In episode seven of The Last of Us, “Left Behind,” Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is taken on a late-night expedition to see a relic and wonder of the past: the mall. Even in “non-post-apocalyptic” (so we tell ourselves) America, said milieu has become something of a relic, regardless of remaining a “novelty” to those who didn’t grow up with it as the end all, be all of hangout locations (see: Billie Eilish in the video for “Therefore I Am”). To Ellie, taken there by Riley Abel (Storm Reid), her best friend and former roommate at the FEDRA military school, it is just such a novelty.
Although Ellie is initially reluctant to accompany her bestie on this mysterious nocturnal journey, Riley soon makes good on her promise of it being “the best night” of Ellie’s life. Which, yes, is a testament to how bleak things have gotten. After the two sneak into the complex where the endless slew of shops is housed, Riley sets up the majesty for a first-time viewer of the mall by telling Ellie to go ahead of her and call out once she’s gone through the hallway and turned right. When Ellie announces, “I’m here, now what?,” Riley turns every light on in the place to reveal the beautiful embodiment of capitalism in all its decayed glory.
Ellie, usually unimpressed by just about everything, stares out at the commercial abyss in stunned wonder. A classic case of being glamored by the bells and whistles of capitalism. Almost like an Eastern bloc defector in the Cold War creeping into America to see what all the fuss is about. To paraphrase what Ruben Östlund said during most of his interviews promoting Triangle of Sadness, “Capitalism won over communism during the Cold War because it was sexier.” In short, Reagan had the snappier quotes (e.g., “Socialism only works in two places: heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it”). And, talking of quotes, one thing Östlund actually did say during an interview was, “Capitalism is so good at exploiting all our needs and all our fears, where we live, our food, and makes money out of our creativity and everything we do.” In other words, it knows how to seduce better than Peitho.
Watching Ellie unwittingly absorb capitalism’s neon seduction without appearing to be aware of or understand its detriments makes it all the more facile for her to become enamored of “the way it used to be.” That is to say, before the overrunning of the Earth by fungally-controlled zombies. And, as Riley assures her, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” we can see that’s very true when Ellie is additionally wowed by the mere presence of a working escalator. Although Riley had only planned on billing four aspects of the mall as “wonders,” she chooses to call the escalator one as well, seeing how much it dazzles Ellie. The second is a merry-go-round, the third is a photobooth (typically overpriced at five dollars) and the fourth is the arcade—particularly meta seeing as how The Last of Us is based on a video game. But the game referenced in this episode is Mortal Kombat II, which Ellie has a poster of in her room at military school.
When Riley confesses that she’s leaving Boston that night for good (stationed elsewhere by the Fireflies she’s joined up with), Ellie, in her state of sadness and rage, nearly opts out of the fourth-turned-fifth wonder of the mall: the Halloween costume shop. Unable to repress her lovelorn feelings, she goes back into the bowels of the mall when she hears a scream she assumes is coming from Riley, only to find it’s a sound effect of one of the props in the costume shop. The two then proceed to find love in a hopeless place, as they both give in to the romance that only capitalism can furnish, even in its “dormancy.” Kissing each other after Etta James’ “I Got You Babe” ends, one might say it was all the proverbial “wining and dining” Riley did that got Ellie to finally surrender to her true feelings. For, even in the post-apocalypse, girls just wanna be shown you care through material things (like volume two of a pun book).
Which is perhaps why the most depressing aspect of “Left Behind” isn’t that Ellie and Riley will not have a happy ending after at last admitting their affection for one another, but that the allure of the mall (and all it represents), in spite of being theoretically defunct after an apocalypse, will not die. Its metaphor lives on (for you can’t kill an idea, etc.). This ultimate emblem of consumer culture can still manage to hypnotize and seduce people. Even if it’s a person who doesn’t know any better about the effects of capitalism—you know, the ones that ultimately lead to things like the level of global warming that can cause a fungal infection to adapt to body temperatures and become hospitable in humans, thereby creating the post-apocalyptic state in The Last of Us in the first place. That a ravenous zombie ends up attacking them in the final scenes feels only too poignant as well, considering that ravenous zombies were (and are) the primary clientele of the mall in its heyday.
