The Last of Us

By leaning just enough on the source material but not so much as to lose sight of the mission, which is to deliver a gut-wrenchingly emotional and poignant story, The Last of Us is not just the perfect adaptation; it’s an adaptation that has the potential to transcend even the original game.

I loved its balance of horror and heart. It burrows under the skin and refuses to leave.

Aa prestige drama based on a prestige video game, with quality distinctions that place this story in a league of its own. ... The television adaptation is such a gripping tale of survival because it makes ample room for savagery and love, desperation and selflessness. Pedro Pascal knocks it out of the park as grizzled survivor Joel. ... Prior knowledge of the saga is not required to become entangled in this rich drama. ... An enthralling experience.

This isn’t just a breakthrough video game adaptation. It’s a great show, period.

In time, it may not be the “best [insert qualifier here].” It may just be the best.

Poignant, violent, joyous and exhilarating all at once, this isn’t just another remake, it’s a well-deserved tribute.

As heartbreakingly faithful as it is riveting and suspenseful, The Last of Us is a triumph that ends any further debate about the all-time best video game adaptation. ... At once familiar and original, action-packed and mournful. Barring some Armageddon-grade calamity, it seems destined to be HBO’s next big blockbuster.

Druckmann and Mazin have taken this unforgettable story and made it richer and more impactful, letting us live with these characters and this world in a way that we couldn’t in the game. The Last of Us is a monumental success, and in this universe of incredible darkness, Mazin and Druckmann show us the light that makes this story so powerful.

The Last of Us is the best video game adaptation of all time, and it's also a fantastic TV drama in its own right. If you're on the fence about watching it, do yourself a favour and get involved as soon as possible.

Comfortably the best adaptation of a video-game ever made: one that deepens the game’s dystopian lore, while staying true to its emotional core. Like the game, it’s a masterpiece, too.

Complex characters combined with stellar acting, a wonderfully paced story, and an emotionally engaging plot make The Last of Us a brilliant series that is now the template all other videogame-to-TV adaptations should follow.

It requires a strong stomach, for one thing. (I can’t imagine binge-watching more than one episode at a time.) But for those who are up for it, it’s a highly compelling and artfully crafted step forward for the zombie genre — and for television in general.

Through the riveting craft of it all, the taut writing, excellent direction—filmmakers like Jeremy Webb, Jasmila Žbanić, Liza Johnson, and Ali Abbasi—exemplary cinematography and moody and melancholy music, Mazin and his co-creator and co-writer Neil Druckmann—the creator of the original video game—craft something that becomes visceral and primal.

Anchored by two outstanding lead performances from Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, it delivers an enriching show for fans of the PlayStation hit, while also managing to stay welcomingly thrilling to newcomers.

Mazin, Druckmann and the directors got the vital elements of "The Last of Us" right by honoring what makes the game outstanding and making its story come alive for anyone who has never played it and never will. Nonstop action can be enough to move along stories in that format and in comic books. Real people require additional dimensionality – and here, at last, is an apocalyptic fantasy that strives to give us that along with its monsters.

Gripping, relentlessly brutal and unexpectedly moving nine-part thriller. [16 - 29 Jan 2023, p.6]

A series that effortlessly merges the various horrors of end times with the courage and clarification they can bring. ... Pascal and Ramsey are up to the task, each pushing their character from stock to specific.

“The Last of Us” turns out to be a terrific series despite its thematic similarities to “The Walking Dead.”

With impressive special effects and some sharp storytelling instincts, “Last of Us” ups the playing field for not only streaming services but movie blockbusters.

Don’t worry if you’re not a gamer, this series—the best screen adaptation of a vidgame ever—will hit you hard. Costars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey kick off the new TV year on a high note, turning familiar elements into a triumph of ferocity and feeling.

The spotty track record of videogame adaptations and glut of apocalyptic/zombie dramas receive a welcome boost from The Last of Us, which proves there’s room for more of each as long as it’s this good. A road series with mini-dramas baked into the episodes, the HBO show quickly proves itself worthy of the hype and anticipation by delivering a fully realized series graced with flesh-and-blood characters.

The Last of Us takes up the mantle The Walking Dead set down long before it left the air, picking up where that show left off instead of attempting to trod its well-worn path. ... The Last of Us operates entirely differently, keeping the action centered on Joel and Ellie throughout the main story, and providing side characters with flashback spin-offs. We get to appreciate these side characters, and even become greatly endeared to them, but within the confines of their own story.

The show’s rough-hewn center is the surrogate father-daughter bond between Joel and Ellie, but the series works best as an anthropological travelogue of post-catastrophe subcultures, teasing out the disparate ways that survivors rebuild mini-societies and create new alignments of power.

If it’s zombie spatter you want, “The Last of Us” has it by the bucketful. If, on the other hand, you’re hoping that it will upend the plague-apocalypse genre as “The Sopranos” did the mob drama or “The Wire” did the cop show — well, not quite. But with its smidgen of hope and its rejection of nihilism, “The Last of Us” has a few key mutations that make it a variant of interest.

