Last of Us show is good, not great
I’ve been resistant to watching the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us. I loved the video game it was based on, but given my familiarity, knew the show would be dark. My tolerance for dark subject matter has decreased as I’ve gotten older. The world is already such a bleak place, consuming bleak works of fiction sometimes feels masochistic.
I also didn’t want the series to supplant my experience of the game, which was special to me. I didn’t get around to playing the 2013 title for four years. At that point, it had been remastered and packaged with the Left Behind downloadable content for PlayStation 4. That’s how I played the game in 2017, when my wife was pregnant with our daughter.
The choice was auspicious, as the title is about parenthood, centering on a teenager named Ellie Williams and her surrogate-father Joel Miller, who navigate a post-apocalyptic United States. In an odd way, I began to associate these characters with my daughter and me. When I learned the fate awaiting them in The Last of Us Part II, I lost interest in the 2020 sequel.
I should mention I developed a similar connection with The Mandalorian and my son. The first season of the Disney series was released shortly after he was born. In the Star Wars show, Din Djarin becomes an adoptive father to a Yoda-like creature named Grogu. Coincidentally, Pedro Pascal plays Miller in the HBO adaptation of the Last of Us and Djarin in The Mandalorian.
Despite my reluctance to see the former, which debuted last year, I couldn’t find anything to watch recently and decided to give the series a chance. The adaptation is good, but not great. The exposition can be clunky, Pascal’s accent comes and goes, and Bella Ramsey doesn’t seem quite right as Williams. Perhaps my assessment was inevitable based on the high esteem I hold the game.
In both the PlayStation title and the show, Miller and Williams traverse crumbling, plant-covered infrastructure, that is being reclaimed by nature. It’s reminiscent of Alan Weisman’s fascinating non-fiction book from 2007, The World Without Us, that explains how the artifacts of human civilization would deteriorate if we were to suddenly disappear. Of course, in The Last of Us, there are also zombies!
The collapse of human civilization would be a godsend to the animals we exploit for entertainment, science, clothing, and food. As someone who is very fond of a number of humans, that’s not an outcome I’m rooting for! I tend to think the more likely path to animal liberation is through increased technological development, specifically in the field of cellular agriculture.
Ultimately, I enjoyed HBO’s adaptation, despite the grim tone. I’m somewhat tempted to put aside money to buy The Last of Us Part II. Then again, I’d probably have to replay the first game to get the whole experience and I’m not even sure if my PlayStation 4 still works. We’ll see if I feel the same way in a month.