Leading one to ask, from within the context of the show: was it really “better” then, when places like the mall functioned to make us all feel as though we were “civilized” members of a “society”? Or should the one benefit of a post-apocalypse be that you don’t have to feel like you’re still constantly being brainwashed to “want” useless things (like, as Ellie and Riley point out, lingerie)? Then again, considering Ellie still has to do pre-apocalypse shit like PE, it seems unclear what, exactly, is meant to truly differentiate our current climate of societally-imposed expectations and misplaced obsessions from a post-apocalyptic one.
The release of The Last of Us in 2013 already marked a remarkable shift in narrative tone for big-budget, so-called “AAA” games. However, for some of us, 2014’s DLC chapter, The Last of Us: Left Behind, proved to be even more remarkable. It took mechanics that, in the game proper, had been used in nail-biting sequences of life-or-death desperation and repurposed them as the stuff of bonding and relationship-building, leading us to feel Ellie’s connection with Riley not just through cutscenes and pre-written dialogue but through play, in the purest sense of the word.
Now, the episode of HBO’s adaptation based on Left Behind is here, and it’s very good on its own terms. The storytelling fundamentals still work, even with the interactivity that made the game so striking removed. (A number of sequences built around that interactivity, including one in which Ellie and Riley have a contest in which they throw bricks to break car windows, and one in which they hunt each other with water rifles, are understandably totally absent in the episode.) However, because Left Behind was a particularly remarkable example of what’s possible when AAA mechanics are used in new and exciting ways, I don’t feel that there was really any hope of this episode reaching the same highs. The game was one of the very best, most innovative and moving AAA experiences of the decade in which it was released. This is—and I don’t mean this as an insult at all—a very good episode of a mostly very good TV series, and it does benefit from a few music cues that the game lacks. On top of that, Bella Ramsey and Storm Reid are both exceptional, and defixfnitely make this story and its deeply felt emotions their own. Let’s get into it.
A tale of two malls
First, let me touch on the biggest change between this episode and the game on which it’s based. In both, Joel’s been seriously injured, and Ellie must find some supplies with which to treat his wound. Here in the show, we experience Ellie’s mall flashback while she rummages for supplies in a house where she and Joel are hiding out, and the only real thematic throughline between the action of the “present” and the “past” of the episode is that what Ellie goes through in the past informs our understanding of why she’s so desperate not to lose Joel in the present.
Screenshot: Naughty Dog
In the game, she’s actually got Joel locked up in an old storefront at a Colorado mall, and the flashbacks to her night at the mall with Riley are interspersed with action set in the “present” in which she searches this other mall high and low for medical supplies. Playing the DLC, you probably spend about as much time in the Colorado mall as you do in the Boston one, and as Ellie, you must fight infected stalkers, solve some environmental puzzles, and survive some very challenging combat encounters with men who are hunting Joel and Ellie. The Colorado mall also has a number of details that trigger associations for us as players with the Boston mall. For instance, both have a restaurant chain called Fast Burger, and in the pocket of a body she’s searching, Ellie finds a strip of photos created by the same type of photo booth she and Riley use at the mall in Boston.
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Meanwhile, all TV show Ellie has to do is look in the kitchen for a needle and thread. She doesn’t know how easy she’s got it.
This hopeless situation
In the episode’s opening scene, the injured Joel tells her to leave and she says “Joel shut the fuck up!” reminding us, as the last episode emphasized and this one will drive home, that she has known too much loss already, and she’s not about to give up on him.
He tells her to go to Tommy. She covers him with a jacket, gives him a fuck you look, and walks out of the room, and into the flashback that dominates the episode.
She’s running listlessly in circles in a high school gymnasium. On her Walkman (yes, an actual Sony Walkman, which she also has in the game) she’s listening to “All or None” by Pearl Jam. It’s from the 2002 album Riot Act, so it would exist in the show’s timeline where the outbreak occurred in 2003. Without spoiling anything for those who haven’t played The Last of Us Part II, Pearl Jam does figure into the game in a way that likely won’t, for timeline reasons, play out the same in the show, so this at least lets the band’s work be heard in the TV series.
Screenshot: HBO
(Incidentally, none of this stuff with Ellie in school is from the game. Some of it may be based on material in the comic book series The Last of Us: American Dreams, but as I haven’t read that series, I can’t say for sure.)
Soon, a bigger girl starts giving Ellie shit, telling her to pick up the pace so that the whole group doesn’t get punished. When Ellie says she doesn’t want to fight about it, the girl says tauntingly, “You don’t fight. Your friend fights. She’s not here anymore, is she?” With that, Ellie decides she does want to fight after all.
