The Last of Us - HBO *Spoilers* See warning in post #1

johnny_ultimate

Woah, woah, let's not say things we'll regret here...

... the Halo games absolutely do not have a good plot 😂

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120192635#Comment_120192635

Resident Evil is a loose franchise to begin with, between the games and the films there is a lot of creative freedom. The series was just stupidly bad, that's all.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193079#Comment_120193079

I have that every possible chance and really tried to be positive but it's just awful.

Practically anyone other than HBO would have made a balls of this too. Too many of the streaming services think the name and some pretty scenes will sell a show but it's shocking how much they undervalue actors. Imagine if this show instead of Pascal had that smarmy looking dryball who played Elrond.

johnny_ultimate

TBH, there has never been an easier-to-adapt video game than The Last of Us. The developers practically handed an oven-ready 'prestige show' to HBO. All they really needed to do was give the filmmakers the proper resources to recreate the story of the game and they were away to the races.

The Last of Us was already a well-written, directed and acted game, but also an extremely cinematic one. Most of the storytelling took place in cutscenes and heavily scripted dialogue, and a lot of the time the gameplay (while enjoyable) was just action scene filler in between the important character beats. The things that made The Last of Us unique in gaming made it extremely straightforward to adapt. The only things you really lose in the translation are the little bits of environmental storytelling that occur when you have the freedom to explore a virtual space.

No doubt video games have been given uniquely short shrift on the adaptation front in the past, but equally when you take things like Sonic, Mario, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, Street Fighter, Halo, even Resident Evil... the writing in most games is total rubbish or non-existent. Yes, the adaptations often make baffling and terrible choices even allowing for that, but there's no natural, obvious path to a feature film or TV series in the way Last of Us had. Take away the game aspect from Resident Evil, for example, and you're often left with a hokey-as-hell z-movie story full of ludicrous characters and laughably bad writing. Uncharted, for what it's worth, probably should've made for a better film given the source material - but that film ended up being just a bit shite for various reasons. Ditto Silent Hill back in the day - that should've been a more direct adaptation. Even The Witcher came from a series of novels, so again there was an easier job there.

The Last of Us exists in a fairly small category of game stories that are easily replicated in other mediums. Most other games I'd consider to have particularly great storytelling - things like Outer Wilds, Half-Life, Chrono Trigger, Ico / SoTC / The Last Guardian, Kentucky Route Zero, Return of the Obra Dinn, Norco, Citizen Sleeper, The Stanley Parable, Sam Barlow's recent 'FMV' games, various games based around environmental storytelling or 'walking sims' - are all uniquely 'gamey' types of storytelling and would not have such an easy path to TV or film. The Last of Us, for all its strengths, largely tells a story that unfolds passively regardless of the player's actions - there are ven some comical and silly moments if you try to break the 'scripted' outcome of the very few scenes where the player is given control over an important character decision.

It's no surprise God of War is one of the next game adaptation TV shows to have been greenlit, because Sony's recent AAA game house style is a much easier fit than most games.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193266#Comment_120193266

Halo and Resident Evil had more than enough story to be good. The 2 series are just crap on many levels and the movies were bombastic Hollywood crap.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120193305#Comment_120193305

There’s a big difference between something having a lot of story and something having a good story :) A lot of video games fall into the former category - the ‘Kingdom Hearts effect’, if you will.

I think the Resi films are shite and there’s no doubt a better film to be made using the basic ideas and atmosphere of the series. But the story in the Resi games is at best preposterous b-movie silliness and at worst incoherent nonsense.

Cordell

TBH, there has never been an easier-to-adapt video game than The Last of Us

Mass Effect, Bioshock, Deus Ex, Fallout. Plenty of examples where the story or a story line can be just pulled off from the game straight into a film or a series. If only there will be writers willing to do just that instead of bringing their own ideas and hating the original material.

Homelander

I would completely disagree with anyone who says Halo has a non-existent story/rubbish script and certainly it's a little disingenious to put it in the same category as the likes of Street Fighter.

