A review of the first season of "Last of Us": Has HBO managed to survive the apocalypse again?
We tell you, with spoilers, how Ellie and Joel's journey of several lives came to an end.
The first chapter of Ellie and Joel's journey is over - the trauma Naughty Dog Studios inflicted on gamers has now crippled those with a remote rather than a joystick in their hands. A smuggler (Pedro Pascal) and a girl with immunity (Bella Ramsey) walked through a country overrun by a cordyceps mushroom pandemic, but even scarier, by people living by their own laws. The HBO series turned survival with pockets full of ammunition into a tour of life after the end. From episode to episode, scene to scene, game designer Neil Druckmann and showrunner Craig Mazin have guided veterans and recruits through the corners of moldy morality to fit Joel and Ellie into a new picture of humanity in the finale.
"Last of Us" is a project of calibrating multiple shades of perception: the spectator is not a friend to the gamer, the child will not understand the parents, and therefore the test of empathy and involvement everyone passes differently. Translation of lost into seen or unblurred gaze? Who is fairer in diagnoses? The question is as open as the show's finale: interpretations, interpretations, counting the infected in the frame and tracking mutations of canon have by and large just begun. There is no doubt about one thing: "Last of Us" is a milestone project that is not labeled by its counterparts for a multitude of reasons. The series will remain a topic of heated discussion, a source of sincere love for some and searing disappointment for others. With another season (and perhaps more than one) ahead, the horizon of discovery is wider than it seems, and the writers are already hinting at changes to come.
A respectful bow to the iconic original
Upon completion, in addition to deafening despair and reflection on the problem of the wagonload, the watchers inherited a sense of pent-up rebellion. Neil Druckmann had once already "failed" to live up to the audience's trust - the release of the second game was accompanied by massive unrest in the community. A good half of fans did not accept the sequel (a reckless and stingy approach): in comparing the reversals of the apocalypse diptych, the first chapter was the perfect canon - almost holy writ from Naughty Dog, which no one dares to touch with dirty hands. As if setting the stage for a new bloody battle with the audience, Druckmann and Mazin faithfully, diligently and carefully saluted the pop-culture pillar. Druckmann pulled out the plotting with explanations, interpretations, and plotting that remained outside the gameplay perimeter, like the circumstances of Ellie's mother Anna's (Ashley Johnson) infection and the nature of the girl's immunity. Mazin, as script doctor, diligently patched up the white spots in the story, asking more questions of the world and building up the dramaturgical volume behind each survivor's portrait: the NPCs became people with biographies behind their shoulders and names on their approaching tombstone. The actors from the game - Ashley Johnson, Troy Baker, Merle Dandridge, Jeffrey Pierce - have found a safe haven on screen, the textured world is oversaturated with virtual souvenirs that wink at "their" audience, from clothing items to posters on the street, and Gustavo Santaolalla's music stabs a misgivings somewhere in your chest with every note. "Last of Us," taking the plank of a video game adaptation close to the ideal in the pilot, stuck to its noble mission until the very end, choosing to be ultimatelly safe, despite certain (but not radical) liberties with the narrative.
The routine fight against death has acquired many faces: FEDRA's military discipline with a trial without delay, the Fireflies resistance alliance that doesn't shy away from any method of achieving a good cause, the quiet oasis of Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett)'s affectionate suburbia, the highway robbery, the civil war for the city, the closed community in the underground communications, the imitation normality with the communist system in Jackson or the cult with a belief in salvation at the winter resort. One general misfortune has not superseded a multitude of private misfortunes: cancer, multiple sclerosis, and loneliness remain, multiplied by shortages of medicine, food, and hygiene products.
A change of genre and a muted texture of violence
Building a future on the wreckage of well-being doesn't work for everyone: the survivor gallery varies like the genre cut of each episode, from an aorta road movie pumping blood throughout the plot to a winter western, an action invasion of the infected, a disaster movie or a coming-of-age chord from the past. But in the whole palette of retelling methods, the main language is still the drama, which by the end finally sends the crowd of infected out of the frame. A disappointing circumstance for those who were expecting carnage, and a rediscovery of the truth for everyone else: no matter how many monsters the Earth holds, the most terrifying remains human.
