(The editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for “The Last of US” Season 2, section 3)
Games are the only art form where the player makes the story happen, whether it means to save the princess from the monster in the castle or murder an entire hospital full of people to save a person immune to Cordyceps Infection whose death can lead to a cure. You have to make Joels (Troy Baker in the games, Pedro Pascal in the series) choices to end the game, whether you agree with them or not. That’s what really hurts.
A huge part of adapting from gaming to another medium is to find out what needs to change about history when it is no longer designed around someone who plays, and maybe no adaptation understands this challenge better than “The last of us. “No amount of load screen tributes, lore drops and Easter eggs, or lovingly recreated environments stands for good story.
A good example of how the show achieves this sits in the middle of section 3 of Season 2, “The road.” Author Craig Mazin And director Peter Hoar Stretch the time between Joel’s murder in the hands of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and Ellies (Bella Ramsey) Decision to hunt for their murderers by first throwing a hospital stay in front of Ellie, and then a much more reluctant Tommy (Gabriel Luna) who wants to put a Posse properly.
This means getting the Jackson Council’s condition. We do not see much enthusiasm for the assignment from the citizens of Jackson during the Council’s session to discuss the proposal, until the resident asshole Seth (Robert John Burke) stands up and defends the need to avenge on the people who killed one of their own. Ellie’s speech is a little more nuanced – being a society requires that you seek justice for each other, something outsiders will not do – but fail to win the vote. And when psychologist Gail (Catherine O’Hara) correctly diagnosed, Ellie lied. She does not accept the Council’s decision. She and your (Isabella Merced) go villain and go to Seattle, with Seth’s help.
The Council’s scene is completely original to the series, which means that there are so many ways that mazin and hoar could have handled it. A show with various priorities may have decided the advice completely and cut from Jesse (Young Mazino) and Ellie’s heated discussion the night before to the verdict. Another version of “The Last of US” on a smaller budget may have had only Ellie made a presentation to Council-Berries of her reading from her prepared speech, a certain coverage of the serious but encouraging faces of Tommy and Mary, and a remorseful twang on Gustavo SantaoLla points when the movement fails.
Instead, the sequence lasts over seven minutes with camera positions and something like 44 different perspectives on all characters participating. While Hoar and Kinematographer Ksenia Sereda uses some pictures to create a sense of space in widths, much of the coverage from the perspective for the people in the room – Ellie, Dina, Tommy, Jesse, Maria, Gail and Seth, but also everyone who speaks (shouts to Haig Sutherland and his opinion). The most repeated angle is one from the left seats of the house and puts our view of Ellie on a diagonal with Seth, and then Carlisle (Hiro Kanagawa), which advocates for mercy as a matter of principle. We see the whole community represented in depth in that framework.
That level of detail is only possible when you invest as much in City Hall meeting scenes as you do in zombie attacks. “People ask,“ What is the difference between prestige -TV and not prestige -TV? “And the answer is not (that) one is better than the other.
Sereda also provides a special sensitivity to capture views on the series through the camera and lenses she uses for “The Last of Us” – during Season 2, these Alexa 35 and the Cooke S4X were. “I was looking for lenses where you can have this connection of the close -up and what you can see around,” Sereda said. “We really wanted (few) the close -up to work at different levels, for (there are) so many structures and layers of things you can see. When working from the characters’ perspective you have to be inside, but at the same time you have to be very linked to the environment around you.”
The environment does not need to be production designer Don Macaulay’s spectacular rebuilt ruins from 2003 either. Sereda’s camera is mostly still in the council sequence, with just a small handheld shaking, and a painful, knife -twisting move to the right over Ellie’s face when the “no” voters pour in. Her and Hoar Composition Choices give the closest visual feeling of being present in the scene, so much that she describes the camera as “breathing.”
“It gives this very beautiful movie experience, and I really love working with actors with the close-ups. It is-my heart is there. Because it is about people, it is about following the characters, and I really want to support the viewer’s experience with our cinematic tools, to stay very linked to (the emotions) that go through.
Mazin’s heart is with the people too. Showing the complexity of society in Jackson will only be more important as a counterpoint when we learn more about WLF and the cult -like scars, which have made completely different choices but are full of people with the same slopes and worries as in Jackson.
“The arguments that are articulated there are all valid in their own way,” Mazin said. “You can’t actually survive without someone like Joel or someone like Seth, who is willing to just throw blows to protect the people they love. But if that’s all you have, life itself becomes quite brutal and unforgiving, which is why Bill needed Frank and Frank needed Bill.”
Of course, it is easy when it is only Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) and they are in love with each other. Ellie’s path is harder, filled with people who love her and want to stop her, love her and want to help her, disgust her and want to help, or who have no opinion on the whole Seattle thing. The Council sequence gives us into all these perspectives, immediately and invisible, which only good filmmaking can.
“When the people who help you are people you don’t like either, (can) you forgive that person? Can any of us forgive any of us?” Said mazin. “Is it possible, especially in today’s world, for us to keep two things in our mind at the same time? Things number one, this person has done and said bad things; thing number two, this person has a beautiful part of those who would sacrifice and suffer for me. There are people who are both of these things and how we handle it is part of what the story is about.”
“The Last of Us” is now flowing at Max.