No-one's claiming it's high art, but there's enough of a solid story in there (at least from Halo 1 through 3, not a fan of the later games), and great characters, that it's completely inexcusable to end up with the turgid crap that we're ending up in terms of adaptations.

It's not about lifting scripts off pages. Of course the Last of Us is more adaptation-ready than say, Resident Evil, in that it almost was an interactive movie to a degree in the game format. But that doesn't there isn't a solid core there that any half-decent film-maker could do justice to in the case of the latter.

It's not about sticking to a particular script, it's about taking a good idea and building on it while remaining faithful to the concept, and handing it to a competent film-maker.... rather than tearing it apart and slapping the title of a game on a complete frankenstein of a creation.

Halo and Resident Evil being crap adaptations is everything to do with bad film-makers, and nothing whatsoever to do with the games. Neil Blomkampf was earmarked to make a Halo movie; it fell through and instead he turned it into District 9. But he also made a really good Halo short called Halo Landfall. Which is incomparably more exciting than anything we saw in the supposedly $200m Halo TV show. And I struggle to imagine anyone who's played the Halo games would think the direction they went with the TV was better.

Even the Halo live action game trailers from years ago are infinitely better quality than the TV show.

While I don't think there's a HBO quality show to be made out of every game, and I don't believe adaptations have to be completely accurate to the source material in order to be good, I don't understand why they bother with adaptations that bear almost zero resemblence to what they purport to be.

In terms of Resident Evil, a studio like Blumhouse could easily make a rock solid, survival-horror movie based on the first game for relative peanuts. I would agree that after Resident Evil 3, you're entering into almost unfilmable territory as the inherent plots themselves go off the rails completely.

One of my preferred adaptations is Silent Hill. It got somewhat **** upon by critics but I thought it captured the atmosphere quite well. We will not speak of Silent Hill 2.

Tony EH

Yeah, I've always liked 'Silent Hill'. Never played the games though, and I think it definitely loses its way somewhat in the latter half of the movie. But for the bulk of the running time, it's a decent watch. Probably better if you haven't played the game?

Mav11

Watched episode 3 last night. I wasn't expecting that, top class. It struck me as being more akin to the Walking Dead than the Last of Us.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120194679#Comment_120194679

Netflix are doing a Bioshock film which I think is a really difficult story to just lift to the screen. Rapture is an amazing setting and there’s definitely a good story there but there’s a lot of video game concepts that will have to go straight in the bin.

Like, even if they keep the idea of genetically modified little girls that grow and collect Adam that need to be protected by Big Daddies, I fully expect the nature of what Adam can do to be changed - I don’t expect the main character to be going around throwing fireballs or lighting from their hands.

Fallout(being done by Amazon) I think you can get away with an entirely new story in a new vault, just need to nail the tone and the look.

The last of us has neither of those problems as it’s a great story with no outlandish plot points to serve a gameplay mechanic.

Fallout movie has been done.

Book of Eli; at least until they went all religiosity on it

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120195075#Comment_120195075

I'll start to feel a lot more confident about Fallout of Nolan can pull together the kinda cast he got for Westworld.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120195172#Comment_120195172

Fallout should be easier, though. There’s several completely separate games so as long as they can stay true to the general concepts of Fallout, they don’t need have any characters or places from the games.

Bioshock has a specific story and setting, but there’ll need to be a lot of deviation to make it work on screen.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120195195#Comment_120195195

It can still be a crap show though even if they get the concept right. Bring in some Arrowverse writer and a cast of blank generic American nobodies.

