The article contains a spoiler for a significant moment in the first part of the series.
The HBO series The Last of Us, based on the highly acclaimed video game, has become one of the most significant pop culture events of recent times, with many talking about how “the curse of bad video game adaptations has finally been lifted” (which is not entirely true, for example the Arcane series has handled this before). In any case, the assessment of experts and the public is still very high, and the audience of the first part is breaking the records of the decade. But that doesn’t mean the series is perfect. One particular moment from the first series shocked many more attentive viewers, as it was obvious that something strange was going on there. We now have an explanation in the official podcast and documentary video from the shoot… and unfortunately it’s not a very good explanation.
Toward the end of the first part, a situation arises when Joel kills a soldier who threatened Ellie (and, by extension, Joel’s entire group) with his bare hands. What was odd about this scene was that Ellie, a fourteen-year-old girl who was watching the brutal murder from close range, was not frightened, but instead watched the whole scene with a very interested expression on her face. It more or less looked as if she had deliberately positioned herself so that she could see better and some satisfaction could be seen on her face. What exactly was her alarmed reaction supposed to mean?
We received the answer in the aforementioned official podcast of the series, as well as in a documentary video from the filming: “The most remarkable thing about this moment is that when Ellie watches Joel fatally beat another person, she activated… Ellie doesn’t cry. She loves the idea of someone being so protective of her, and she loves the thought of punishing a guy. This is where the problem becomes apparent, but also the delight of this couple’s union. These two are made for each other, but be careful.”
While the intent of the creators makes sense (especially given the development of Ellie’s personality in the later stages of the story), perhaps in this case they went too far and significantly reduced the realism, or at least the sympathy of the Ellie character. Watching a mesmerized 14-year-old girl looking for a better angle of bloody beating a man to death and imagining that she enjoys it in the context of “someone finally stood up for me” seems highly unflattering and bordering on significant mental distress, or at least at least extremely callous, especially in relation to the child. While much of the first episode of the HBO series worked well in terms of portraying the characters, their motivations and relationships, this point is just a little overdone. And before you start whining about how it was in the game… no, it wasn’t. On the contrary, the game Ellie was horrified by the situation:
Source :Indian TV
