In serial adaptation Last of usOn HBO, the first sign of an infection that will bring the world to an end is a slight tremor in the boy’s wrist. A brief, single, and almost irrelevant look at what will happen soon after. For Sarah (Nico Parker), this is a small incident that will later take the form of a monstrous reality that cannot be imagined right away.
In fact, what is most surprising about the script by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann is its patience. Nothing seems hasty in explaining the apocalypse what’s next. Neither artificial nor forced. Last of us describes the scenario in detail. But without exaggeration and dramatization. The first ten minutes of the series tell about the usual day of an ordinary teenager.
However, one who is destined to face the fall of the world as she knows it. Be part of the violent circumstances that unfold off-screen as Sarah witnesses her tiny footprint.
The story is captivating with the many details it uses to announce what is about to happen. The production is aware that its premise is familiar to most viewers. That it is part of a collective experience of great importance, which in turn keeps the interest in adapting it for television. For this reason, Last of us he takes special care to ensure that what is told is both innovative and recognizable. Sarah moves from one end of Austin, Texas to the other on September 26, 2003. This is the last day of the world as she knew it before. Also his life.
A faithful adaptation of the original material, but with its own content.
Last of us craft your scary scenario carefully. There is a close, all-out and potentially devastating threat that is happening quickly. The one announced in a curious prologue that takes history back to 1968 and wonders aloud what could destroy human life as we know it.
This is an addition of information that makes it clear, unlike other similar stories, that what will happen in the story is not an accident. It is the result of a phenomenon that began in the dark, almost in front of an unsuspecting world. A kind of danger that forty years ago seemed unthinkable, but which had enough time to develop until it became unstoppable.
The writers gave the series a meaningful context that somewhat mimics the game’s claustrophobic atmosphere. In particular, how to imagine a slowly but surely developing biological threat. AT Last of us, the idea of the apocalypse arises not from a loss of control, but from an inevitable series of unseen events. Just like in the game, the mushroom cordyceps (who even appears in the opening credits) is the trigger for the apocalypse.
When an argument is encountered To Sarah, sitting in the classroom of one of her classes, the threat seems insignificant. Convulsive, rapid movement in the boy’s hand a few rows away. He is already infected, although neither she nor he knows about it. As well as several people Sarah will run into during a tense and well-spent first hour. Last of us. By the time the horror finally shows its true form, the story makes it clear that it’s too late to run.
Last of ushistory of the fall of the world
In the story, the tragedy does not come immediately. Not noisy, not a series of catastrophic events. During the first episodes, it is only clear that something is happening in the background of the lives of the characters. Through Sarah, and after her father Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his uncle Tommy (Gabriel Luna), Last of us talks about the scattered fragments of the catastrophe. The mysterious circumstance that surrounds them does not show its true extent until it suddenly explodes with the blow of an unthinkable catastrophe.
But in the second part – the first chapter lasts an hour and twenty minutes – the wreckage of the world is everywhere. The stuffy atmosphere of Austin’s seedy streets, looking decadent and barren, is morbid.
The camera focuses on the tragedy from within, between the fears of the members of the same family. The streets have become inexplicable battlefields. Gradually, a threat arises. In all its power and ability to destroy reality and leave a disturbing darkness behind.
Last of us take care to show the appearance of the classics clickers (or creatures infected with mycosis) from its initial signs. The third phase of the transformation is not shown in the first chapter. It is in the room that the faces of the creatures are visible. A smart solution that allows the series build your own mythology carefully and with pedantic precision.
Just like in the title created playful puppy, the monsters spawned as a result of infection eat meat. They also bear no resemblance to a human being in his final stage of transformation. Last of us he even managed to create the feel of his classic flick in the plot as a key element. An idea that gives beings a second dimension, much more complex and torturous than just a threat.
Monsters hide in the dark
The first two chapters of Last of us they have a sober and almost simple way of showing complex concepts. Not only do they retell the famous video game plot, but they also add the necessary context for its TV version.
The result is a magnificent staging of an impending cataclysm, its sharp development and desolation, which spreads like a shock wave. If there’s one thing that strikes me during the series, it’s its power to show how fear of the inexplicable can turn into pain. In a type of human suffering that is nevertheless linked to the inexplicable that produces it.
But above all Last of us It’s about human tragedy.. The production manages to establish that its script is based on the pain of loss. At the same time, it’s weathered in the rigor of fear and the codes of the horror genre, this time modulated to tell an emotional story. Little by little, and as Joel tries to escape the chaos on the streets of Austin, the horror thickens until it ends in an irreparable event.
Sarah’s death (a turning point in both the game and the series) is shown as all the brute force of misfortune in the midst of chaos. One of many that takes place in the middle of the night, with screams of horror as humanity falls to pieces. By the time Joel is holding his daughter’s body and screaming in pain, the message is clear. The world disappears, monsters dominate and roam the night. Human fear is everything.
Last of usgift for fans
It’s amazing how the story unfolds at a leisurely pace that would be tiresome in the wrong hands. But in Last of usjust like the video game it comes from, the solidity of the story depends on its characters. Through them, and especially through Joel, the power of their hidden message is understood. From its powerful background, pulsating among the insinuations of devastation and hopelessness.
When Last of us Fast forward twenty years, the action shifts to Boston, a ghost town watched over by fast-moving military teams. As in the game, Joel is now a faceless citizen, an anonymous survivor with no other reason than survival instincts. Indeed, Pascal endows the character with a gloomy and humiliated rudeness, an existential longing so close that it is impossible to understand.
By the time I meet Ellie (Bella Ramsey), Joel must go through his own horrors to begin reuniting with the man he once was. Ramsey endows the girl, who has become the hope of a devastated world, with amazing charisma and total humanity.
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Together, the actors have brilliant chemistry, and as the journey begins – and the series ups the ante – it’s clear why the plot hits. The power to make it plausible is that in the midst of all the pain reported so far, there is a pure existential sense of survival. Find the answer to living in the midst of darkness, death, and menace. Possibly the highest point Last of us in its first chapters.
Source: Hiper Textual
