The Last of Us (HBO)

[KnightDamien]

Anyone catch the first episode?

I can't believe how much stuff they crammed in. Don't mean it in a negative way, though. A few spots did cause it to feel a little rushed, but overall I was blown away by how good it was.

My only complaint is that I DO think we lose something early on by not having Joel do some human-murdering due to the missing battery. I mean, that's a WHOLE thing in the game where you kill like a dozen people. Sets off on that tone that Joel is NOT a good person, where the show is trying to get that across mostly with less obvious stuff like being okay with burning the dead body of a kid and just generally being grumpy and threatening.

[AdrienVeidt]

Not knowing much about the game, that was a fantastic premiere episode to what I hope is a fantastic series.

[Magnuz]

It was really good and as an episodic series I think it can be great. I only played some of the game but the way the show recreated so much of it scene for scene was pretty amazing.

My biggest complaint maybe that the way they did the grey hair/beard on Joel looks cheap sometimes and stands out. Maybe also cause I'm used to seeing pedro without it.

Can't wait to see the clickers and real crazy stuff.

[Aleks]

The first episode was great. I'm even a little surprised. It will be interesting to see how the story develops further and what changes in the plot they will make.

It's the ending that worries me the most.

Spoiler! :

Spoiler! :

The Fireflies were a violent, terroristic group. Even Ellie talks about how she got in a fight because someone called them terrorists (in the beginning of TLOU we see them detonate explosives in a civilian QZ). The only FOB they manage to secure is the Hospital, while actively stealing, hoarding, and trading stolen supplies from other quarantine zones despite being the "Liberators". Their response to immune people is not to monitor them for months and carefully work on replicating their immunity, but to cut their brains out. Fireflies decide to risk their only chance at a vaccine by removing the specimen from Ellie while killing her in the process. No more tests, no more alternative procedure. Whatever they decided to do for achieving a vaccine, they decided it in less than 24 hours...

No one asked Ellie if that was what she wanted to do. They left her unconscious. Why? Because they knew it wasn't a 100% and were shooting in the dark. Also. The Fireflies didn't want Joel to convince Ellie to say no and so they sedate her immediately and wanted to kill Joel before Marlene convinces them to let him leave. Instead of letting Joel say his farewells to Ellie (someone who he spent a journey with, someone who saved his life) so he can come to terms with her decision. They antagonise him, threaten him with death and expect him to just walk off, while letting Ellie die, without her consent of being the sacrifice. My interpretation always was that Fireflies represented the desperate but ultimately futile desire to resurrect the old world. And in their search for vaccine, they had to resort to increasingly more brutal acts, losing their humanity in the process.

So no, I absolutely don't want to see ending where screenwriters presented Joel as the main villain, blaming him for everything, “Joel doomed the rest of humanity” thing. [email protected]#$ no. It was a selfish decision, but a very human one.

[KnightDamien]

Spoilers for the games and therefore probable spoilers for the entire show:

Spoiler! :

(in the beginning of TLOU we see them detonate explosives in a civilian QZ).

It's 100% nitpicking, but there's basically no such thing as a civilian QZ. QZs, by their very nature, are fascist/semi-fascist authoritarian states constantly patrolled by the military. Basically any attack on the government is an attack on the civilians as well. Not -defending- it, mind you. Just saying that it's mildly unfair to classify the QZs as civilian zones when they're constantly patrolled by large numbers of military personnel that are completely interwoven into civilian life.

The Fireflies are definitely terrorists, though. From a certain point of view. So are the WLF. And the Seraphites.

Their response to immune people is not to monitor them for months and carefully work on replicating their immunity, but to cut their brains out. Fireflies decide to risk their only chance at a vaccine by removing the specimen from Ellie while killing her in the process. No more tests, no more alternative procedure. Whatever they decided to do for achieving a vaccine, they decided it in less than 24 hours...

