A Short Note on Adaptation & THE LAST OF US (Patreon)

Criticism is an odd thing.

For one, it’s the kind of thing where you have to have something to say. And as you’ve likely noticed by this point, a lot of times this isn’t a problem for me. My brain will get fixated on some idea and suddenly I’m off to the races with thousands of words of complicated explanation, which is sometimes just a way of understanding my own internal response. But the truth is that a lot of times I watch something and don’t have much to say. Which is why I, you know, don’t write about whatever that something is. But sometimes this runs headlong into my plans. For instance, I was really excited to try and attempt to do some recap coverage of THE LAST OF US. After all, it’s the big new HBO show. I love having water cooler events for us. Plus it’s a big video game adaptation and I’ve written a ton about both games before so I was sure there would be much to discuss. But instead I watched it last night and…

I just don’t have all that much to say.

It’s not because it’s not good. It is good. Quite good, in fact. But, as far as one episode goes it is a deeply faithful adaptation that doesn’t really invite a lot of comparison. Yeah, there’s the moments of flourish. There’s the direct comparison to our Covid-ridden world and I really like when he asks for the precious plastic bag back. But because the original source material is so good in a deeply similar way (especially in the cinematic sequences) that means it doesn’t invite a lot of criticism either. But I want to say that I don’t like the way we often reduce the concept of adaptation down to such faithfulness itself. For instance, I saw a tiktok that kind of broke me because it pointed out that the daughter was wearing the same exact shirt she did in the game and the person was like “so you know it’s going to be good!” and I’m like… that doesn’t mean a one to one correspondence at all. But for some people it’s the exact kind of surface-level signifier that plagues many conversations about adaptation on the whole. Because so often people want a movie to be a literal recreation of a book's finite details.

But THE LAST OF US is not a book. And in many ways, I would argue it’s not purely “a video game” in that Mario-like way either, where everything is bent on interaction. No, what made its entry remarkable a whole decade ago (kill me) was that it marked a huge step forward for the quality of cinematic storytelling of games. But please understand the context. Because for years there had been this big argument brewing that games shouldn’t try to be like movies because “they’re different mediums” and blah blah blah. And yes, they are. But the prickly truth is that the vast majority of video games that tried to be cinematic were merely aping the texture and didn’t seem to understand bupkis about actual narrative. It was honestly a case of “we’re bad at this and not even TRYING to learn, so it must be impossible!” Meaning the obstacle was the age-old reality that telling a good cinematic story is really, really hard. But luckily, THE LAST OF US’s main storyteller, Neil Druckmann, came in and told a complex, thematically-driven, adult story with great acting and there happened to be a fun video game that integrated right with it. This was what made it the landmark entry it was. I adored it and could not shut up about it.

And yet, there’s already a decade-late conversation from big media outlets being like “can a video game be adapted!?” and I’m like, in a way, the game already proves it can be. It’s all right there. This is not to minimize the work of anyone in this production. Craig Mazin’s CHERNOBYL is a stunning piece of work. And here Mazin, Druckmann himself, Pascal, Ramsay, et. all are creating something organic and fully-realized. But it’s also creating something that exists very closely to the form it comes from. Which, emotionally-speaking, makes this matter of adaptation feel more along the lines of when Matt Reeves faithfully adapted LET ME IN from LET THE RIGHT ONE. Meaning this is deeply faithful work of relative-recreation and there’s nothing absolutely wrong with that, just as I know that’s what so many people want… but again, I don’t know how much I have to say about the comparison, unless it really also tries engaging things from the game side more completely (i.e. someone on twitter made a great joke about how it won’t be a true adaptation until we see Joel crab-walking to pick up duct tape and half a pair of scissors, I’d link but that hellsite’s search is broken). But I recognize that faithfulness may change with episodes that are coming, though it may stay on this faithful path, too.

I’ll finally admit that part of my lack of insight here also has to do with a existentail tiring with the philosophy of its approach. Just prior to watching the first episode, I finished the third season of FOOD WARS, which by all surface-level accounts gets reduced to a dumb horny show (which it is), but whose writing and character work is some of the best I’ve come across in years. Seriously. The way it sets up complex catharsis is masterful. For it is a constant threading of needles that are so so so so difficult, creating a narrative highwire act that eventually provides the viewer an emotional high like few others. And its sense of pace and pursuit has it turning out banger after banger within a 22 minute arc. Going straight from that right into THE LAST OF US is like going from a cranked-up hot tub to a cold pool. Again, there’s nothing wrong with either. But where one shows what it’s like when a show is actively firing on all cylinders and pushing the capacity of its medium (which, perhaps ironically, the video game did the same), the show of THE LAST OF US fits write in step with the texture-centered, drawn out, largely allusive, and yet weirdly plot-heavy episodes of 80 minute episodes of prestige TV that have come to feel a bit too commonplace this day and age. And, perhaps ironically, it harkens back to the kinds of prestige TV shows that inspired the game in the first place.

It’s a weird feeling because we live in a world that enjoys FOOD WARS but dismisses it as fluff, while it puts things like THE LAST OF US on a pedestal. I know, I know. For many, it’s not about what things really are. It’s about what things FEEL like they are. And it all feels odd because I feel like I spent a decade writing about the game(s) and now the big TV show is here and it just feels like the logical extension of every bit of insight I already gave beforehand. Especially because THE LAST OF US’s original victory was its ability to imbue the genuine lessons of cinematic storytelling into a medium that often aped them without a deeper understanding. And now, it’s simply reflecting those same values back into the medium that rightfully inspired it. Again, there is no misgiving about this, it just feels like an echo. But to its exact intention…

I will still be watching.

<3HULK