 Hello! I'm here with my new lack of background for the moment. I'm sorry I haven't gotten things set up. Like maybe next time I'll get my green screen here, just chill in a volcano while I talk to you. But yes, I am here on this special edition video, not released on a Saturday, to talk about the last of us, Season 1. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. This show has really blown up over the past couple of months, and for good reason. It's based on a very popular video game franchise. I've been a fan of the games for years, and it's just a huge budget show from HBO where they're just putting these big stars in it and pumping in tons of money and giving it a bunch of marketing and all kinds of stuff. They're trying to get it to a huge audience, and it looks like it worked. It has had massive success. It's gotten good reviews. It has a lot of viewers. It's already been renewed for Season 2, and overall I am really happy that it's been so successful because I watched it. I think it's a great show. I do not think it's perfect though, and I sat here for a while trying to come up with a way that I could meaningfully talk about this without going into spoilers. You know, don't just say generic things like, the characters were really good and deep, and I bought into the themes or anything like that. I really couldn't think of a way to do that, so this is mostly going to be a spoiler-filled review. My brief thoughts, like I said, it is great. It's not perfect though. My main problem is the lack of subtlety, or my two main problems. Number one, lack of subtlety. A lot of characters will just straight up say what they're feeling and say what their arc is, particularly Joel, the main character. Number two is the pacing. The season is nine episodes long. It should have been ten, because the episode before the finale, that one in particular feels like it should have been two parts, and then a lot of the individual episodes along the way do feel like they should have been five minutes longer, maybe? Not even a lot. When the camera is focusing on actors and they give a dramatic line or a dramatic moment happens, it doesn't really linger on them to let that sink in or anything. It's just too concerned with getting to the next plot beat as fast as it can, and so it just cuts ahead, cuts ahead, cuts ahead. As far as video game adaptations go, yeah, this is one of the best. It helps that it's being adapted from a game that has a really good story, but it's not perfect again. The story, if you're unfamiliar, is about there's a zombie apocalypse, only this time the zombies are caused by a fungus instead of a virus, and the main character Joel loses his daughter early on, and then 20 years later he gets tasked with escorting this other small girl across the country somewhere else that they can help make a cure, and that's not really a spoiler, it's revealed by the end of episode one. It's the generic zombie story, but it's told very well both in the show and in the games, and, or game I should say, because season one is just based on the first game, and just in terms of the actual filmmaking, absolutely phenomenal. The special effects on the infected and everything, absolutely phenomenal. Every single actor in this is amazing, and I mean like the main actors, like Pedro Pascal and Bell Ramsey as Joel and Ellie, all the way to side characters that are only there for one or two episodes, like Nick Offerman as Frank, and hell, even characters that get like one line of dialogue or no lines of dialogue, in the case of the actors playing the infected, they are just absolutely amazing on every level they could be, like any issues I might have with like their dialogue and stuff, like that's a writing issue, as far as I'm concerned the actors did no wrong here. I do wish there was some more zombie action though, because while we do get some, we don't get nearly as much as you might think based on, you know, the premise and the setup for this, like the beginning part of episode one where you're seeing the outbreak first happen, and then the scene with the clickers in episode two, and then the big one in the middle of the season, which I won't give away here, those are like the three main zombie action scenes, and all of those are great, but it does feel a little light on zombies especially near the end, because I think the last like two episodes there were, I think there was one in the last two episodes, so like yeah that is a little disappointing, and I get it, it's budgetary constraints, you can't throw them in as easily as you could in a video game, and also they want to make the characters seem a little bit more vulnerable, which is fine, but it still, it bothered me just a little bit, that's it though for non-spoiler stuff, I really cannot go into deeper discussion without going into spoilers, so if you are at all interested in the last of us, go check it out please, it's a great, great show, a great, great adaptation of the game, it changes a few things, but overall it does still hold to it, and so now spoilers. So wait, is my grandpa really dead? Right, so Broziff, I thought this was supposed to be a kids movie! The main issue I have with this show as an adaptation is that thematically it is far, far weaker than the game, and part of that is the lack of subtlety I mentioned earlier, like the game would have a lot of characters, they left things unspoken and you had to just read into it a little bit, like as Joel is first getting to know Ellie and getting attached to her, he doesn't just say, you remind me of my daughter, and he doesn't have like flashbacks of her or anything, whereas at the end of the first episode when a soldier is pointing a gun at Ellie, it just literally shows flashes of his daughter and everything, and it's like, come on man, like that in addition to being ungodly corny, it just removes any ambiguity or any subtlety about him and his arc, but the main thing that makes it like just weaker thematically is that the main theme of The Last of Us, the first game again, is that people will do absolutely horrible heinous things in the name of love, and even if you want to criticize them for it, you kind of get it, like at the end of the story, Ellie is going to be killed in order to make a cure slash vaccine for the cordyceps, and Joel just murders a bunch of doctors in order to do that, and in fact it's made clear in