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

johnny_ultimate

I think if you want to understand the importance of the giraffe scene you sort of need to understand just how different it felt in the context of the game. Plenty of games before TLOU had little, thoughtful, quiet story moments... but the sheer cinematic flair of TLOU was quite a departure. So in the middle of this tense action game full of darkness you have this little setpiece of wonder and warmth. You also had the developers put in the significant work of rendering and animating these giraffes - no small amount of effort to create such bespoke graphics - for this one short sequence. The way the build-up also played with player spectacle was a witty little flourish - usually, you'd expect something much more horrifying or dramatic to occur when characters were briefly separated like that.

It was a rare example of thoughtful spectacle in the video game space - a small but important story beat, creating quite complicated and advanced visuals solely for the purpose of a lovely little story and character beat. Again, this is deep into a game full of ultraviolent combat and bleak storytelling - while there are plenty of other quieter moments in the game (especially during its exploration sequences), that one moment stands out as the game's graphical fidelity - which was pretty much peerless at the time - being put towards a very different purpose. It's hard to emphasise its impact nine years later, and it undoubtedly feels less unique in a live-action TV setting. But it was almost without question the most memorable moment in a game that sort of redefined what was possible in a 'cinematic' video game.

And I don't even like the game as much as many others do :P

NattyO

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120360694#Comment_120360694

Not sure why you think "people's brains are stuck on the giraffes" - I've seen a lot of people remarking about how important it was the scene was put in the series, when it doesn't make an awful lot of plot sense (perhaps it does in the game). The scene feels shoehorned in to me - as if it was meant to lead somewhere or lead to some revelation, but then it doesn't (it also begs the question as to why the starving populace haven't eaten them!). If the writers felt there were scenes from the game that had to appear in the series, that's fine, but they could have written this one in a little better.

ULMarc

Eat the Giraffe? I think the idea is that the flora and fauna is continuing and flourishing unperturbed by humans, like the monkeys just having the craic earlier on. And I suppose the interaction is intended to be a very innocent experience for Ellie after what's just happened, the giraffe being a giraffe would mean no harm to her. The human world is dysfunctional. I don't think we're supposed to get hung up on how people are finding food and.... producing ammunition... Just that society is unable to get itself together, or at least has not yet gotten itself together, for various reasons. Dreaming up solutions to these discrete problems is equivalent to telling a person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, when in reality we know life just doesn't come that easy for many.

And at the end of the day. I don't know if the story necessarily wants you to think that there is no future. There's a balance of hope and despair. You know, FEDRA has their idea of a future, and Jackson has their way of how to move on, the Fireflies think they've figured it out, Bill was defending his ideals, the old couple in the cabin are happy out, even people like David seem to have found their own sinister comforts. And ultimately, it's all a backdrop to himself and herself.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120300230#Comment_120300230

That’s gas , I think she’s the greatest actress I’ve seen in a few years

PhiloCypher

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120361578#Comment_120361578

Shes fantastic . Don't know what the people who think she's miscast are smoking . But they can keep it. They can't have played the game if they think she's played any more "annoying kid" then Game Ellie was .

PhiloCypher

*Deleted. Double post

johnny_ultimate

I'd go as far as saying it was Pascal who struggled - not saying he was miscast or anything like that, simply that I feel he struggled to land some of what was required of him, especially in the last episode. Not a bad performance, just one that wasn't as sharply realised as Joel was in the game.

Whereas I think Ramsey was totally in tune with the material - a slightly different take on Ellie than was in the game, but what's the point in casting an actor if they can't put their own spin on something? She achieved a fine balance between capturing the essence of the character while bringing something new at the same time.

bucketybuck

I thought Pascals puppy dog manner at the start of the episode was really jarring to be honest. Like a teenager bouncing around after getting a kiss from his crush, all chatty, making plans for the future and bringing her gifts. I get what it was supposed to represent, but it was far too much a disconnect from everything we had seen to that point and needed to be a bit more subtle.