Drakmann and Mayzin staked on frightening realism, erased all shades of old-fashioned action hero from Joel's face and put the "macho against all" concept out of the narrative brackets. The decision is more than justified, but along with squads of NPC bandits, subspecies of infected and powerful falls from the bridge gone adrenaline drive and frantic invincibility of the original. However, it was strange to expect from the author of "Chernobyl" and a selected cohort of festival directors (Ali Abbasi, Jasmila Zbanic, Lisa Johnson, etc.) a zombieland-inspired carnage. The key to the genre's change in tone has been the language of on-screen violence: HBO's "Last of Us" shy away from blood and cautious, guarding Joel Miller's alignment until the climax. The aftermath of physical mutilation is more often hidden from viewers; the camera doesn't take its eyes off the author of the damage, whether it's Ellie and David's fight or Joel strutting around with a threat-a FEDRA soldier or a teenage Kansas City bandit. Even in the stunned finale, the violence is not an accomplished fact but a means: the silent fighter methodically fires off the Fireflies, not a muscle trembles on Pascal's face, and the bodies remain contorted behind somewhere under the weight of Santaolalla's chords. It's impossible to compare the level of brutality of the series and the game, where dozens of faceless opponents are blown to pieces every 15 minutes, but in the case of building Ellie and Joel's relationship, the violence (and its perception) serves as both a forced defense mechanism and a lesson in parenting. The audience was deliberately spared frank mutilation and the domestic texture of death so as not to romanticize the active stage of survival at all costs, but Ellie could not be saved from the consequences of her experience. Except to knock the hubris and heroism off the trope of the chosen one: the immune girl is like Harry Potter in a zombie apocalypse without magic. The fate of the vaccine's raw material is clearly twinned with the fate of the "slaughter pig" - raised in warmth and satiety under the care of Marlene and under the care of the military, Ellie's time has come to die. The choice of a non-sacrificial but ordinary fate amidst the end of the world is once again resonating and condemning, but the outcome of "Last of Us" is a rare combination of circumstances in a pop-cultural alliance of characters with a mission to save the world. Perhaps it is today, a decade after the game's release, when the trope of the chosen ones has tired everyone else out and characters are increasingly devoid of the polarizing characteristics of bad and good, that Joel's act will be interpreted differently. There can be no right line here, though.
Season 2 might be different, and that's not a bad thing.
Ellie and Joel are carefully wrapped in a patchwork quilt embroidered with the patterns of lost humanity. Guarding against surprises, sudden bursts of plot self-rule or event spoofing, Druckmann and Mazin gently and dignified the companions along the familiar road, proving once again that "Last of Us" is a dramaturgically flawless story with a harrowing ending that can neither be forgotten nor changed. Predictability for gamers was transformed into an evil doom, a total foreboding of new misfortune, provoking a desperate desire to save the roadrunners by misfortune at least this time (we wrote about how Druckmann and Mazin manage emotion in a separate text). In Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, and the quiet magic of born intimacy, it's impossible not to fall in love with all your heart: the striking and human casting the game has been waiting 10 years for. Despite all the deliberate correctness and even economical didacticism of the authors in relation to the source material, it is impossible to stay away, even passing the way again. And if there is a barometer of excellence, perhaps re-engagement can be considered one of the indicators of filmmakers' professionalism.
The first season of "Last of Us" was a kind of maturity and consistency of the idea of transferring the journey to another medium: very careful, balanced, and whole. As time passes, the opening chapter may even seem like a prequel to an even bigger story. Now all that's left to do is to fill our chests with air and hope that the sequel becomes a real testing ground for the audience's mental reserves. Where it's no longer scary to hurt the most discerning audience and once the author's entire relationship with the fandom has been ruined, the area of responsibility is smaller, and therefore the likelihood of significant change is greater. Drakmann and Mazin once again face perception games with old friends and emotional swings for new acquaintances. I wish with all my might that "Last of Us" would allow itself more courage and authorial freedom: the point of no return has been passed, and there is nothing more to lose.
This article was sponsored by Thomas Miller
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