Cut to some time later, and Ellie’s sporting a nasty shiner. A FEDRA official, Cpt. Kwong, notes that her behavior has been particularly bad for the past few weeks and that his bad-cop approach in response—tossing her in the hole multiple times—hasn’t worked, so he tries the good-cop approach, giving her a heartfelt talk in which he suggests that she’s too smart to throw her life away, but that seems like exactly what she’s determined to do. She can either keep misbehaving and end up a grunt, doing grunt work until she dies in one unfortunate circumstance or another, he says, or she can swallow her pride and someday become an officer. His impulse is rooted in a bleak view of humanity—”if we go down, the people in this zone will starve or murder each other, that much I know”—but Ellie nonetheless seems persuaded, for the moment.
Ellie’s room, featuring a poster for Mortal Kombat II
Later, Ellie’s in her room as the rain falls outside. She’s reading an issue of Savage Starlight, the significance of which I first talked about in my recap of episode five.
Setting the comic down, she stares at the vacant bed across the room before a lights out call prompts her to try going to sleep. For a bit, the camera lingers on details in the room, like a small stack of cassettes that includes A-ha’s greatest hits compilation and an Etta James tape, both of which feature songs we’ll be hearing before the night is out. Also on Ellie’s wall are dinosaur drawings, space shuttle diagrams, and, amusingly, a poster for the 1987 sci-fi comedy Innerspacestarring Martin Short, Meg Ryan, and Dennis Quaid.
We also see a poster for Mortal Kombat II. Yes, this reflects one of the biggest changes to the source material that we’ll get to later in the episode. However, what you may not know is that, when Left Behind was remade for The Last of Us Part I, the developers also snuck a Mortal Kombat II poster into Ellie’s room there, confirming (via retcon) that the game does at least exist in the game’s universe as well, likely because they knew by that point that MKII was going to be taking the place of The Turning in the TV adaptation.
Riley and Ellie’s reunion gets off to a rough start when Riley (Storm Reid, Euphoria) sneaks into the room and puts her hand over the mouth of the sleeping Ellie. Ellie panics, knocks Riley to the floor, and grabs her switchblade before she realizes who her attacker is. When she sees that it’s actually her best friend, the exposition starts flying fast. Riley’s been gone for three weeks because, after a long time spent “talking about liberating the QZ,” she’s actually decided to do something.
Screenshot: Naughty Dog
This triggers complicated feelings in Ellie, who refuses Riley’s request to come with her and have “the best night of your life” because she has to get up in a few hours for drills “where we learn to kill Fireflies.” Yeah, these friends are in a tough spot, seemingly on opposite sides of an ideological (and real) conflict. As Riley predicted, though, Ellie quickly relents, the chance to spend a few hours with the friend she’s been missing so much apparently too tough to pass up.
What’s FEDRA vs. Fireflies between friends?
After they make their escape, Ellie is surprised that Riley seems less inclined toward conflict than usual, telling her, “You can’t fight everything and everyone. You can pick and choose what’s important.” “Are they teaching you this at Firefly University?” Ellie asks, and it turns out they are. A minute later, as they’re sneaking through an old apartment building, Ellie’s flashlight starts giving out. “Firefly lights are better,” Riley teases. When Ellie declares that “one point for the anarchists,” Riley says, “We prefer freedom fighters.”
In a moment that’s new for the show, Ellie and Riley find a man’s body in a hallway, with some pills and a bottle of hard liquor nearby, which they snag and take swigs from on the rooftop. In the game, they instead raid the camp of a man they were on friendly terms with named Winston, who, remarkably for someone in their world, died of natural causes. He has some booze in a cooler that you can drink. The show’s Ellie handles the liquor much better than her game counterpart, who spits it out.
After begging Riley to let her hold her gun, Ellie asks, “So, what happened, you started dating some Firefly dude and was like, ‘Uhhh, this is cool, I think I’ll be a terrorist’?” It’s a striking line because it’s both an obvious joke and it also seems to be Ellie perhaps trying to feel out Riley’s attitude toward boys, as if she’s trying to determine if there’s any chance Riley reciprocates her feelings. (Nothing like this is said in the game.) Soon, Riley tells the truth: she encountered a woman—Marlene—who asked her what she thought of FEDRA. Riley replied with her honest opinion, “they’re fascist dickbags,” and with that, she was in. Ellie starts to push back, regurgitating some of the same bullshit Cpt. Kwong told her earlier about FEDRA holding everything together, but rather than let it devolve into an argument, Riley says they’re on a mission, and leads them onward, hopping across many a rooftop on the way to their destination: the mall.
