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

robwen

I haven't played the game but some of that felt like I was watching someone playing the video game

MarkR

I watched the last one this morning. I enjoyed it as a reproduction of the game's end stages. Nice to see the giraffe. Really great to get to see Ellie's mom and the reason why she was immune. Mom antibodies is a quick one, but weird nobody else had it. Mom antibodies saved everyone in tv shows loads of times!

Ashley Johnson as the mom was great, I loved hearing her voice again. :-D

Interesting to hear how Joel got his scar (which to be honest to me was never that visible?). His daughter was dead and the world was ending. I can see the reasoning.

Joel killing all and sundry in the hospital was great. Love the muted sounds while he did what "he had to do". Kill bad guy, take an upgraded weapon, and repeat. Just like the game! He must have taken a power up (red mushroom? 😂) before hand, because he was a killing machine there.

bucketybuck

Episode 9 just proved all the concerns from earlier in the season to be perfectly correct, the pacing and choices over the season as a whole were horrendous. We were told to see how it all pans out, now we have seen it and it does not hold up well at all. 56 minutes of two kids flirting in an old mall, 43 minutes for the denouement and resolution of the entire story? Somebody send those directors on a time management course.

The last episode felt completely flat to me, they got to the place, got captured, minutes later Joel is on a rampage and then they leave. Season over. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that it copies the video game word for word because it felt like watching somebody play a video game. The bad news is that if I wanted to watch the video game I would have just done that instead. This is TV, its not the same.

Its a bit of a shame, I really enjoyed the first half of the season, I wanted to like it and it started so well. But to copy a line from another forum, that episode just left me in a mood to nitpick it.

Sudden Valley

Hard to know how the season will be judged when the hype dies down. I enjoyed the game and the tv season. Pacing was a bit strange but probably better they didnt have the violence of the video game as the violence in the last episode felt a bit over the top, like Joel was the terminator. Acting in the series top to bottom was excellent.

BruteStock

Damn , this show really took a nosedive in quality. That episode wtf. Some of it was like fan made vignettes cobbled together. Couldn't believe how terrible Pedro Pascal was. Emotionless , robotic and by the end speaking in his Mando voice. His acting for whatever reason in this episode was abysmal. What should have been an emotionally impactful finale was a rush to the finish line. All they did is adapt cut scenes to live action verbatim. Those scenes were created with the knowledge they would be separated by large portions of gameplay. They weren't designed to be played out in sequence. The show did that and that's why it felt all over the place tonally. Disappointing because it was all going great until the last few episodes.

RoryMac

I enjoyed it overall, not mind-blowingly good like some reviews make out but some great episodes mixed with not so good.

I enjoyed the last episode although some of that might be based on playing the game through again. It was almost scene for scene the same as the game, not sure Joel's rampage could've been done any differently without going way off from the game.

Thought Bella Ramsey was the standout throughout the show

Evade

The whole thing is really rushed and placing Left Behind in the middle of the story takes away from Ellie's reveal overlooking Jackson. There were two bits in this episode lifted straight from the game but lacking game context and it's just weird. The ladder scene in the game made more sense because a major mechanic was boosting Ellie up to place Joel couldn't reach so she could drop a ladder down and Joel going commando in the hospital made much more sense because combat was also a major game mechanic.

Also, I wrote this 9 or so years ago and it bears repeating, vivisection should not be your first option. Ellie was there for a day at most what sort of test could have been run in that time?

mcburns07

I didn’t love it. Some really good tv in there but overall probably a 7/10 series. The critic reviews are over the top in their praise IMO.

Slydice

Well. That was season one. Fairly decent overall. Felt consistent in the grim world they created. Not like.. The Road level grim but pretty grim all the same.

9: Damn but that heavy on the thinkaboutits! Well done!

Have to say, I really felt a call back to..

Spoiler Warning

the terminator 1 police station massacre when Joel was rolling through the hospital like that.

The Lies! Oh jeez, the lies... that's gonna be a rough revelation down the line..

That woman who they cast for Ellies mother was spot on! She was the spit of her. I was guessing she was the mother well in advance of them making it explicit.

She was singing a song upstairs with Ellie when the others arrived and were coming up the stairs. I googled the lyrics and think I found..

The song from the start was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3ir9HC9vYg

Future: So there's gonna be a season two? Haven't a clue what they'll do with that. Plenty of world and established story to work with though.

