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The Last of Us (HBO Spoilers)


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On 1/23/2023 at 8:23 AM, Ramsay B. said:

Yeah. That actress did a great job in conveying the terror she felt while realizing what’s really happening. Her saying bomb this city was pretty chilling.

 

Smartest character in the show. First, I was like "Don't put your fucking fingers in there!" but then, before she even put down her tool I was like "Dracarys dracarys dracarys, brisingr brisingr brisingr!!!!) 

On 1/29/2023 at 11:15 PM, l2 0 5 5 said:

It's implied in the game that they were a couple. Bill's talk to Joel in the armory, the notes left behind, Bill's catalogue of umm.... books.... lol. Yeah, I always thought they were a couple from my first playthough, they just never showed any of it. It was more, let us show you dialogue, and you come to your own conclusions. Tonight's ep bummed me out cause they completely obliterated everything about this part of the game.  Ellie and Bill's back and forth was so damn good. And there were so many classic fights. 

Still a good ep, just didn't think it was as good as I was hearing it would be from critics. Heard on multiple podcasts, 'wait till ep 3, oh my god ep 3...' 

I think that this show is awesome precisely because it does follow the story of the original game. Because there's really no reason to change that story. However, they take advantage of the fact that this is an All-Cutscene format to... use MOAR cutscenes! :) :)  :) 

I agree that there's something lost there with the way you interact with Bill in the game. And the way you learn about his and Frank's relationship implicitly, through literal and metaphorical progression through these dudes' environment/relationship. 

But this is an adaptation done right, in my opinion. I think this story has an ability to do its own things here and there, to take advantage of its own mediums' strengths, without abandoning the actual bedrock vision of the game. I think that's a good thing. 

The game's still there :) 

 

 

On 1/30/2023 at 11:34 PM, dbunting said:

Very unexpected episode, really liked it but seems strange in a 10 episode season to take an entire one to get our main characters supplies and some meaning to teaming up and move them down the road, all the while barely showing them. I did appreciate them showing us the way these two survived and really thrived in this environment. Normally we see these places get spoiled, the "raiders" usually win and kill the "good" people and destroy what has been built. Also great touches to add his paintings to the walls in all the rooms.

I kept expecting them to show up and for us to find out the person Joel shot at was Bill and they missed each other and then started working together.

I wonder if Joel has even more regret now. If Tess had lived they could have moved there and lived the rest of their lives out like Frank and Bill. I'm sure we won't get any thoughts on that but it has to suck. Of course if we ever see his brother again they could try coming back there but I assume his brother will forever be one step farther away from Joel.

This episode was everything that the shameful emotional-blackmailing BS Steppin plotline thought it was being. Beautiful. Sensitive. And fucking art

Also, gaaaaay! And beautiful 

:D

On 1/31/2023 at 3:12 AM, Heartofice said:

Yeah honestly Episode 3 is a beautiful piece of tv. I had no idea this would the sort of thing we would be getting from a Last of Us tv show, I expected a roller coaster zombie ride, not some end of the world romance between two old men. It was gorgeously done and maybe one of the most touching romantic things I've seen on tv.. like ever. I guess there is something much more powerful seeing two people growing old together.

I have no idea if any of this was in the game, I don't remember any of it. 

I doubt if the rest of the show is like this, which might be a bit of a shame.

I don't know nothing about their ambitions, but it seems to me like you could do two seasons or more (depending on the actors' proclivities and the writing teams and so on...) of original material before you moved on to doing fixing the 2nd game's story. 

 

Barely a spoiler. There's a 2nd game! But I wanna be cool about it:

Spoiler

Hell, if I were in the room I'd argue that we should do an entire season/spinoff show where Joel and Ellie and Tommy are helping set up some town out in the boonies. They're only there for the first episode. Then they wave goodbye and drive back to Tommy's and The Mandalorian or Westeros or wherever they gotta be until they're ready to do the next Tentpole Season for the franchise. 

Y'know. 

Like Marvel.

