The Last of Us (2023): Season 1

Title: The Last of Us

Year: 2023

Genre:  Action | Adventure | Drama |

Season: 1|

Runtime: 58 min/Episode

Creator: Neil Druckmann & Craig Mazin

Starring: Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsay, Anna Torv

8,7/10

After a global pandemic destroys civilization, a hardened survivor takes charge of a 14-year-old girl who may be humanity’s last hope. 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed, Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal heartbreaking journey as they both must traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.

GOOD START, LANDING ON EMPTY NOTE

The Last of Us is another HBO hit that has conquered their audience during the first season. It’s based on the 2013 video game with the same name. One of the directors for the game is directly connected to the series. It’s an ambitious saga about Ellie who get to follow across a post-apocalyptic world. The backbone of the series is that she immune to the unsettling virus and she is the key to find a cure.

The series has frequently been praised as an adequate adaption of a popular videogame in the horror-genre. Sure. Give a world a little broken structure, depressing character and a road-movie arc and it’s a success.  It’s a story that takes you from point A to point B. This is Ellie’s story meaning that Joel will die at some point of the second season, that has already been given.

For a series that is packed with profanity, post-apocalyptic theme and self-destructive characters, there’s barely any monsters involved in this series. Just like the The Walking Dead – series, the humans are far more intuitive than the monsters. This is a common practice with post-apocalypse genres.  The sad part with this stay-and-go concept is that the character who show up in one episode barely returns in the next. The characters are always on the move. The series ain’t bad but there’s nothing interesting culminating in the end. Everything seems to be spot on, but something is bother me with how the story evolves. It’s predictable as the synopsis indicate.

For a series that Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, two heavyweighter in the writing department. There’s nothing new. Nothing excited in the series. It’s like wathcing The Walking Dead all over again but with a better story. It’s like a story that has great audio but has no interesting going on. A series that could be like Seinfeld, a series about nothing. A series about bad jokes,overhumane powers and overdoing on the dialogue.

Pedro Pascal is the real deal in the series. He can’t make the worst dialgoue scenes give depths and nuance. Bella Ramsey is not as good. At the first, she’s brilliant but loses the momentum by the end. The music is decent for sure but the audio is the best part.

Overall, for someone who hasn’t played the horror-game, there was some excitement beforehand. A thrill to have series in nine weeks to follow, the hype, the cast and the built-up world. But when having seen this, it feels a little empty. The journey with the main character, Joel and Ellie feels undone by the end. It’s a shame. It had potential.