the game that Joel is a horrible person, you know, we understand him and we kind of go to like him because we see the positive sides to him, but he will do absolutely horrible things to protect those he loves, like even before the end of the game there, it's pretty clear because it's made, it's mentioned that he and his brother Tommy used to be bandits, and Joel just murdered people in order to keep both himself and his brother fit, and this is reinforced throughout the game with him killing people without hesitation or torturing people, like the torture scene, which I mean there's actually two of them, but one's early in the game and it's not that long or focused on, and the second one is much later in the game when Ellie's kidnapped by cannibals and he is prying a dude's kneecap off with a knife, like this dude's horrible, he's a horrible person, but the thing is the show didn't want to commit to him being as horrible as it should have, it seemed like it was going in that direction in the first episode because during the initial outbreak it shows him, you know, run somebody over and just keep going and drive past people without even considering stopping to help, and we see somebody in the background who does try and go help and they get immediately eaten, so it's made clear, okay Joel has kind of always been this way, he's kind of always been callous other than to those he loves, and then later on again we see him like selling drugs and stealing stuff and threatening people and killing people again in the name of those he loves, it just doesn't go far enough with the violence I mean, and I know that might sound strange, but like the most violent thing we see in the show is Joel torturing two people, and that scene goes pretty much as it does in the game, like he threatens to pry a dude's kneecap off with a knife and then he kills him, and then he immediately kills his friend with, not with his bare hands, but in a brutal manner, and so that works really well, but beyond that the most violent thing he does is punch a soldier a bunch of times, and I think he kills that guy, but to illustrate my point, the main thing where this stood out to me was in the final episode, right? Like in the game, Joel goes into the operating room where the doctors are, and the doctor picks up a scalpel, says I'm not going to let you take her, she can save so many lives, and then Joel takes the knife from him and brutally murders him with it, and then he kills the two nurses while they're begging for their lives, and it's not a pleasant scene, like the game has a lot of violence, but none of it is like really fun or satisfying, it is brutal and unpleasant, and it's supposed to be, but in the show, when Joel gets to the operating room, the doctor also threatens him with the scalpel, but Joel just shoots him in the head once, and then he holds up the two nurses at gunpoint, and then he grabs Ellie and leaves, like he lets them live, and so it doesn't really make him seem like as much of a horrible person as he is, let's be clear about that, he is a horrible person, we sympathize with him and we understand him, but he's a really nasty dude, and scenes like that just make it seem like okay, they're trying to redeem him a little bit, and that's really not what they should be doing, and then there's the whole two episodes where they're in Kansas City, now this is an adaptation of the Pittsburgh part in the game, I don't know why they moved it from Pittsburgh to Kansas City, it doesn't seem to really change anything, but whatever, like Joel and Ellie are driving in there, and in the game they get stopped by some raiders, their car gets wrecked, and they're stuck in the city, they have to fight their way out, and eventually they succeed, and the show starts off very similarly at least, it's in a different city for some reason, I'm still not sure why, but they're driving down the road and this dude comes out pretending to be wounded and begging for help, and then Joel immediately knows this is fake, and so he drives forward and nearly runs the guy over, and then they get attacked, and I guess ambushed is the word, but is it really an ambush if you know it's coming, I don't know, whatever, they get attacked and then the car gets wrecked, and it's pretty much the same, and Joel mentions, both in the show and in the game, that he knew it was a trap because he's been on both sides of that, because as I said, he was a raider, he was a bandit, he murdered people to keep himself and his brother fed, but the thing is in the game, they were just generic faceless bad guys, you know, we didn't see a leader that they had, and what little dialogue and everything they had was just them laughing about killing people, and in the game, while yeah, they're kind of cartoonish in how evil they are, it's made clear Joel is just as bad as them, like he was exactly this type of person in the past, he isn't anymore, but he has still done things like that, and so it's made clear, okay yes, this guy is, he's a really really bad person, but he still loves Ellie, he still loves people in his life, and so that's why he's willing to do these horrible things for them, and while I love the two Kansas City episodes in the show, the people there aren't bandits, so like for starters, it doesn't make sense that they ambushed Joel and Ellie's car, because these guys aren't raiders, they seem more like border guards or a border checkpoint or something, I'm not sure what, why they would attack them in the first place, but okay, whatever, but these, they're not raiders, they're people who just recently overthrew the government in Kansas City, which is totally understandable, because that is one thing I liked about both the show and the game, is that the government still exists, it's much weaker, and it's much nastier than it is in the real world, but it is still there in some form, and in the show we actually get much more of a sense of what it's like for people to live under these circumstances, so I liked that, and yeah, so people in Kansas City, they recently overthrew this government and got rid of it, and now they have control of the city, and they're coming after Joel and Ellie because, you know, they killed some of the guards there, and it doesn't, I don't know, when Joel says, I've been on both sides of an ambush like that, it doesn't really hammer home how much of like, oh yeah, this