Screenshot: HBO
When they arrive, Riley arranges a pretty cool reveal for Ellie, having her friend stand in the darkened shrine to capitalism before flipping on the power. Ellie gazes in awe as everything becomes illuminated. Riley promises to show her “the four wonders of the mall,” and their adventure truly begins.
Take on me
The Last of Us becomes the latest prestige TV series to use the A-ha hit “Take on Me,” a song that also figures into the game’s sequel, as Ellie experiences the wonder of escalators, or as she calls them at first, “electric stairs,” for the first time. Amazed by the contraption, she races down them, races back up them, walks in place, and, perhaps trying to impress her crush and probably feeling the effects of that swig of alcohol she took earlier, just generally acts like a total goofball.
As they make their way toward Riley’s first wonder (which is now the second wonder because Ellie was so wowed by the escalator), they pass a movie theater with a poster out front for a film in the Dawn of the Wolf series, the Last of Us universe’s stand-in for Twilight. Briefly stopping to regard the display at a Victoria’s Secret, Riley comments on how strange it is to her that people once wanted that stuff, then starts laughing while trying to imagine Ellie wearing the lacy lingerie. Riley moves on, but Ellie takes a moment to check her look in the window, clearly concerned about the impression she might make on Riley tonight.
Just like heaven
Riley tells Ellie to close her eyes, and as she leads her by the hand to the mall’s next wonder, we’ve gotten enough insight into Ellie’s feelings that we can imagine how exciting it must be for her, that high school electricity you might feel at the slightest physical contact with the person you’ve been dreaming about.
Screenshot: Naughty Dog
The wonder is indeed worthy of the build-up: a stunning carousel, lit up in golden lights. This is, of course, straight out of the DLC, the source of some of its most iconic images, but new here is the fact that the carousel plays a music-box version of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” and I think the lyrics of that song sum up how Ellie feels in this moment pretty well. Like the game on which it’s based, this episode is full of unspoken emotion, which makes it all the more effective. Ellie’s smile, beaming at Riley as the carousel spins, says more than words ever could. Find someone who looks at you the way Ellie looks at Riley here. The two have another drink, and Ellie continues to bask in Riley’s presence.
But such moments never last, and as the carousel grinds to a halt, Ellie’s mind is interfering with what her heart feels, turning over questions again about Riley’s allegiance to the Fireflies. “Did you really leave because you actually think you can liberate this place?” she asks, making the question sound every bit as dismissive as it reads. When Riley protests that it’s not a fantasy, that the Fireflies have set things right in other QZs, Ellie tells her that they could do that too, “if you come back. We’re, like, the future.”
Screenshot: HBO
Riley doesn’t seem hopeful about her prospects with FEDRA, telling Ellie that Kwong has her lined up for sewage detail. To Kwong, Riley is doomed to the kind of grunt work she told Ellie she could avoid if she plays her cards right. This is new for the show, and makes it that much more clear why Riley wants a life outside of what FEDRA has in store for her.
Pictures of you
Next up on Riley’s tour of wonders is the photo booth, another classic moment from the game. When the DLC first launched in 2014, this moment felt impactful because it featured some then-novel Facebook integration, allowing you to upload images of the specific poses you had Ellie and Riley strike to your feed. It was a way for people to share the experience and connect over their feelings about it. It’s a bit strange to see a moment that was initially designed not just for interactivity but for social media integration be recreated without these elements that once made it so special. It’s still a sweet scene, of course, but this is one case where the game will always be the definitive experience for me. At least the show’s Ellie and Riley actually get a printout of their photos, albeit faded and colorless. The game’s duo got only their memories of the experience.
As they head to the next wonder, Riley talks it up, saying “it’s pretty dang awesome and it might break you.” Ellie tells her not to oversell it, but she hasn’t. She tells Ellie to stop and listen, and in the distance is the unmistakable cacophony of a video arcade. Yeah, Ellie is stoked. Standing before Raja’s Arcade in all its noisy glory, she says, “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Mortal Kombat II vs. The Turning
The arcade’s got Centipede and Tetris, Frogger and Daytona USA, all alive and ready to be played. But there’s one game they want to play most: Mortal Kombat II.
