Review of the first season of The Last of Us

The HBO-produced series ended up making a much bigger “hole in the world” than many probably expected. Since its viewership broke the vast majority of records (only the later seasons of the original Game of Thrones remained unsurpassed), it cannot be argued that the popularity of the series was provided only by the community of fans of the original game (and their favorites). For something to reach that amount, it must have universal appeal to both the completely clueless and insiders alike. And this is exactly what has been confirmed.

#Last of us became the most watched series on #HBOMax all over Europe 🍄 Thank you for watching with us 💜 pic.twitter.com/VfuZCWH9iK

— HBO Max Czech Republic and Slovakia (@hbomaxczsk) March 14, 2023

But in addition, one more very important thing was confirmed: despite the fact that some screamers “leave” and curse the series as it progresses (for example, after the third episode), the numbers again speak clearly: the viewership has clearly increased during the first season with every episode. This will only happen with very high quality shows that are interesting enough for most people. After all, in today’s digital world, we pay primarily not with money, but with our own time. And the ever-increasing, record number of viewers decided to devote their time to this particular series, which undeniably confirmed its quality.

Final Episode

As with the entire series, there was nothing special in the last, ninth episode. After a brand new opening scene (we’ll come back to it in the next paragraph), she very quickly played all the key events of the story’s finale, from the giraffe episode to the operating room. It was very interesting to see that the further the creators moved along the plot, the more they were afraid to risk anything – towards the end, all scenes, including shots, montages, or even intonations of the actors’ speech, are almost identical to the game template. This is understandable to some extent, but the crew’s original statements about how they didn’t want the actors to learn the game template and only copy it, how they wanted to bring new elements to the game made possible by the new environment. the whole work and so on seems somewhat insincere. But the problem is that it all felt more like cut-out movie clips glued together than the smooth journey we took in the game template.

But the brand new scene at the beginning of the episode, where we are introduced to Ellie’s real mother and the bizarre, apparently very important circumstances of her birth, also left mixed impressions. Although this is a very interesting passage in terms of plot and a useful addition to the story of the characters, in terms of viewing experience, nevertheless, a sad thought came to the fore in these moments: actress Ashley Johnson showed much more believable emotions in this role for a few minutes and a much stronger charisma than actress Bella Ramsey in all nine episodes of the series. Unfortunately, thanks to this, I once again realized how sorry I am that the creators did not find a slightly more expressive representative for the main female role of the entire series.

Great series for non-gamers

However, both of the above criticisms (the brevity of the series and the controversial casting for the title role) can only be fully understood by someone who has experienced a masterfully dosed and memorably acted pilgrimage with Joel and Ellie from the game model, which certainly makes him compare. So, what I already wrote in my impressions of the first episode was confirmed – by far the best impression of this series was received by the original, completely new viewers, who were looking forward to every turn. The story of TLOU is unusual, among other things, in how well it works not only with fundamental human qualities or values, but also in how it effectively doses feelings of happiness and loss, causing strong emotional reactions in the audience. As you can see on social media or hear from our loved ones who are not familiar with video games, the story of Joel and Ellie has had a very strong impact on them, just as much as it does on us in the game model.

Video games have not yet reached the stage where their characters can look and act comparable to real people – at least visually. Therefore, when it comes to the most powerful representation of human nuances, a live-action film (or series) still has an advantage over the game environment, which was also confirmed in some episodes of the series. Both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are absolutely amazing in some scenes and look much better than the digital character models in game art. Unfortunately, there are also a number of scenes where it doesn’t work as well, and most importantly, even more scenes where it just works too differently. It is a pity that when the creators of the series took care to copy many key scenes to the absurdity, one to one according to the original, they did not take care to cast more similar (not only externally) actors in key roles.

So while I respect the storytelling or success of the series and really enjoyed some of the bits and pieces of it, as a fan of the original game, I can’t shake the impression that something was missing from it. Perhaps it would have been better if the creators of the game and the creators of the film had teamed up to create completely new characters and story in the world of The Last of Us, rather than trying to copy existing ones. So for now, Arcane continues to be the best use case for a gaming license in the series, working equally well for connoisseurs and newcomers alike.