The series is based on the famous game created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann for HBO. The series has a very high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but there are few notable professional awards. I can mention only MTV Movie & TV Awards in several categories. What is the reason for this discrepancy? Let's look into it.
The structure of the series consists of a cross-cutting plot — the journey of Joel and Ellie to the hospital to create a vaccine that will save all of humanity.
At the same time, the series has entire episodes dedicated to individual stories. It’s much better than telling everything linearly, from the point of view of the main characters, who meet different strangers, and then show flashbacks of what happened to the strangers before they met the main characters. Tarantino used this method in Pulp Fiction, where each short story began with a new hero and then at some point, they converged with the rest of the heroes.
Some of these individual stories are very interesting.
In particular, a very dramatic story in the third episode about Bill and Frank. A very powerful finale, when they drank poison together, reference to Romeo and Juliet.
Also, I liked the seventh episode about Ellie and her friend Riley Abel at the mall. It’s strange how they are interested in things that are banal for us, such as an escalator or a carousel. I suppose the scriptwriters looked at a lot of references, such as the Water World. But the dialogue between Ellie with her friend and their relationship looks very artificial. Two teenage girls usually don’t talk to each other like that.
I liked the first episode when the boy came to quarantine. Guards checked him and the indicator went red. The woman guard said “We will cure you, feed you, give you toys” and she held his hand. Then we see his body in a pile of corpses thrown. Very touching image, understandable without words.
Such scenes set the framework for the plot: the official authorities are not ready to save the infected. In general, as the story progresses, the situation becomes familiar. Human society is divided into three camps.
1. Official authorities who hide the truth from people to further control resources (episode 1)
2. Opposition group, fights against the official authorities, but their methods are sometimes even worse than the authorities use (episode 4).
3. Wild gangs that do not obey anyone at all and just pursue their benefit (episode 8).
Replace the Cordyceps virus with Covid 19 and the post-apocalyptic world will look pretty similar to our modern one.
Which group should you join? None.
“The happiness of the whole world is not worth one tear on the cheek of an innocent child.” F.M. Dostoevsky.
Why? At least because anyone’s or even a group's ability to save the world is insignificant. If this film describes a way out, then it is not to try to solve global problems and not join any of the groups, but to try to remain a man himself and, if necessary, save the one who is nearby.
But when Joel killed Marlene, who was already injured, he made a negative impression. Albeit judging by the plot, Marlene turns out to be a villain. At the end, she says: “What would Ellie do herself? I’m sure she would have made the right choice.” I would suggest an answer for Joel: “Why didn’t you ask her before the operation, but simply put her to sleep with anesthesia if you are sure that she would have chosen correctly?”
But the fact that Joel lied to Ellie, about how everything was there, is a bad decision. Joel looks like a soulless swindler in the finale.
The ending was pretty predictable overall. In general, I feel that I have already seen all this separately in different films. Although filmed, of course, qualitatively, it can’t be argued.
To justify the creators, I can say that when making any screen adaptation you are always in a rather rigid framework of a given story. And game adaptations are no exception.
Conclusion
From a cinematic point of view, I’m not very happy with the show. A little bit boring and dark. The casting could be better. They use standard Hollywood rules to cast the most famous actors at the moment and not those who fit best. There’s also no full-fledged romance line. but from a moral point of view, this story is definitely worth watching.
I will try to assess the main parameters of the film that seem important to me using a 1–10 point scale.
Selection of Actors 6
Innovation 5
Soundtrack 5
Meaning 9
Final 6
Total 6.6
Thanks for your time.
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