The problem is that he has come to accept her as a surrogate daughter, but we saw how he acted around his daughter in episode one and it wasn't like that. Episode one felt real, the beginning of the last episode felt like exaggerated stage play directions.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120362011#Comment_120362011

What was the 'essence of the character'?

It never really developed for me. I can't believe she didn't actually work out that she may have to die at the end of the journey, or at least undergo some serious traumatic and invasive surgery.

We never got any of this, either questioning what was going to happen/fear etc and her character arc never really went anywhere for me resulting in not caring all that much at the end.

bucketybuck

Well it is very, very stupid to kill the only immune person, so it is somewhat understandable that Ellie and Joel didn't consider it a possibility. They probably joked about it around a campfire one night and then dismissed it as being too stupid for serious consideration.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120362812#Comment_120362812

Well Ellie certainly seemed to assume it would be a matter of taking blood.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120362712#Comment_120362712

Ramsey captured that mix of fragility and resilience that is central to the character. She’s someone who has never known ‘normal life’, so she’s somewhat desensitised to the violence and trauma. But she’s still a kid, trying to process normal teenage emotions and relationships - and, for all her hardiness, she still struggles with the emotional impact of all the extraordinary traumas she’s had to endure.

So Ramsey’s performance got at the heart of that all for me - there’s a teenage cheekiness, charm and naivety there, but also anger and determination forced by the extraordinary circumstances she has grown up with. Ramsey often portrayed that silently, as a character dealing with all this internally, but also gracefully handled the scenes where she had to go bigger.

trashcan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120363124#Comment_120363124

Agree. I thought she was brilliant. Not familiar with the game at all, but I can’t imagine the performance of a computer generated character could have been better.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120363124#Comment_120363124

Well, I figure that is just another example of why this was not great as a stand alone series.

You clearly are projecting stuff onto her from the game.

Fragility? Anytime she was under threat she seemed to have superhero levels of strenght and resources.

The more I think about this and the miraculous recovery of Leon in the final eposode the more of a cartoon it all becomes sadly.

Evade

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120363143#Comment_120363143

Game Ellie was completely motion captured by her voice actress and I think it was a better performance.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120363181#Comment_120363181

Fragility cones in more forms than physicality :) One of the character details the series keeps looping back to is how the death of Riley has left Ellie raw and vulnerable and therefore emotionally fragile. The desperate lengths she will go to to save Joel in episodes seven and eight to me suggest someone who cannot bring themselves to lose someone close to them again.

I’ve played both games (albeit haven’t played through the first since its original release) so yes of course I can’t entirely separate Ramsey’s performance from the Ellie in the games and Ashley Johnson’s performances. But Ramsey to me offered up more than enough to create a compelling and convincing take on this character. I was very mixed on the series overall, but Ramsey’s performance is one thing I have no hesitation about praising - she was excellent.

Zero-Cool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120363235#Comment_120363235

Yeah, Ashley completely knocked it out of the park with voice and motion capture. I highly recommend, to anyone interested, watching the documentary about making the game. Lots of behind the scenes showing the acting on display.

Bella did a great job but didn't top Ashley imo.

https://youtu.be/yH5MgEbBOps

If Ramsey gets any kind of acting nominations for her performance, it would be great if she turned up initially wearing a cardboard "Ellie face from the game" mask.

Dial Hard

I'm really not sure you can compare mo-cap to live action. You're getting two layers of performance with the former. I know several serious film aficionados who would say Andy Serkis is better in the suit, despite being an excellent actor in either medium.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120363435#Comment_120363435

You know that there's like a 20 year age difference between the two, right?

Never mind. Ignore me:-)

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120355435#Comment_120355435

Love that. My son told me as he had played the game. She was so like her I first thought "oh no, its' grown up Ellie pregnant and alone"!

Liked this episode and the series. Very clear that the tv series is more about the relationships than the action from the game. I was a bit taken aback at Joel killing everybody and then lying to Ellie. I rationalised the killing (they were going to kill Elllie so they were baddies!) but not the lying.

Guess he'll pay for that next season?

He should have told her, because she was lied to by Marlene as well.

And one guy who deserved to die more slowly.. The surgeon! What in hell was he doing about to kill their one chance of fighting the fungus, because " he thinks it might be growing inside her?"