dude has killed a lot of people for very selfish reasons. It's not that the theme here is bad, or even all that weak, it's just weaker than it should be, and mostly in regards to Joel, like there are other characters where this shines through even better, like again, when they're in Kansas City, they meet Henry and Sam, and Henry murdered somebody, the leader of the resistance in the city, because he was trying to get drugs to help his brother who has leukemia, and you can tell it weighs really heavily on Henry, and also the people are after him for revenge, like the new leader of the revolutionaries is the guy he killed's sister, who is played by, look, her performance is really good, like I said, and I actually kind of like that she's different than you would expect, like she's really physically unassuming and soft-spoken, but she's still very clearly psychotic and willing to do absolutely horrible things, and they show her doing that, so I do like that she's different than you would expect from a revolutionary leader, but at the same time, when I first saw her, my immediate thought was, that's the crazy ex-girlfriend from Two and a Half Men, I can't take her seriously, and while yes, she is doing these horrible things, trying to murder this dude and this young child out of the love she held for her brother, it doesn't feel quite the same, because, well, that's something you're doing out of hate, rather than love, and that's really more the theme of the second game, which I'm not going to get into here, but like yeah, the first game is about, and the first season of the show, is about the horrible things you'll do for the people you love, whereas the second one is about the horrible things you'll do and everything you will destroy out of hate. And while at some points I did really like the shot-for-shot remake that this show was at a few points, because like, you know, if it isn't broke, don't fix it, but if there are issues with the original source material, the original game, then tweak it a little and make it better. And at a few points where it's in the better scenes and it's just shot-for-shot remade and some of the dialogue is verbatim repeated, I did like that, but it is inevitably going to make me compare it. You know, like, that's just, it's going to happen because I played the game. Like, that's not a problem if you haven't played it, but I mean, looking at this as both its own thing and as an adaptation is part of what I'm supposed to do here. Like, there are lines where characters say it, and it's the same in both the show and the game, and I think it's better in the show. And then there are lines where I think it's better in the game. And I think overall they just kind of cancel each other out, but the fact that it's that similar and that I have to compare it, like I just, my brain will do that automatically, that is unfortunate because I can't really judge it on its own merits and at a few points I was going, oh okay, that acting wasn't as good as it could have been. And I feel bad for that because like I said, the actors did nothing wrong in this show. I really want to emphasize that on every level. They're amazing. And one last thing before I go, the show made Ellie seem a little bit more helpless than she did in the game. You know, because in the game she has a lot of moments where she doesn't really need Joel to protect her, or maybe she does, but she doesn't act like it. Like for example, when they meet Frank and he handcuffs her to a bar, she like pulls the bar out and is about to hit Frank with it and Joel stops her. Or later on, when she's fighting the cannibals, it's like a whole long sequence for her. Like first she has bone arrow and she hunts down the deer and then she runs into David and James. And then a whole bunch of infected attack and they have to work together to survive. So Ellie takes down a whole bunch of infected and then she's captured by them and she's about to get eaten, but she escapes and she has to go through like this whole town avoiding people and killing people. And eventually she does kill David on her own. Like she doesn't need to be rescued by Joel, at least not physically, like emotionally, mentally he needs to help her through that. But you know, she gets through all that on her own. Whereas in the show, she just runs into David and James after killing a deer and then she gets captured right away and then she does manage to escape, but she doesn't get that far and then her and David fight and she kills them. So again, she's still able to look after herself, but she doesn't seem nearly as strong and capable as she did in the game. And in fact Joel seems a lot weaker too, but that is I think a good thing because in the game he seems like an unstoppable juggernaut at times. Whereas in the show they wanted to bring him down to earth, make him more of a flawed fragile person, I suppose, which is part of why they made him older as well and had him complain about his age and he specifically mentions like he's lost some hearing in one year, he's slower and weaker than he used to be. Like I'm fine with that in his case, I just wish they hadn't nerfed Ellie as much. But despite all that time I just spent complaining, I really do want to reiterate that the last of us season one is fucking fantastic. Like this is one of the best video game adaptations ever, if not the best. It's one of the best shows I've seen in a long time, like even knowing most of what was gonna happen and most of what was coming, I was still super invested every week. Like I watched this with my family rather than watching it alone and I am super glad I did that because I got to experience it with other people, including both other people who have played the game and people who have not. And just overall yeah it's a fantastic show, like it looks fantastic, the sound design and everything is fantastic, like so many modern shows and movies are like too dark or the sound mixing is terrible so it's hard to understand what people are saying, this didn't have any issues with that. And it's just like it's not always a pleasant experience but it is always an engaging experience and that's about it. And yeah my next video was filmed before this and it'll actually be in my old bedroom so yeah that's the thing. Anyways subscribe and all that, I'll see you later. Goodbye. 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