This is no ordinary grab bag of jump scares and grisly kills: The Last of Us respects its genre but works to defy its creakiest tropes.

Fight scenes and gun battles are filmed as if the viewer is looking through the eyes of the character delivering the blows or pulling the trigger. This approach is deployed just often enough to add a sense of immediacy without feeling too much like a gimmick. The Last of Us distinguishes itself most when it veers off the path laid by its source material.

The result is a show that amplifies what a phenomenal piece of storytelling the game was in the first place, taking a video game more seriously than any adaptation has to date. This is more Cormac McCarthy than Paul W.S. Anderson, and it should appeal to both fans of the game and those who put down their controllers years ago.

The Last of Us is undoubtedly a new landmark in the seemingly impossible task of adapting video games. It’s too early to say whether it will satisfy the legions of fans who believe that Druckmann’s survivalist game is high art, in itself. But Druckmann, working with Mazin, has his fingerprints all over this tender, well-crafted and blackly comic piece.

The third episode is what elevates The Last of Us from a horror romp to something on the verge of truly special. ... Though I wouldn’t have wanted much more padding, a tiny bit of additional breathing room could have let The Last of Us achieve additional profundity in its commentary on The Way We’re Living Now, beyond what is a sincere if superficial take on darkness and light within human nature. If those, however, are my biggest complaints about your blockbuster video game adaptation? Well, you’ve done pretty well indeed,

It is essentially a smarter and much better-executed The Walking Dead, with higher production values, and a smaller and stronger cast. ... But the character work soon becomes so potent that there are long stretches without any infected, and it doesn’t feel like the series is lacking in dramatic tension or memorable incident. ... Druckmann and Mazin have turned it into something that works incredibly well as a television show.

Because The Last of Us is arriving into a medium already so saturated with comparable material. The Last of Us series does not feel like a revolution of any kind—it is simply well-made television that elevates itself slightly above some of its genre peers.

“The Last of Us” can lean too hard on action sequences, which emphasizes the uncanny surreality of the infected. But what lies beneath the chaos is the nascent bond between Joel, a rootless man who’s promised to guard Ellie. ... Through Pascal’s and Ramsey’s performances and some strong writing, this dynamic glimmers with emotion and life.

At nine episodes, it feels a little long, even if it is truncated compared to its source material. But in its scale, depiction of dread and its believable vision of friendship in disaster, The Last of Us is a rare piece of television: an adaptation that makes you want to rush out and play the game.

The Last of Us is very good. Beyond Pascal and Ramsey's excellent work, it's visually striking — both in the post-apocalyptic world it creates and the scary creatures that inhabit it — tensely directed, and populated with intriguing characters (including a terrifying tyrant-in-the-making played by Melanie Lynskey). But the Bill and Frank episode suggests an even better show might be possible if it allowed itself to open up a bit more.

"Us" isn't really a groundbreaking series, but it is well done, compelling and gripping, a superb example of a zombie story done the right way.

The high production values and the series' ability to pivot its storytelling — the third episode is a lovely and quite moving distraction from the main plot — keep it fresh, even as the show's familiarities and the rudimentary bickering between characters ("you sure do ask a lot of questions!" Joel crankily remarks to Ellie, as he'd rather walk in silence) ring all sorts of bells.

There’s a lot in The Last of Us that feels stale. But within that repetition, there are glimmers of promise: Its slick presentation, Pascal and Ramsey’s soulful performances, the show’s intermittent detours to (forgive me) flesh out the world Mazin and Druckmann have set up. Newbies to the story may find plenty to love in the series, if they can get past the trappings of the genre itself. But if you’re familiar with the game, get ready to watch it all over again, with a couple of novel twists.

The show is by turns gorgeous and harrowing, brutal and warm. From the performances to the storytelling to the aesthetic elements, it’s an exquisitely made adaptation. But it also asks viewers to absorb a whole lot of human misery without saying much that we haven’t already heard in similar shows.

Yet for all that is so clearly wonderful about this show, it’s a series that can never escape its roots. The Last of Us is hands-down one of the greatest and most inspired video game adaptations brought to screen. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? No matter how sharp the writing, how inspired the visuals, how awards-worthy the performances, this will always be an interactive story forced into a passive medium.

The scope is vast, for better (soaring vistas, extensive cityscapes) and for worse (one of the premiere's two prologues is pointless). There are big-deal guest leads. The action is fine, functional. One episode completely shifts the game's canon, but some scenes get recreated shot-for-shot. That may work best for newbies, or fans who prefer adaptations barely adapted. It contributes to the feeling of watching someone else's replay.

“The Last of Us” is certainly well-made and mostly absorbing, anchored by solid performances from Pascal and Ramsey. ... But the story told in “The Last of Us” — from the game’s writer Neil Druckmann, teaming up with “Chernobyl” creator Craig Mazin — isn’t especially curious or interested in lingering in this place long enough to suss out the details.

Superior zombie series that takes a little too long to get around to what it's really about — us.