You say 'them' but it's just Ellie. That's clear in the audio log from the doctor saying they've experimented on people before but 'nothing like this' (or something to that effect). Ellie's immunity, if we can call it that, is unique. But I think this is also a reductive argument about what they were trying to do. Not defending the idea of killing a kid, but defending the concept from the writing perspective:

This is a fungus, not a disease. There's only so much you can do with it. They pretty much definitely took plenty of Ellie's blood and scanned her brain. They have pretty much everything they are ever going to get from a living Ellie. What they needed, and this seemed fairly clear in the game but they could probably clarify further in the show, is to study -the fungus itself- that is wrapped around her brain. Which means taking it out.
And it's important to keep in mind that they're doing this in a post-apocalyptic world, in a random hospital (not one specifically designed for this), with whatever equipment they can scrounge up and make work, with whatever tools and supplies they can find. And they also made it very clear in the game that Abby's dad was the ONLY person that could even do this, suggesting that they basically have one -real- doctor/surgeon and therefore not necessarily an abundance of expertise and certainly not the -teams- of doctors you'd find in real life tackling complicated medical procedures/questions.

I'm willing to concede that the 'ticking clock' of needing to do it right this second is largely a dramatic contrivance for video game purposes. But I don't think any of the logic of why they'd be doing it is flawed - from a writing perspective. Also, one could argue that even the 'we must do it now' has a lot of logical foundation. You don't want Joel to have time to change his mind even if he does agree to go along. You don't want Ellie having lots of time to decide she doesn't want to do it. And you don't even want to risk Ellie being around for a long time and having -other people- get attached and decide against this. Because in -their- estimation, the emotional response of 'let's not kill this kid' is anathema to the goal of saving all of humanity. It's just the trolley dilemma writ large, after all.

They antagonise him, threaten him with death and expect him to just walk off,

It's easy to look at the interactions and say 'why are they making him WANT to kill them?' Meaning, it's easy to forget that Joel has spent a good chunk of the game summarily executing all of their friends and family. I doubt there's a single person in that building that wouldn't have been/wasn't absolutely furious that he was even going to be given the chance to go home unharmed. They very likely did want him to try something so they'd have the excuse to kill him. Just didn't go in their favor.

My interpretation always was that Fireflies represented the desperate but ultimately futile desire to resurrect the old world. And in their search for vaccine, they had to resort to increasingly more brutal acts, losing their humanity in the process.

As above, I think they just represent the one side of the trolley dilemma. Go one direction - kill a bunch of people, go the other to kill just one.
Joel and the Fireflies just represent the two sides of the argument, with the ultimate resolution being that no one is actually right. There is no 'good' answer. Even the idea of letting Ellie decide is patently ridiculous; You'd basically be saying 'you can choose not to die, but if you choose that you're selfish and morally bankrupt and are effectively murdering millions of people or even potentially dooming the entire species.' In fact, we see Ellie grapple with exactly that type of guilt in the second game. She very clearly feels responsible for people still being killed by the infection (or because of it) simply because Joel saved her.
Giving her the 'choice' wouldn't have been a choice at all. Which is likely what anyone in-universe would have concluded. It's also very clearly why Joel only told her the truth when she found out on her own and cornered him. He would never have willingly put that guilt on her.

So no, I absolutely don't want to see ending where screenwriters presented Joel as the main villain, blaming him for everything, “Joel doomed the rest of humanity” thing. [email protected]#$ no. It was a selfish decision, but a very human one.

Don't even know where you're getting this concern or the idea that this would ever be the way the show would present things. It's obviously very early to tell for sure, but it seems like they're sticking very true to the actual plot and themes of the games, so it wouldn't really make sense to go out to lunch for the finale' and have Joel be Darth Vader or something. Not sure where you came up with that.

[Aleks]

Spoilers for the games and therefore probable spoilers for the entire show:

Spoiler! :

So no, I absolutely don't want to see ending where screenwriters presented Joel as the main villain, blaming him for everything, “Joel doomed the rest of humanity” thing. [email protected]#$ no. It was a selfish decision, but a very human one.

