'The Last of Us', under the shadow of 'The Last of Us'

In 2013, the third-person action-horror video game

appeared for the Play Station 3 console .

It was an event in the digital world.

Its

was remarkable, supported both in the fight and in the survival.

Its setting was superb, with the natural twist (of nature) that it brought to the classic post-apocalyptic zombie story.

Its rhythm and the levels of intimacy that it reached at certain moments were simply something sublime, and the work didn't break into the

just because of an important limitation at the time: being an interactive creation that was played with a controller in your hands.

As a video game, perhaps it was not the best in the world precisely because it relied too much on its cinematographic part (

sobre el

) but precisely for this reason, due to the depth, seriousness and care with which it treated its story and its protagonists, it became a first-rate narrative artifact.

That the viewer would receive an adaptation of

was inevitable.

The question was whether it would be done right.

Bluntly: it has been done well.

In fact, it has been done very well.

And it has been done well for the simple reason that the adaptation is very faithful to the original.

The

is a success, no matter how you look at it, with that Pedro Pascal carrying Joel on his shoulders (a success of the series is to turn his character into someone much more

than the video game hero) all the pain in the world.

With that Bella Ramsey composing an Ellie with her own nuances and peculiarities of hers.

Obviously, HBO knows how to do things: it knows how to anabolicize all the literary scaffolding of the work, modifying certain characters (Nick Offerman's Bill, Nico Parker's Sarah) to give them more depth and presence than they had in the game, but The narrative foundation of the series is extremely faithful to the original, with specific shots that are repeated to cause the viewer the feeling of overwhelm and dim hope that they already caused in the gamer in their day.

'The Last of Us' series, broadcast on HBO

It should be remembered that, behind the scenes, in addition to Craig Mazin

, there is the director himself of both the original game (2013) and its sequel (2020)

Neil Druckman.

In other words, HBO has resorted to the original source to wrap its series in the same aesthetic sensations (the pastel tentacularity of the parasitic fungus) and auditory sensations (Gustavo Santaolalla's forlorn guitar) that already gave the game its specific flavor.

Not to mention the artistic design, for example the most characteristic enemies, the clickers, which will now become part of the global collective imagination.

Mazin's hallmark, for its part, is specified in more closed and oppressive shots, which make it similar to his previous (and extraordinary)

, with which it also shares a certain threatening touch of cosmic horror.

Something is missing from the series, yes: the action, omnipresent in the original, is here relegated to the background, which does not prevent it from offering certain adrenaline-charged moments that work as a perfect counterpoint to what HBO wants to be the core of this adaptation: character development and the plot path that marked the game.

The Last of Us

has the wickers to become not only a phenomenon, but a great series.

And it also has a silver bullet in the chamber: a second season (a sequel to the game) that further twists the moral and personal approaches proposed by the 2013 game, taking the narrative experience to a higher level and introducing almost new characters. interesting than those already known.

HBO just has to repeat with a sequel to this first installment what it did with the 2013 game to give birth to a cultural giant.

Image from the video game 'The Last of Us'.

However, beyond what this series implies in particular, what it implies as a business movement is almost more interesting;

like a canary in the mine of audiovisual culture.

In 2019, the Japanese multinational Sony (the parent company behind the Play Station console) created PlayStation Productions, a new corporate arm for video game adaptations.

It should be remembered that Sony is not exactly someone new to making movies, Sony Pictures is one of the largest producers in the world, and if they wanted to create a division focused exclusively on video game adaptation, it was for a very simple reason: the immense potential that these contained at the time of becoming audiovisual products.

That is to say, far from the mediocre adaptations that the world of videogames has suffered in the past decades,

now Sony wants to have creative control of the transfers, they want to do them with care and muscle.

And this strategy includes products such as the recent film by

or the future

, or the next

or

series .

Also, of course, is

HBO's

Leaving the Sony universe, dozens of other films and series that are based on the world of video games are waiting and that are about to hit the market, starting with the great adaptation of

It will hit theaters in March.

All this makes sense: at a time when the comic begins to show signs of exhaustion as a repository of stories and characters to transfer to the ¿great?

screen, video games are shaping up to be a good well from which to draw the mythologies and characters that will form popular culture for the next 15 or 20 years.

As a strategy, taking into account the player base around the world (especially in the generations that are joining the consumer activity), it is infallible.

And as the first knight of this stake,

series is the best possible ambassador.

The world of the HBO series has completely succumbed to the cordyceps fungus.

In the same way, the popular culture of the real world is about to succumb to digital culture.

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