This is one of the episode’s biggest departures from the game. There, the machines in the arcade remain off, and the most Ellie can do is imagine playing with them. (As I discovered when re-playing Left Behind for this recap, there’s a hidden trophy you can get here, a little self-deprecating joke from Naughty Dog. If you approach and interact with a Jak X Combat Racing arcade machine in the back corner, Ellie will imagine playing it for a bit. When she’s done, she comments to herself, “That game is stupid,” and you get the trophy, called Nobody’s Perfect. Oof, was Jak X really that bad?)
Screenshot: Naughty Dog
In the game, it’s not Mortal Kombat II that they play, but a fictional fighting game called The Turning, and Ellie can only play it with her imagination. As Riley narrates the action, and as Ellie imagines it so vividly that she can hear the game’s announcer as well as the sound effects of battle, you enter a series of onscreen inputs to pull off attacks, blocks, dodges, and, finally, an ultra kill. Yes, The Turning was clearly inspired by Mortal Kombat, so the genuine article makes for a pretty fitting replacement.
In his own commentary piece, my colleague Kenneth makes a strong argument that something is lost by having the characters actually play a game, rather than merely imagining one. I definitely agree that the way it plays out in the game is much more poignant. It’s just one more thing that Ellie will never get to really experience. At the same time, I think the interactivity of the sequence was central to its impact, that just seeing Ellie imagine the game and input sequences would have little of the same effect that the scene conjures through the device of having you do it, and in lieu of that, I think swapping in Mortal Kombat II, a game so many of us have our own memories of playing, allows us to feel some deeper connection to the scene. For me, it’s another instance, like the photo booth, where the TV show was never going to fully recapture the power of the game on which it’s based.
Screenshot: HBO
Kiss me, kill me
Bella Ramsey does a great job of capturing the intense excitement and supreme cluelessness of a gamer girl who’s literally never played an arcade game before, and it’s fun to watch both her and Reid react to the game’s legendary sound effects, and to Mileena’s famous fatality. Eventually, playing as Baraka, Ellie gets a win on Riley, who tells her how to do his fatality. Baraka impales Mileena on his blades and the girls lose it, and in the excitement, we can tell, even if Riley can’t, that Ellie really wants to kiss her. The moment passes, though, and Ellie protests that she has to be back home in bed soon. However, Riley tells her that she got her a gift, and that’s enough to get Ellie to tag along for a bit longer.
In the food court, Riley’s got a little camp, where she gives Ellie volume two (actually “volume too” lol) of Will Livingston’s series of pun books, the same one she’s been torturing Joel with throughout the series. In the game, Riley gives it to Ellie just after you ride the carousel, and you can spend a while reading jokes to Riley if you like. (My favorite of the bunch: What’s a pirate’s favorite letter? ‘Tis the C.)
In the show, however, Ellie’s delight in the new treasure trove of punny goodness is short-lived, as she finds a bunch of explosives Riley has made. Riley says that she would never let them be used on or anywhere near Ellie, but Ellie doubts that her supervisors would care what Riley has to say about that, and she storms off.
Riley gives chase and tells Ellie that she’s leaving, that this is her last day in Boston, which is enough to get Ellie to stop. “I asked if you could join so we could go together,” Riley says, “but Marlene said no.” In the game, Riley phrases this sentiment a bit differently, telling Ellie that Marlene “wants you safe at that stupid school. I’m not even supposed to come see you.” The reasons why Marlene might be looking out for Ellie from afar—even before knowing Ellie was immune to cordyceps—will become clear in time, if you don’t know them already. Despite Riley’s heartfelt plea, expressing her desire to spend some of her little time left in Boston with Ellie and to say goodbye on good terms, Ellie remains furious, and storms off again.
Love and truth in the Halloween shop
She thinks better of it, though, and turns around before she gets too far. Trudging back through the mall, she hears screams and fears the worst. Charging into the store the screams are coming from, she’s confronted with a spooky sight indeed: some sort of mechanical Halloween jumpscare device letting out the pre-recorded shrieks. Here it is, the Halloween store, the final wonder Riley had in store for her. (In the game, you actually enter the Halloween store first upon arriving at the mall. This scene effectively combines that one and one near the end of the DLC.)