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120355376#Comment_120355376

Ellie's mother was Ellie in the games.

johnny_ultimate

Was legitimately surprised when I clicked into the episode and saw it was only 40 minutes long. And given the first 10 minutes is a flashback, really the episode only takes around 30 minutes to wrap up the last chunk of the game (mostly shot for shot). It really felt pretty rushed and flat to me, like most of the second half of the show tbh. Now maybe that’s partially because I knew exactly what was going to happen. But I dunno - it all just sort of… happened, without the impact these exact same events had in the game. Maybe people who haven’t played the game felt those beats in the hospital hit differently, but if I’m being honest here they played out more like a traditional video game than the actual video game did!

As much as I like Pedro Pascal, I don’t think his take on Joel allowed for the pivotal emotional beats in this episode to land the way the gamemakers and Troy Baker managed. Ramsey did better for sure, but other than that final shot it was all about Joel’s decisions… and it didn’t really work for me.

Overall I would say the season was a bit of a middling affair for me. Episode 3 was by far the highlight, and I remain disappointed they didn’t stick with the cold open pattern they established in the first two episodes - albeit at least we got a hint of that here, with a welcome appearance from Ashley Johnson. But for me much of the show was a pretty straightforward adaptation of the game, just lacking that certain sense of immersion and perspective on offer when you’re controlling these characters.

Greyfox

Excellent series finale, showing Ellies mother was a nice touch and really glad they got the Giraffe scene in. Pedro and Bella were perfectly cast for this and their bond feels genuine.

Royale with Cheese

When I saw it was only 42 minutes before I hit play I thought wtf, way too short. The hospital massacre was a bit weird too, they could have just had him kill 5-6 of them and then escape to make it slightly more believable. Every single one of them fired at him and somehow missed and then he'd just pop out from behind cover and waste them, it wasn't even that easy in the game 😂

Mike Litoris

I loved the pace of that last episode. There was little filler but didn't feel rushed apart from the abrupt ending. Really good TV overall and I really enjoyed those 2 divisive episodes. I would have liked to see more of the terror and tension of the Clicker encounters from the game. I used to be a nervous wreck playing it lol!

Gusser09

At the start i had it marked as a solid 9 out of 10. Now im at 7.

Boring overall. To thought out and not enough bite or action.

Under whelming ending and an anti climax.

Not a patch on the first 2 or 3 seasons of TWD.

Spoiler Warning

The desperation to find a vaccine or cure makes so much more sense in the game given all the infected everywhere, the spores, etc. So you understand why they are making this difficult journey, why the scientists are willing to immediately chop up a little girl, and also why Ellie is so upset in TLOU2 when she finds out what Joel has done.

fitz

Haven't played the game, and I had no issue with the pacing. I also really like how they handled the violence, a lot of the time letting it happen out of shot. The focus throughout was never on the action, but the impact of that action on the characters. I thought Pascal and Ramsey were terrific, particularly as the season went on. Ramsey's change in physicality in this episode really sold how damaged Ellie was by what had happened, and Joel's decisions were completely understandable and had an air of tragic inevitability about them. The line about time not being what did it...ooof, that really landed for me.

Zero-Cool

They did a great job adapting the game and being so faithful to the original (take note resident evil ye gowls) BUT that ending didn't have the impact on me the game had on me. Obviously the game is more immersive controlling the characters through all these story beats while the 2nd half of the show felt a bit rushed. Much prefer that to dragging the absolute bollox out of it like TWD but that Okay didn't have as much weight as it could/should have.

Roll on season 2, can't wait to see what they do with it.

P.S such a joy seeing Ashley portray Anna. Bella was great, but for me, no one will be able to come close to Ashley's performance of Ellie.

Penn

I didn't so much mind the pacing of the episode. There wasn't really that much to add to it. We got the giraffe scene, we got a great sequence between Joel and Ellie, then the hospital bit. I watched an interview with Neil Druckmann who was asked if they discussed adding anything such as more bits about the Fireflies or Marlene, but he said they wanted to not give a moment to breathe or for Joel to think, that it all happens so fast. Which carries through to Pedro's performance in that as he seemed completely on autopilot, and even the audio went a bit like white noise. He's not thinking or panicking, he's just doing.

But where it fell flat for me was the scene with Marlene in the car park, where Pedro played it too emotionless. That was the first bit of the whole show where I felt he played it completely the wrong way.

