The Last of Us (new HBO series)

On a completely unrelated note, I'm getting really tired of 1980s songs being repurposed for movies and movie trailers (see above, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Stranger Things, etc., etc., etc.)

I get that the studios are trying to market to my demographic, but just fucking stop it.

Spacehog’s In the Meantime is from 1995. The best decade for music.

Not disinterested.

But I found out today that Jonathan Nolan's production company is behind the Fallout adaptation and I am therefore all in.

The Peripheral
Westworld
Dark Knight movies
The Prestige
Momento
Person of Interest

Not saying he can't miss but very damn few have a resume like that.

I am a huge fan of the video game and to be honest, I don't know. I will be there to watch it with what I hope is an open mind, but man... that game was so cinematic and complete narratively, it seems that the best this TV show can do is... be redundant. Right? I don't know. it seems like some stories make better TV show, some are better suited for novels and yes, some narratives are better when the audience is an active participant in a game. There will have to be some changes to make this a good TV show and that concerns me.

If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and play The Last Of Us video game. I don't know if you should play it before or after this airs.

It may be my all-time favorite game. It's that fucking good. I have about zero hope that live-action will come close to doing it justice.

Well... The first ep is out and I watched it from start to finish last night. All in all, I'd say this ep went about as good as it could go. I think there was a part in the latter half that went on a little too long, but it was necessary to establish motivations later on. It took me exactly 2 minutes to accept Pedro Pascal as Joel and maybe 3 minutes to accept Bella Ramsey as Ellie. They did a great job! All in all, I'd say the little girl who played Sarah, Joel's daughter stole the show for me!

I do have 1 small, spoiler-ish nit-pick though...

I thought it was really good. Made me excited to see what’s next that’s for sure

My partner purchased copies of TLOU 1 and 2 last year. "Oh, that", I said. All I knew was the series had a good rep and had something to do with zombies and post-apocalypse - not my usual cup of tea.

Whatever preconceptions I had were quickly brushed aside as TLOU grabbed me by the balls to deliver the most engaging gaming experience I'd ever had. After TLOU 2, I didn't touch another game for over a month - I was wrecked.

So yeah, TLOU the TV series had a LOT to live up to. After episode 1, I can breathe a sigh of relief. These mad buggers did it.

I envy you experiencing the story blind. It's going to be quite a ride, I think.

I've never played this game, but I thought the first episode was amazing. I look forward to the next episode.

This is what I'm interested in... How someone who is not familiar with the game sees this show. FF, if you could avoid playing the game til the first season is over and share your opinion as we go, I'd appreciate it.

I’ve not played the game either and tho the show is very well executed, its overall feel is recycled Walking Dead. How many post-apocalypse “people are shit” shows do we need?

Well, it at least allows some of us to fantasize that people would only be that shit POST-apocalypse.

Considering that in a post apocalypse environment people will very likely be total shit to one another it seems that this is an accurate imagining of how things would go

So the answer to your question is quite a few

Never played the game, only have the broad sense of "this is a post-apocalypse" scenario as background and the intuitive sense that Ellie is the key somehow to preventing the fungal infection from spreading and therefore supervaluable.

I'm all in based on the pilot. "Enjoy" is the wrong word. I found it gripping and scary in a way that TWD rarely was (and I liked the first half-dozen or so seasons of that show a great deal). The sporify corpse was pretty creepy.

I suspect (and no, don't spoil me), Joel and Ellie are long-haul characters and Anna Torv (who I didn't recognize despite having enjoyed Fringe) will get Ned Starked in about a couple episodes.

FTFY.

I think once the story gets going, you'll see The Walking Dead similarities as superficial.

Are there Zombies / infected? Yes. Is this a Zombie story? Not really, no. TLOU is a very character-driven story.

It reminds me of I Am Legend.

I refused to play the second game, and now I'm wondering if the show will include that part of the story.

Exactly like The Walking Dead. The zombies are only really there as a plot device for TEOTWAWKI, they're not the prime mover of the storyline.

Really? So TLOU was your favorite game of all time and you skipped the sequel? That’s an interesting choice.
Just a guess, but I’m sure they will if they get a season 2. I’ve already seen somethings from TLOU2 foreshadowed in this show & promos. I’m not even sure if they’ll get through the first game in Season 1.

I started the game but didn't finish it (complex reasons - too many things drawing my attention at the same time, I have like 4-5 games incomplete and never find time to dive into them and am kinda paralyzed by indecision much as I am about streaming TV shows I haven't yet seen)

I found the pickup sequence very familiar, not just to the game itself but to a lot of similar games in the high intensity talking over each other panicked speech and having to react to the surroundings - it felt like the most game-like sequence I'd seen in any adaptation.

But for me, cut scenes are, basically, TV. A game with a lot of key cut scenes is a TV show cut together with game play sequences. So it SHOULD be easy for a talented crew to take those scenes and flesh them out into a compelling narrative (notwithstanding how often someone tries to do an adaptation that does this poorly). So...

I enjoyed it, it seemed well done and I could sense the points where a game would have slipped from cut scene into game play and back but they didn't hurt the narrative at all. But I didn't come away thinking it was amazing in it's own right since I circle back to the proposition that if you are adapting an amazing source you SHOULD make an amazing series. And that kind of ...I dunno, almost creates an unreasonable burden of expectation.

One the other hand, it makes it really easy to faceplant and - they didn't.

It's quite true that zombies or no, "Apocalypse --> the worst people gain enough power to fuck everyone over" is a VERY well worn trope (I think that's partly why Station 11 got so much praise even though I couldn't force myself to get invested in it) and for me, that gives any show of this sort a built in hurdle to overcome in order to do something fresh enough to fascinate me.

This one might - or not - too early to say.

I haven't watched The Last of Us yet as I'll probably wait until I can binge it. One of my favourite video games.

Couldn't agree more with you about TWD. There were hints of dread in the first few seasons but I don't think the show ever truly reached the full potential of just how fucking scary a zombie apocalypse would be.

Oh, right. Full disclosure: I've never watched a full episode of The Walking Dead - bit cock sure of me to say what I did then!

That said I assure you TLOU will be vastly superior to The Walking Dead.

First off, can anyone inform me on what in the hell is TEOTWAWKI?

And @Lanzman, I just want to tell you that while I'm sure that TLOU drew some inspiration from TWD for sure, what drew me in to the game was the way the characters' motivations and actions seemed more rooted in reality. A lot of people consume media because they want stories that showcase their morality and codes of conduct wrapped up in nice neat little bow. TLOU is not that. This story will challenge you. The consequences of actions will come back on you. Just... check it out.

Also:
The End Of The World As We Know It.

I guess that's fair. But it does go back to what I posted about wanting to see your own ambitions reflected in your stories. Sometimes things just don't go like that. Sometimes the shit you deal in life comes back on you. This isn't Super Mario Brothers.


To be honest, if I ask myself if I "enjoyed" playing TLOU2, I would reluctantly say yes... but I was thoroughly immersed in the stakes and the main character's motivations were MY motivations. You know how you read a book and the main character's inner monologue is written out for you? Well, with TLOU2, I felt like the main character was me and I had my own internal dialogue. It felt like they reached into a 4th dimension of storytelling. I don't know if any other medium can do that quite the way video games can. Neil Druckman, the Creative Director and writer of the games is probably the best kept secret in video games. He's making his TV directorial debut on episode 2 on Sunday and I have no doubt he's going to be great at TV. So much that I hope he continues to make video games well into the future. If you can pick TLOU2 up for around $20-30 or so, I'd say give it a shot.

Fuck Neil Druckman.

That's a pretty low bar.