That's where HBO do so well. I would have never expected to see Nick Offerman in that role last week and people were a bit unsure about the main casting too. But like Chernobyl and House of the Dragon they got it spot on.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120194679#Comment_120194679

All cases in point for why Last of Us is unique :) The method of storytelling in all those games is so 'gamey' that significant changes would need to be made to get them onto TV or the big screen. Mass Effect is all about player choice - the story would be nowhere near as interesting without it (albeit with interesting characters that could be used in a hypothetical TV version). Bioshock actively critiques the fact that its story is based on you being a largely mute, anonymous protagonist with no real input into the events of the story - you'd need a very different story for that to work in another medium. Fallout is an exploration-heavy game with again a largely anonymous protagonist (Fallout 4 excepted) and a plethora of random, disconnected subplots. I actually think the basic premise of Fallout will make for an interesting show if done right, but you can't adapt the game directly as you could with TLOU. In TLOU, HBO was effectively handed a fully rendered, ultra-fidelity storyboard for how key scenes played out - hence why many scenes so far have played out beat-for-beat or even shot-for-shot like the game.

To be clear: I think given the right creative team you could end up with good TV shows or films based on all of the above, as the settings alone could be adapted well. It'd just be nowhere near as straightforward as is the case with TLOU.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120194688#Comment_120194688

No question at all that bad filmmaking writing has further dragged down countless video game adaptations. Very few of them have had anyone interesting or ambitious enough to properly adapt the material. But in a lot of cases the fundamentals of the material being adapted is a massive limitation to overcome.

I haven't seen the Halo TV show, but have heard only bad things. I'm sure there's absolutely something better that can be done with the material than what has been put out so far. But Master Chief is sort of a nothing main character in the game - iconic design, no doubt about that, but with little personality to speak of. The supporting characters aren't exactly deeply realised in the game, Cortana maybe excepted (although where they went with that character later on is totally off the rails). The lore is convoluted and silly, and many of the enemies you encounter are fundamentally ill-suited to being adapted to 'live action' as they're all weird little polygonal goblins or giant beast men. I think the early Halo single-player games are great (Halo 2 excepted) but story is far down the list of why I find them compelling. A short film is one thing, but adapting those games into an ongoing, multi-season story is something better writers would struggle with. In some ways, Street Fighter comes with better-defined characters, relationships and backstories than Halo does - even if everything surrounding said characters is basically non-existent :P

I do agree though: Silent Hill at least gets the atmosphere and tone of the game down right (even if it's dragged down by some muddy, over-convoluted writing). It definitely gets some credit on that front, even if it's far from a great film.

TheIrishGrover

Haven't had a chance to watch this episode yet (This evening will get to it). So I'm not gonna comment on it.

However I don't mind standalone episodes in shows if done right (Which it seems this did). I'm reminded of season 1 of Mythic Quest. Episode 5 (Of 11). Mythic Quest is a reasonably funny show with some great talent involved. Pretty enjoyable. But then, mid way through, they have this story about this couple meeting (The always engaging Jake Johnson and Cristin Milioti) and forming a game studio (I won't give anything else away). It is simply FANTASTIC. And it has only the most tangential connection to the rest of the series. And I mean REALLY tangential. They did this again the following season but this "standalone" episode was tied a lot closer to the main series. But still pretty much self-contained.

I know the gist of this episode. It fleshes out Bill and his partner. In the game it was definitely alluded to that he was gay (In one of the funner scenes in the game). Once Nick Offerman was announced as Bill I assumed they would expand his character as he is such a recognisable and popular actor (Especially in the US). There could also be another mainly-standalone episode coming up.

So, if it expands the story in a sensible way, I'm all for it

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120195398#Comment_120195398

The character of Mando showed exactly how Halo should have been done. Plenty of examples of faceless one dimensional leads.

Your right about TLoU being easier to do. The other shows have deep lore but not a cinematic plot.

Penn

Lately when I think of game-to-tv/film adaptations, I just can't help but think of the original design for Sonic in his movie. The idea that all the designers and producers and everyone must have thought "We need to make this anthropomorphic blue speed-hedgehog at least look somewhat realistic..."

