Screen interpretation of popular game The Last of Us starts off as engrossing survival story
20 years after civilisation has been destroyed, Pedro Pascal’s hardened survivor Joel must smuggle a 14-year-old out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What will befall the duo on this brutal journey that’s their only chance to survive?
Starring: Pedro Pascal, Anna Torv, Bella Ramsey
Live action video-game adaptations are first judged on how well the story is translated on screen.
The Last of Us, an HBO series streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, is more than just that. A faithful adaptation of a popular game with an engaging storyline, it finds deeper and diverse interpretation here. Pedro Pascal as Joel, the protagonist, and Bella Ramsey, as the young second lead, imbue it with a sense of urgency and survivalist response that packs the story with thrilling unpredictability. Anna Torv, as fellow smuggler and partner to Joel, is pragmatic and effective.
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The story opens in Texas, with Joel suffering personal tragedy when the fungi outbreak first shows up, and moves to a war zone-like Boston 20 years later. A mutation to a type of fungus called cordyceps has led to a pandemic – and a zombie apocalypse, with an armed, monitored, and walled quarantine zone and sheer chaos in the world outside. There’s no cellphone or satellite TV anymore; only the radio works and acts as a mode of communication.
The Last of Us released in 2013 with four seasons and had an episodic structure. For the series, Neil Druckmann, the creator of the game, and co-creator Craig Mazin, the man behind the masterful Chernobyl, develop the themes like the letters that act as milestones in the game into stories; they’re experiences about life in a post-apocalyptic US. The fungi mutation and spread turns most people into mindless monsters and manifests in grotesque manners in human beings over the years.
Joel is a hardened smuggler who has lost his daughter and has drifted apart from his brother after the very first outbreak. He now lives as an illicit trader of contraband like drugs and guns. He has to escort a teenage girl Ellie (Bella Ramsey) through risky, ‘infected’ territory of zombie-like people, a military dictatorship that now runs the country as FEDRA, and myriad outlaws as well as opportunists. Eliie has survived the infection and armed rebels fighting the dictatorship want to find out if she can be used to develop a vaccine. The series covers their journey through treacherous territory till Joel can find a safe place for Ellie.
Reminiscent of the dark, doomsday-like atmospherics of Chernobyl, this series presents the descent into chaos with an unpredictable enemy (the fungi) effectively. Twenty years on, the sheer collapse of Boston into a warzone-like space, where people scramble for very limited resources and face a dreadful iron-fisted military dictatorship, makes one wonder about the frailty of civic institutions in crisis.
Pascal plays a stoic, indifferent, and emotionally spent father with his signature flair while Bella Ramsay plays the questioning and intelligent teenager effortlessly. Beside the zombie and doomsday trope, the show, in its first episode, sets up an intimate tone with the larger story of constant danger in the background. As their journey into the unknown begins, if the game is an indication, then The Last of Us will explore human relationships surviving in the face of incredible tragedy. The cinematic production, gripping storytelling, and vivid performances make the series well worth watching!
Rating: 4/5
(This review has been written after viewing episode 1.)
Edited by Teja Lele