Don't even know where you're getting this concern or the idea that this would ever be the way the show would present things. It's obviously very early to tell for sure, but it seems like they're sticking very true to the actual plot and themes of the games, so it wouldn't really make sense to go out to lunch for the finale' and have Joel be Darth Vader or something. Not sure where you came up with that.

Spoiler! :

It was in one of the interviews, on some website, where one of the writers said that fans of the original game might not like the show ending.
And that there will be changes throughout the show, especially with Joel. No idea what he meant by that. Maybe they're just trying to interest people in watching. People who have already played the games and know the original ending. Maybe something else. We'll see. I don't think any changes are needed there, especially in the ending.

[KnightDamien]

Spoiler! :

It was in one of the interviews, on some website, where one of the writers said that fans of the original game might not like the show ending.
And that there will be changes throughout the show, especially with Joel. No idea what he meant by that. Maybe they're just trying to interest people in watching. People who have already played the games and know the original ending. Maybe something else. We'll see. I don't think any changes are needed there, especially in the ending.

Ew. I hope that's not something that actually comes to pass. I thought the ending was right up there with the best video game endings ever. They've already made changes to Joel (him not murdering like 10 people in search of his battery, for example). So maybe what they mean is that they're trying to make Joel a little more sympathetic? Frankly, game-Joel is a [email protected]#$ sociopath, like most video game protagonists, I suppose. The needs of 'action game' take the wheel and your character invariably murders just.. way more than is probably necessary just to give the player something to do.
I could easily see them toning this down, maybe to add more drama to the question of whether or not Joel is a bad person for the choices he's made. I could see that and be okay with it, but I don't think that would require any change to the end of the game so... definitely a little concerning but I guess we'll see.

[KvHulk]

I've read that the entirety of season 1 doesn't even encompass half of the original games main story so I don't know if they have an 'ending' set in stone but it wouldn't be this season anyway so I'm sure their is room for change.

[KnightDamien]

I've read that the entirety of season 1 doesn't even encompass half of the original games main story so I don't know if they have an 'ending' set in stone but it wouldn't be this season anyway so I'm sure their is room for change.

I don't know how reliable that is. Druckmann himself said the first season of the show will cover the entirety of the first game and the DLC. He even went on to say that if they get to a season 2, it will be the beginning of dealing with the second game.

The first season is nine one-hour episodes. The entire story of TLoU in the game is told in approximately 90 minutes of cutscenes. Even if you TRIPLE that to get in all the in-gameplay conversations and events, while cutting the bloat from it being a video game, that's still half the run-time of the first season. They have so much extra time to work with, there's really no way they'd need more than one season to tell the story.

[KnightDamien]

This show just continues to be absolutely fantastic.

Next episode drops on Friday instead of Sunday, likely due to some kind of sporting bowl of some sort.

[Capman]

Best episode of the season for me!

[KnightDamien]

I'm of the opposite mind; this was the only episode so far that I genuinely disliked. All of the way-too-convenient timing bullshit for the entire final act was so painfully stereotypical Hollywood action movie kind of fare, and basically the entire episode shit all over what I'd consider main elements of the lore and the personalities of the two main characters. It was just.. bad. It was a bad episode. And actually pretty boring for the entire first half -- followed by stupid for the big action bit.

Just hated it.


But I still love the show. To me this was just a minor misstep and I'm sure the next episode will be great.

[TheSameIdiot]

I don't think the show is doing anything new, but who is these days? That doesn't bother me.

*shrug* I liked the episode.

[KnightDamien]

I don't think the show is doing anything new, but who is these days? That doesn't bother me.

*shrug* I liked the episode.

Was this directed at my comment? Because I didn't mean to imply the problem was a lack of newness.

[TheSameIdiot]

I don't think the show is doing anything new, but who is these days? That doesn't bother me.

*shrug* I liked the episode.

Was this directed at my comment? Because I didn't mean to imply the problem was a lack of newness.

I've read a number of articles to that effect, so I probably subconsciously lumped your critique in with them. The "stereotypical Hollywood action movie kind of fare" read the same way to me.