Spoilers ahead for the series premiere The Last of Us.
The long-awaited HBO adaptation of the popular video game series The Last of Us has finally released its first episode, with Pedro Pascal alongside Bella Ramsey. While fans of the game made their way through a violent landscape, the 90 Minutes series premiere was relatively light on the violence. Game co-creator and writer/director Neil Druckmann explained why the decision to tone down the bloodshed in the HBO adaptation was an easy one to make.
The co-creator had previously planned for the series to feature only the most violence. Talk with The variety in the first episode, Neil Druckmann talked about the difference between watching a show and playing a game, saying:
There are different types of emotions that you can extract from the player through an interactive space: where the camera moves, how it approaches the obstacle in front of it. When you play these sequences, that immersion really connects you with the player you’re controlling. Everything is seen only through his point of view. If we were to shoot these sequences as they are, they would be pretty boring action sequences. So one of the simplest decisions we made was to say, “We’re going to take all of this out.” Let’s put all the necessary violence into this story and no more. This allows the violence to have an even greater impact when you see it on screen than in the game.
While there was a lot of violence in the first episode (Joel even beat someone to death after sneaking out of the quarantine zone), none of it felt gratuitous. Instead, it was completely in service of story and character development before and after the world as they knew it was going to end. The first bloodshed acted as a world-builder to show how it all went wrong, as well as what happened to Sarah. Actress Nico Parker even spoke up get to show more sarah and her bond with her father before his death.
None of this is to say that Joel and Ellie’s journey will be easy, even if viewers won’t be treated with as much violence as in the video game. It’s promising that Neil Druckmann is so optimistic about cutting unnecessary action sequences; Who better to trust an adaptation than one of the people who helped create the world in the first place? Based on the reactions so far, the premiere has been a hit with gamers already knowing at least some of what was in store. as well as newcomers you might be expecting another zombie TV show.
Those affected by the Cordyceps fungus in the series are certainly not just zombie like creatures that have been aggravating the end of the world for over a decade. The walking dead, which ended earlier this year. (However, several spinoffs are in the works, including one centered around Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan and Lauren Cohan’s Maggie .) A preface at the beginning of The Last of Us provided the expose as to why a fungus might be the threat humanity can’t defeat, and the rest of the episode demonstrated why those affected might be even scarier than zombies in the long run.
Of course, “The Long Run” currently consists of just the rest of Season 1, which received a nine-episode order from HBO. Although the creators have already explained ways the show will challenge game of Thrones comparisons with the story, I hope the network follows the prior to dragon house and announces a renewal right after the premiere!
For now, you can expect the following The Last of Us with new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO or streamed with a Maximum HBO subscription . For more viewing options now and in the coming weeks, be sure to check out our 2023 TV premiere schedule .
Source: Cinemablend