My theory after watching the birth, fwiw, is that a little infected blood got into her but the stem cells in her umbilical cord (that stuff is magic) neutralised it. So her immunity is imprinted at a cellular level.

Maybe they should try bone marrow aspiration or taking some blood samples for starters.... if Joel and Ellie let them of course!

Great actors, ominous tone this week and Joel is right to be nervous. Ellie will not be happy she is being lied to.

Goldengirl

Just wonder reading some the game players comnents if the reason it feels flat is because you sorta know whats coming and are waiting for it to happen and expectations are high etc.?

I know if I have read the book for example or have seen a series before a film or a series it rarely packs the same punch.

DB83

Not familiar with the game but thoroughly enjoyed the show. My only major gripe was how short the final episode was - I feel cheated when a season finale isn't at least slightly longer than a standard episode. Feels slightly anti-climactic.

Cartman78

Non-gamer.

Really liked the first 3 episodes but lost interest after that tbh.

7 and 8 were particularly meh....added very little imho, 7 could have been covered with a couple of well edited flashback montages and 8 was literally like a bad TWD episode.

The finale was ok but felt flat and a bit rushed (especially after spending so much time in the mall) for me.

I think they need to decide if they want to make a TV program or some sort of homage to a video game....for me it seems to be trying to do both and falling somewhere in the middle.

I'll probably tune in for S2 anyway

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120363417#Comment_120363417

The desperate lengths she will go to to save Joel in episodes seven and eight to me suggest someone who cannot bring themselves to lose someone close to them again.

Or somebody she needed to be alive for her own survival.

I never got a sense of her fragility to be perfectly honest.

MOR316

The reason the first season feels rushed is because of the ego of the co director of the game, Neil Druckmann. From what I've read, he had his ideas reigned in for the story of the first game (his idea for the story for the first game wasn't as good) by the co director and he hated how people saw Joel as, for the want of a better term, a "hero"

Co producer got canned and Druckmann was in total charge of the story for the 2nd game. He doesn't like the first game very much and sees the second game as his own.

It's why this was rushed through and why the second game is going to be broken into 2-3 seasons

For someone who just finished the 2nd game, I have no interest in seeing the story again. It's utterly hallow and you're left feeling nothing. It tries to destroy characters from the first game and tries to make you love a new character, that no one has any sort of connection to. It's like the director is telling you what you should feel and it's the ultimate no! The new supporting characters are utterly bland and helping a Zebra does not help someone's character development.

SimonTemplar

Non-gamer but I'm aware of certain events in Part 1 and Part 2 through pop culture.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Last of Us. Probably this and Happy Valley will be tied for my shows of the year.

Spoilers for the game Part 2 and thus season 2 of the show

Spoiler Warning

The key to my enjoyment of this show is the relationship between Joel and Ellie and watching that evolve and develop over the season. Given what will happen to him at the start of season 2, I'm a little concerned I won't enjoy that season as much.

nix

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120363710#Comment_120363710

Not for me, the best episodes for me were the first two episodes, and they are the most accurate to the game. My issue with the season as a whole is they changed a lot of good parts from the game and they rushed through the end. Why they bothered making up the Kathleen character is beyond me, she added nothing and was barely in it, so little in fact it begged the question of why did they bother? They could have used the screen time she took up later to fill out the David section, that part of the show should have lasted two episodes, not rushed into one.

The pacing of the show was off from episode 3 onwards, not a coincidence thats just when all the big changes started coming in, i enjoyed the show but it could and should have been so much better/polished.

Tony EH

The show really should have just stuck to its central story and not pricked around with Ep3 and Ep7. When you have just 9 episodes to tell your story there's no time for detours and 50 minute flashbacks. This is why the whole thing ends up feeling rushed.

Flaneur OBrien

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120370580#Comment_120370580

How people survived in the circumstances is the central story for me though.

Ellie and her possible cure is just the vehicle to tell those stories.

After TWD, this felt positively speedy, but in a good way. There was enough storylines in this to get 4 seasons out of TWD 😂