But art

 

 

On 2/5/2023 at 11:41 PM, IFR said:

Pretty good episode, probably the weakest so far for me. I thought the scenes of bonding between Joel and Ellie were terrific, but the bandits are extremely underwhelming, particularly the leader. The show had been building up these bands of outlaws as this terrifying menace, but everytime Kathleen appeared I expected her to serve everyone brownies and ask if people have taken their vitamins.:lol:

Maybe that is what the show was going for - the banality of evil. But it is pretty hard to take this group seriously from my perspective as an audience member. It's really hard to believe that someone like Kathleen could end up as a leader to this group. She wouldn't last a minute among the gang from Blood Meridian.

Aside from that problem, it was entertaining.

Maybe after decades of abuse what those people were looking for in a leader, flawed and otherwise incapable or not, was someone who would bake them brownies and make sure they took their vitamins. 

If she had brownies to give and they had vitamins to take. 

Banality indeed.

Quote

Some smartass said something about the banality of evil. And if that's so this is the seventh circle of hell.

 

On 2/7/2023 at 8:41 PM, IFR said:

A book I quite enjoy is World War Z. An HBO adaptation would have quite a bit of potential. Sadly, I feel that the genre is so overdone at this point that the opportunity was squandered with the movie that came out.

It'll be comin' round in a couple of years. If we're not actually murdering actual each other by then. Which I hope we are not, for the record. 

I've always enjoyed zombie movies like the next person. But I enjoy the teamwork, survival, aspects of the stories. Y'know. 

 

 

But, like, even as I was slaughtering motherfuckers and having fun in Left4Dead I never felt like 100% happy about killing zombies. Seriously. Even in, like Mass Effect, I have a little less guilt about pushing the Blue Suns merc out of Dantius tower than I do about capping a random zombie in The Last of Us. 

Why? 

Because at a very fundamental level that merc made decisions that put him in that tower associated with people who were slaughtering innocents. 

The zombie is sick. 

:crying:

On 2/9/2023 at 11:19 AM, Corvinus85 said:

Yes, but at the same time, I should think the generation born in the apocalypse would develop their own phrases. Just look at how each generation of teenagers tend to develop turns of phrase. Not sure I spotted that from Ellie. But I'm not sure the writers thought of that besides the names they've given the infected.

Maybe, once you get down to it, the youngest generation has so little of value to itself that it has no choice but to reimagine and re contextualize the stories and ruins of their elders. For the sake of motivating whomever's left to be motivated if nothing else. 

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Another great episode. 

I am anxious and excited for the next parts of the story. The ----- y'know, sequence was my favorite in the whole game. One of the reasons, I think, I was so ready to bite the head off the second game when it came out and well, I didn't like it. 

....

Now I'm off to play videogames. 

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I can't help but feel that there were significant changes from the game here. Apart from Joel's situation at the end, not enough bad stuff happened. :P I loved the elderly couple in the beginning.

Tommy had a much more noticeable Texan accent than Joel. It seemed to me that Pedro was attempting a stronger Texan accent in the dialogue scenes with Tommy compared to Ellie. I find that relatable.

A lot of great interaction between Joel and Ellie in this one, from the serious moments to the lighthearted moments. Everyone loved contractors. :laugh: nice callback to Ellie confessing earlier she would believe whatever Joel told her.

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55 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Tommy had a much more noticeable Texan accent than Joel. It seemed to me that Pedro was attempting a stronger Texan accent in the dialogue scenes with Tommy compared to Ellie.

Gabriel Luna had played the games before starring in the show, so he knew exactly how to mimic Tommy's voice from the game.

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4 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I can't help but feel that there were significant changes from the game here. Apart from Joel's situation at the end, not enough bad stuff happened. :P I loved the elderly couple in the beginning.

 

While you're right, this is one of the more slower chapters of the game, with less action. It's much more story driven and there are very few infected, that you actually fight. I found something about this episode rather strange; the show as a whole is starting to remind me of The Walking Dead; if I'm being perfectly honest.

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The more I watch this show the more Bella Ramsey reminds me of my daughter.  The take no shit attitude the guts.  It’s honestly hard to watch at this point.  She even looks a little like Kate.  Same shape of face with dark hair and eyes.  

That was a really tough one.  I can understand Joel wanting to make the hard decision to try to keep Ellie safe.  I just cannot imagine walking away even if it is the right decision.

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I thought it was a really good episode. The dichotomy between Maria handling her loss vs Joel was well done as was between Tommy and Joel. Past decisions and the way they've handled them has very much led to where they each are in their lives. 

