) has been changed, if in the game there were spores, which forced the characters to wear gas masks in many scenes, in the series it was decided to use filaments, in order to avoid covering too much the faces of the actors (and poor Pascal had already gone through it in Mandalorian) and because, according to the authors, today the public is much more aware of the use of certain protective devices and how an infection that can exploit the air spreads and the spores.

So does The Last of Us prove that video game adaptations are changing? Are we facing a watershed? Yes and no. For sure involving the game’s author in the adaptation seems like a sensible move, which perhaps does not guarantee success, but certainly protects against the risk that the product is managed by people who perhaps have no experience or ties with the original material and who change it until they completely lose the meaning of the work. It also helps that the story was based on a known archetype and on an all in all realistic staging and a strongly narrative and non-crossroads video game. But the adaptations are still complex issues in which a good starting story or the success of a game guarantee nothing, just look at the lukewarm result of Uncharted, another Naughty Dog work that has become a film.

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For the next few years Stony has other transpositions at stake, including Gran Turismo and God of War, without forgetting the projects dedicated to Fallout and Borderlands, or Halo, which despite being a questionable project has received great public favor. We’ll see if The Last of Us will remain an example to imitate or if it will be surpassed.