As a TV show The Last of Us is entertaining, but so faithful it feels like watching a cutscene compilation on YouTube.
Given the long development cycles of big budget videogames, it's rare for them to resonate with a particular moment in culture the same way that film and television can. The Last of Us 2, which had the bad fortune to release at the height of the global pandemic, depicted a fictional global catastrophe in a way that was hard to square with the one happening in our own lives.
Led by the game's creative director Neil Druckmann and Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin, The Last of Us is probably the most faithful adaptation of a videogame I've ever seen, but the source material hasn't aged that well. If you played the game or plan to when it finally makes its, you'll see just how close the show is to its source material.
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, who play gruff hero Joel and angsty teen sidekick Ellie, largely adhere to the performances in the game, with some condensing and exaggeration to make up for the show's much shorter length. Without the game's brutal shootouts and stealth sequences, Joel's simmering anger and explosive penchant for violence is depicted more overtly through flashbacks to the awful event in the first episode, and it works.
Survival in The Last of Us mean taking what's yours and defending it until your last breath. Other people, infected or not, are the real monsters and, well, you remember The Walking Dead. The show doesn't seem interested in tweaking the game's story—a man traveling across a ravaged country with a girl who could save the world—and emphasizing any parts of it that could resonate with our reality right now.
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