I also though they are doing really well with Joel / Ellie relationship and did justice to the scene where Ellie admits she's lost everyone she's cared for but Joel. That was a super powerful scene in the game and they handled it well.

Where they're falling just short in my opinion is the danger of the infected. I know last episode literally just happened and they don't want to overdo the major infected set pieces but I think it should be a constant danger, one that's visible rather than inferred. It doesn't need to be major pieces, maybe just a gas station here, or a run through the woods there, but a little elevation of the threat level would be nice to see. By skipping on some pieces from the game to streamline the story, they lose that constant sense of danger. Everything is so well done that I forgive it but would like just a little bit more.

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Another good, well acted episode. Also liked the older couple in the cabin from the beginning. The panic attack setting in was a surprise for me. When they got to the bridge I expected infected of some type, same for the dam. I thought they would be going there for some reason. Also never expected them to find his brother this fast. But, him not being part of the fireflies anymore makes sense why he was found, the story has to keep going past him. Ellie and Joel bonded a lot more this episode even though she knows he was going to leave her. Hopefully those who thought she wasn't holding her own in the acting dept watched this.

I wonder if the fungus has a hard time existing in the north in the winter and maybe that's why we don't see much? Maybe once spring/summer hit the fungi come back in full force like the bugs do?

So is next week the origin story of Ellie?

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16 hours ago, dbunting said:

I wonder if the fungus has a hard time existing in the north in the winter and maybe that's why we don't see much? Maybe once spring/summer hit the fungi come back in full force like the bugs do?

Presumably they could pretty easily freeze to death in the winter if caught outside.  And they don't seem to have the cognitive function to open doors or anything like that, so it's not like they could break into a closed up house for warmth or anything like that.

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42 minutes ago, briantw said:

Presumably they could pretty easily freeze to death in the winter if caught outside.  And they don't seem to have the cognitive function to open doors or anything like that, so it's not like they could break into a closed up house for warmth or anything like that.

When chasing people the infected have enough cognitive function to break open doors. And in episode 2 we saw all those infected that were just lying in the street react to sunlight. 

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Seeing the university this episode gave me some serious gameplay flashbacks in a way I didn't know I remembered! 

Otherwise I think this was a very strong episode in terms of making me get a bit more into the head of Joel, and it was a good performance from Pedro.

I have to say though, if I was Joel at this point I think I would have just dropped Ellie off in the middle of nowhere and rode my horse as far away as possible, just to get a break from her insufferable nattering. Fuck me she is such an annoying person, I don't know how he can bare to be around her. Every word out of her mouth is some wiseass unfunny crack, poorly judged bit of banter that just makes her come off like a bit of a dick.
That sort of thing is fine in small amounts but it's like 90% of her character right now and the show is trying to project it as some lovable trait. In reality I would tell her to shut up or she can find the bloody fireflies on her own. 

I'm sure its possibly too good a recreation of a teenager, but then teenagers ARE insufferable as well, and I would probably leave most of them in the middle of a fungus infested forest if they were anything like that!

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17 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I have to say though, if I was Joel at this point I think I would have just dropped Ellie off in the middle of nowhere and rode my horse as far away as possible, just to get a break from her insufferable nattering. 
 

Agree with the sentiment but without her this is a silent movie until we come across random raiders and settlements. Joel is supposed to be the quiet brooding type so he can't carry the on screen dialogue. This is the way.

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4 hours ago, dbunting said:

Agree with the sentiment but without her this is a silent movie until we come across random raiders and settlements. Joel is supposed to be the quiet brooding type so he can't carry the on screen dialogue. This is the way.

I’m 100% on board for such a show. 

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On 2/20/2023 at 1:19 AM, Nictarion said:

I instantly recognized that actress from Northern Exposure. And yeah, they were great. 

The guy is Graham Greene whom you might know as Kicking Bird in Dances with Wolves, also fantastic.

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Another great episode (Ep6) that proves Ep3 was no accident.

The relationship between Joel and Ellie they developed during the season finally comes to fruition, and it's done in a rather smooth and credible way. Nice bits of acting by Pascal and Ramsey btw.
I really like that "zombies" aren't even in the picture anymore, and that this is about people.
Simply loved the political commentary.
- This isn't communism.
- It's literally communism.

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