Last week, Craig Mazin’s screen adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us achieved the single most remarkable feat as a video game adaptation, landing 24 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. This included Outstanding Lead Actor nods for the show’s two leads, Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie, as well as best guest actor for Nick Offerman in the role of Bill and Anna Torv as Tess. The staggering nomination count also includes Outstanding Casting, Outstanding Directing for the episode “Long, Long Time,” Outstanding Writing, and Outstanding Drama Series. This is still only a portion of the many nominations, all richly deserved. The show was an absolute masterpiece, and for multiple reasons. It’s only right that it has received so many accolades.
As excited as I had been for the release of the show, I was also quite anxious, and I think anyone who has seen a video game adapted into film or TV would understand and agree. Historically, game adaptations are pretty terrible. Even after 30 years, I still have nightmares about the Super Mario Brothers movie. Sure there have been some crowd pleasers like Sonic the Hedgehog, Detective Pikachu, and the latest release of The Super Mario Bros Movie, but these movies are aimed mostly at younger audiences and don’t adhere to a particular storyline within their respective franchises. The challenges to create a faithful video game adaptation have always felt insurmountable. One need only recall the disastrous Mortal Kombat films of the 90s to be assured of this (though to be fair, the original 1995 film is campy and fun, so at least it’s watchable).
It’s hard to pin down one singular reason why video game adaptations fail, but perhaps the most common thread among them all is that they lack the faithful authenticity that make the games themselves memorable and great. You can’t take a badass character like Raiden, a literal god of thunder, and relegate him to a quirky side character in robes that is only seen in his trademark conical hat for all of 30 seconds. Or turn Bowser into some creepy nightmare fuel mafia boss in Manhattan. Trying to alter key aspects of a game’s story and lore for the sake of “Hollywood re-imagination” is always bound to fail. If you can’t succeed in winning over the core fanbase of the media you’re trying to adapt, you sure as hell aren’t going to be able to convince a brand new audience.
What gave me the first glimmer of hope was learning that Craig Mazin was tapped as the showrunner, and that Neil Druckmann, the game’s writer and creative director, was also brought on board as a creative advisor. Then to see Gustavo Santaolalla tapped to provide the musical score gave me another burst of hope. There was a clear indication that the studio knew that to make this work, they needed to lean on what had made the game great. And to do that, they needed the foundations upon which it was built.
And boy, did they succeed.
I don’t need to point out the perfect scene for scene, word for word moments that encapsulate the entire series. I don’t need to point out the perfect recreations of the settings, the clothes, the various types of infected from clickers to runners to bloaters. By now, if you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen plenty of that ad nauseum all over the Internet. But it bears repeating, because it worked. And it proved something that Hollywood has tried to convince us was not possible. Video game worlds, stories, lore, characters, can and do translate to the screen, if given the proper care, and if the core themes of the story are honored. Sure, not everything makes sense to try and adapt. But that’s where creative liberty must find a happy compromise with the source material. We saw that front and center as early as the show’s third episode.
If you’re unfamiliar with the source material, the episode “Long, Long Time” centers nearly exclusively around the doomsday prepper Bill’s relationship with his partner Frank over the span of about 16 years. In the game however, we never meet Frank (at least not alive), and Bill is a very cold, set-in-his-ways survivalist who prefers his solitude while keeping both humans and infected at bay in the most elaborate ways possible. In the game, we only spend a few in-game hours with Bill, where we learn that Frank left him because he couldn’t stand Bill’s refusal to even attempt to connect with others, and build a more fulfilling life than one being behind a massively armored wall of his own making. Frank’s choice to leave ultimately ends in his demise, since, unlike Bill, Frank is not nearly as prepared for the realities of the violent and unpredictable world that they now share. This loss is immensely painful to Bill, which we see only in the few brief moments after discovering his body. In the end, Bill will never change, and that is his great tragedy as it exists in the game.
The show takes a drastically different turn with Bill’s character arc, but does not eliminate the core aspects of his personality, nor lessen the tragedy of his circumstances. Still a doomsday prepper, Bill happens upon Frank after the latter stumbles into one of his traps a few years after the infection began. Bill is at first hostile to Frank, but eventually warms to him, since Frank’s personality of being friendly, thoughtful, compassionate, articulate, runs so counter to his own. They find companionship in each other, and the qualities of each support that of the other. Frank is someone that needs protecting, but Bill is someone that needs loving. There is conflict over the years and Frank often is frustrated with Bill’s stubbornness and unwillingness to connect with other survivors, but the difference here is that Frank doesn’t resent him for it. He is patient, forgiving, and does small things to remind Bill that the world remains inherently good, if only in the bites of a few fresh strawberries. In the end, after many happy years together, each complimented by the strengths of the other, and despite many adversities, they meet their end on their own terms, satisfied. Bill has been given a purpose, and Frank has been given a home.
This is just one example of the show’s departures from the game that work in unexpected but beautiful ways. Bill is still Bill; still gruff, unkempt, crass, and eccentric. Frank still wants more from life than the survivalist lifestyle that Bill offers. But the difference here is that those conflicting personalities are okay. The essence of who they are didn’t have to change to convey a truly heartbreaking love story. And that is why this show is being lauded with so many Emmy nods.
I’ve always had a profound love and respect for The Last Of Us and what it achieved as a video game with its character building and storytelling. It has been frustrating trying to explain this for many years to people who are not gamers, about why this story was so impactful to me. The care that Craig Mazin and his team put into the show, the loyalty to the source material, the departures that made thematic sense, birthed an adaptation that is both beloved by fans of the original and accessible and fully digestible to anyone experiencing the story for the first time. To have non-gamer friends reach out to me and tell me how much they loved the show, how much it has piqued their interest about getting into video games because they “didn’t know games had stories like that” is so validating as a gamer and educator. I always knew it to be true, but HBO has put it up on a pedestal with a megaphone, for all the world to hear.