Bella nailed the final scene though. Also got confirmation that Ellie had to kill Riley, something I'm not sure is ever confirmed unless it's mentioned in the second game (which I only played once and don't remember a lot of the little stuff).

A decent episode to finish the season, though didn't quite hit the heights I hoped it would.

Exclamation Marc

I thought it was a fantastic end to a great series. A really great 8.5 or 9/10 series for me.

The cinematography of the hospital rampage was brilliant.

Bella Ramsey was sensational and having been sceptical about her casting at the start, she totally won me over. Pedro as Joel was fantastic too. His journey from stoic grunt to being more open and more fatherly with Ellie as they bonded was very well done.

My only minor complaint was that there wasn't enough infected towards the end for my liking. Ironically I praised them at the start for how little they showed them but there wasn't an infected in the current time line after episode 5 which was a slight let down as having one or two in the current timeline would have beeb

Either way, roll on Season 2. Can't wait.

ULMarc

That was a great finale! It really hit hard when Joel said "it wasn't the time".

I thought the penultimate episode had more to give alright. But this last one was buttoned up nicely.

I felt crestfallen for Ellie's mam to be in that situation.

And Joel's hiding a lot of skeletons at the end there.

bucketybuck

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120354996#Comment_120354996

Wasn't episode 3 very different than the game? So they had changed things previously. Frankly they should have remembered that this was not a video game, its a TV show and if things needed to be done differently then do them differently. If I wanted to watch a shot for shot recreation then I'll bet there are clips on youtube with all the cutscenes spliced together.

They didn't necessarily need to do the rampage differently (though the fireflies standing in the open waiting to get shot was repeatedly stupid), what they needed was more build up to the rampage. Not to have Joel start the rampage literally minutes after getting there. That might work in a video game where you spend hours playing the combat sections, but it doesn't work in a TV show.

Apothic_Red

Em. . . hasn't anyone noticed that Joel is a psychopathic murdering animal yet, completely indiscriminate.

He tortures, he maims without any repercussion, it's daft.

Someone will use the term anti-hero but no, I can't cheer for that.

Bella Ramsey doing a fine job but the writers need to justify the sympathy for Joel.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120355905#Comment_120355905

Yes, that’s pretty much the whole point of Joel’s character and arc. And the themes of characters dealing with the acts of violence they’ve committed and/or witnessed is pretty much the central dramatic tension and overarching thematic focus in the game series and, by extent, the show itself. As this episode shows, Joel can’t even bring himself to admit what he’s done to the person he’s closest to.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120355905#Comment_120355905

Who ever said he was the good guy ?

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120355905#Comment_120355905

Agree with the others. It's not daft, it's been telegraphed the entire series that he's ruthless. He even said himself through the series that he killed indiscriminately, sometimes even innocent people . The finale just reiterated that past.

He's masterfully written in my view. You've sympathy because he lost his daughter and he couldn't bear to lose a daughter figure that he's bonded with over an extended period of time. And for most of the series, we root for him before being reminded of who he is and his relative selfishness. He's a hero in one light and a villain in another. To me it's great that he's not just a black and white good or bad guy.

Galwayguy35

Would have preferred if the one who played Joel's daughter was cast as Ellie.

That one from game of thrones was annoying.

It passed an hour on a winter evening that's about it really.

They needed more episodes, I don't care if it was 100% made for TV.

The game allowed for some tense moments with infected throughout the game. Many of those would not work on TV, fine, but they needed an episode or two more to cement the infected threat.

As it stood it looked like the infection was contained and manageable. The original transmission was food or something other than bites, how did that stop? Is everyone remaining somewhat immune to that vector?

They way they presented this world was bleak and broken but nothing that was not salvageable. It looked like they would have been able to send out kill squads to kill infected, TBH.

The reason I feel that some tense experiences with infected were needed was to build up the threat, show them as still more a threat to any nascent recovery than human infighting. Joel's decision was a no brainer because of this, Ellie's vaccine doesn't actually seem that important...

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120356372#Comment_120356372

They mentioned early on that the cordyceps was growing for miles underground and practically choking up the ecosystem for humans but never really went any further with it.

All the infected were around the cities and I get why but a few here and there in the later episodes would have been nice. And they probably should have done the spore thing even if it was just something that happened in close proximity to those dried up expended infected.

I didn't really understand the army camp thing either. How did they go from shooting everyone to corralling them into camps in the space of a few days.

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120356432#Comment_120356432

They could still have been shooting people in hot infected zones while providing medical aid to others.