Riley’s hiding out in the Halloween store, and tells Ellie she was saving it for last because she thought she’d like it the best. “I guess it was stupid,” she says. “I’m fucking stupid.” Ellie sits down. It’s time to talk about some real shit.
Screenshot: Naughty Dog
“So you leave me. I think you’re dead. All of a sudden, you’re alive. And you give me this night. This amazing fucking night. And now you’re leaving again, forever, to join some cause I don’t even think you understand. Tell me I’m wrong.” Yeah, I can see how Ellie’s got some emotional turmoil going on at the moment.
Riley tells Ellie that she doesn’t know everything. Unlike Ellie, Riley remembers what it was to have a family, for a little while at least, and the real sense of belonging that came with that. Now the Fireflies have chosen her, and she senses a chance for that kind of belonging and purpose again. “I matter to them.”
Screenshot: HBO
Ellie softens a bit, and tells Riley that she’s her best friend and that she’ll miss her. Riley proposes “one last thing,” and Ellie agrees, before Riley tosses her a werewolf mask and grabs a spooky clown mask for herself, masks they both also wear in the game. She puts on Etta James’ “I Got You Babe,” the same song that features so prominently in the game at this pivotal moment, and begins dancing atop the display case.
For a while they just enjoy the moment, but what Ellie is feeling is too strong to be contained, so she takes off her mask and pleads with Riley, “Don’t go.” Just as in the game, Riley agrees, almost as if she’s been waiting, hoping that Ellie would ask her this. Ellie kisses her, then apologizes, to which Riley responds, “For what?” It’s a beautiful and cathartic moment, and a painful one, too, since we know their happiness ends even before it has a chance to start. It makes for a fascinating contrast with the third episode, which charted the love story of Bill and Frank across decades. Here, we get the love story of Ellie and Riley, not quite in real time but not too far off. This night lasts only a matter of hours, and yet the memory of it will be with Ellie forever.
I feel like “don’t go” is a bigger ask on Ellie’s part here in the show than it is in the game, since she knows that FEDRA has Riley pegged for grunt work, and it’s a lot to ask someone you love to resign themselves to a life of such limited possibility just to be with you. But I’m sure that in that moment, she thinks that together, they can create something better. And who knows, maybe they could have.
They barely even get a chance to imagine what that future might look like, however, before the infected we saw earlier roars and runs in, putting up one hell of a fight before Ellie finally finishes it with her switchblade. Not before both of them are bitten, however, and just like that, their dream future evaporates.
“I’m not letting you go”
Screenshot: Naughty Dog
And while future Ellie rummages desperately in the house for something to help Joel with, past Ellie, thinking her fate is sealed, smashes shit in a rage before collapsing next to Riley. Riley says they could just off themselves with her gun, but she’s not a fan of that idea. Taking Ellie’s hand, she says, “Whether it’s two minutes or two days, we don’t give that up. I don’t want to give that up.”
Screenshot: HBO
Rummaging in the kitchen, Ellie finds some needle and thread and returns to Joel. For a moment, she takes his hand, interlocking her fingers with hers. She’s not letting him go. Then, she begins to sew.
“The Last of Us” is subverting what audiences assume are important items in a postapocalyptic scenario.
In Episode 6, the show’s central characters, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are introduced to Maria (Rutina Wesley), a woman who is revealed to be the wife of Joel’s long-lost brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna).
Rutina Wesley as Maria in Episode 6 of “The Last of Us.”
In one scene, Maria leaves 14-year-old Ellie a few essential things on top of a bed that will likely aid her in a postindustrial world brimming with fungal zombies. This includes new clothes and what appears to be a DivaCup.
What makes the scene significant is the show’s decision to handle this lesser-known and reusable period product in a very understated way. Ellie picks up the menstrual cup along with a pamphlet and reads its instructions.
“Oh,” she says, seemingly a little surprised and impressed by it. She then squishes it a bit before folding it like the directions instruct and amusingly says, “Gross.”
“The Last of Us” showrunner Craig Mazin explained to Vulture why there was a lack of hand-holding during the menstrual cup scene.
He told the entertainment site that they used a real DIvaCup pamphlet for the scene and used special effects to make the words “menstrual solution” slightly larger on the paperwork so audiences could read the tiny font a little better, but decided to end any further explanation beyond that.
A menstrual cup could be quite useful in a postapocalyptic situation.
Volanthevist via Getty Images
“It goes by very quickly,” he told Vulture. “The intention was that if you don’t know what it is, you can ask someone or you can Google. It’s more for the people who do know what it is.”