TheIrishGrover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120195475#Comment_120195475

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGjs1DOF2Hs

Ugly Sonic

Bacchus

I don't get any of the negative feedback on the "deviation" from the main plot for episode 3. First of all, it was a fantastic episode to watch, and second, its still deeply connected to the main plot. It manages to tell a beautiful story in this world while setting up so much... the army response to the outbreak, introducing the first glimpse of the human (raider) danger element, hammering home how many of life's luxuries are non-existant inside the QZ, how Tess and Joel set up their smuggling gig, the radio signals, why Joel was bring Ellie there. Sure, they could have just had Joel and Ellie rock up to the door and probably have some sort of tense action as the infected or raiders attack the town but it's clear the writers/showrunners wanted to do something more than the obvious. We'd have cared little for Bill (or Frank) and would have had to spend time on exposition on their background and their relationship with Joel. Telling it the way they did in episode 3 was a stroke of genius IMO. Also, they did sandwich it between the Joel and Ellie story so it's not like they were just ignored.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120195475#Comment_120195475

There's a very good reason that many of the better video game adaptations have been animated rather than live-action efforts!

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120195580#Comment_120195580

I wouldn't even mind that, but it always just feels like when producers etc do things like that or the Resident Evil show, they're so focused on changing so many aspects of it so it appeals to people outside the core audience, to the point where even the core audience don't like it. A cartoonish Sonic appeals more to kids, and also to adults who grew up playing Sonic as a kid. Yet going out of their way to make it look like a realistic blue speed-hog felt like trying to appeal to everyone and ending up with a horribly off-putting main character design that appeals to no-one. Obviously the writing of the film was the same and was very well-received, but if you're going to do a blue speed-hedgehog movie, have a blue speed-hedgehog. Commit to it. If you're going to do a Resident Evil show based on a game with a special forces team in a giant mansion with zombies, don't do..... whatever this was....

Most game-to-tv/film adaptations fail because the studios are just using the recognition/branding of the source material, change the source material to try and widen appeal, and end up not appealing to anyone and just p*ssing off existing fans.

That's where The Last Of Us has gotten it so right so far. It's incredibly faithful to the game (which is a given with how cinematic the game already is as per your previous posts), the game director is involved, and they're using the advantages of a TV show to expand on the story in ways that they couldn't in the game (because Bill was just a side character in a small section of the game, but through TV he's able to have a much greater effect on Joel through his story and has become far more important and well fleshed-out). Which also means a strong positive reaction from fans also makes people who've never heard of the game want to check it out.

Plus as far as I'm aware no Tomb Raider film thus far has had Lara lock her butler in the fridge, so they've been doomed to fail from the start. RESPECT THE SOURCE MATERIAL!

walkonby

….

walkonby

Spoiler Warning

One thing that the “bottle episode” criticism overlooks, which non-players wouldn’t realise, is that this is foreshadowing later developments with Ellie’s character and her romantic interests (and anticipating how she uses pop music to express herself.)

gmisk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120194679#Comment_120194679

Fallout series is on the way

Cordell

I know, fingers crossed they do it right :)

mcburns07

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120198327#Comment_120198327

There was but not til late Mon night. Hopefully that won’t happen again.

_CreeD_

I am often extremely critical. Especially of the horror shows of game conversions (and to the above posters who mentioned God Of War, it has the same showrunner as the ****-show of The Wheel of Time so my commiserations). But the TLOU has been fantasic imho to date. I started episode 3 wondering how they would tie in the banter with screen vs. game mechanics. All the way through there was a voice in the back of my head whispering Bill's lines that made him a loveable cook for the hour or so he is memorable in game and wondering how they would eventually tie it in. Part way through I thought the genius of the episode was in adding so much brilliant context behind what I was expecting. By the end? Even though it rewrote it all I was stunned. Amazing, beautiful and absolutely impactful story telling of someone I thought I knew that destroyed their game events in a way that made it so much better.

I'm one of those who feel TLOU2 failed (and was emotionally alienating and clumsy vs 1) and I still do. But that episode gives me hope that Druckmann has evolved with the production team and can really do something special again.

Spoiler Warning

When Bill is pouring the poison sachet into Frank's wine all that went through my head was I'd give them half and take half, what he does though or has done? Better.

Heckler

The comments about this episode on various sites and channels are at times laughable in ignorance and disturbing in vitriol.