He added: “We do this all the time in shows with things like guns. People don’t know how to load guns, and we don’t explain it to them. Why should we have to explain this?”
This isn’t the first time the show, which is adapted from the popular video game of the same name, has implied that feminine care products are as much of a score during postapocalyptic foraging as, say, medicine, weapons or cans of food. This diverges from the game, in which a player can up their stats if their characters obtain “collectibles” including supplements, tools and even comics, per a guide published in IGN.
In Episode 3, Ellie finds a dusty package of Tampax Pearl tampons in an abandoned convenience store, remarks “Fuck yeah!” when she grabs them, and proudly shows them off to the hyper-masculine Joel.
Ellie’s no-shame attitude about having a period is pretty revolutionary — especially in a storyline that attracts so many male fans.
Advertising menstrual products on television was banned until 1972. After that, ads for tampons and pads used blue liquid to demonstrate the products’ effectiveness. The idea of menstruation on TV was so taboo that it was considered edgy when Courteney Cox, before her “Friends” fame, was the first to use the word “period” in an ad during a 1985 Tampax commercial, The Cut points out. Popular brand Kotex became one of the first major menstrual product companies to use red liquid that resembles blood in their ads in 2020.
Mazin explained to Vulture that he was inspired to add period products to the already well-established canon of things one would find handy after zombies have overtaken the world while buying tampons for his wife and daughter at a Target during the COVID pandemic. He told the site that he was contemplating how many boxes to grab, when he realized it would be an interesting new layer to add to the video game’s adaptation.
“These are basic items that we’d need or would want,” he said. “In a postapocalypse, it’s annoying to have to deal with that and have a shortage of options. Why wouldn’t we show it? Especially because our co-lead is a 14-year-old girl. This is part of her life!”
Adrianne Curry has been over the news ever since her comments on Melanie Lynskey’s casting on the popular HBO series The Last of Us. However, it looks like the season 1 winner of America’s Top Model has now deleted her Twitter account following the backlash she faced after Lynskey clapped back at her, for critiquing her body. Read on to find out what happened.
Adrianne Curry deletes her Twitter account after Melanie Lynskey slams her
Adrianne’s Twitter account is no longer available on the micro-blogging site. As per a report by Entertainment Weekly, she took to her Facebook space to explain why she deleted her account, and said that her comments were not personal. She complained that Lynskey “screen shotted it and posted it for her fans to BULLY me over an opinion on a FICTIONAL CHARACTER. LOL.”
She further added that she finds it ‘absurd’ that actors cannot take criticism of the characters they play. She gave her own example and mentioned that the audience had torn a character she played to shreds, but that she survived it, as it was not a direct attack on her. Adrianne Curry added that she will be staying off Twitter until Lynskey’s fans “stop berating me for not finding her feminine stature suitable for warlord status.” Concluding her post, she wrote, “Now, I think I’ll keep my NERD movie/show criticism.”
The Last of Us actor Melanie Lynskey’s Twitter war with Adrianne Curry
For the unversed, recently, Adrianne Curry took to Twitter to critique Lynskey’s casting in the adaptation of the zombie video game. As per The Hollywood Reporter, she wrote that Lynskey, who plays the role of Kathleen in the HBO series was not the perfect fit for the role as “her body says life of luxury…not post apocalyptic warlord.” She also referenced to the Terminator franchise as she asked, “Where is Linda Hamilton when you need her?”
Taking to Twitter, Melanie tweeted a screenshot of Adrianne’s tweet, which appeared below a photo of Lynskey, reportedly from an InStyle shoot. Addressing Curry as ‘ma’am’, the actor then commented that she does not need to be muscly for the role. “Firstly- this is a photo from my cover shoot for InStyle magazine, not a still from HBO’s The Last Of Us. And I’m playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA. I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly. That’s what henchmen are for.”
It seems I was too quick to judge HBO’s The Last of Us. While the first four episodes certainly kept my attention as well-written and delightfully-shot prestige television, I had been a little let down as the adaptive process of turning the game into a show has, so far, left out the recreation of specific, memorable action sequences from the game. Well, with “Endure and Survive,” the fifth episode of the first (but not the last) season of The Last of Us, the show has revealed that it’s more than capable of adapting the action of the video game, and in some cases, just might be doing a better job with it.
Adapted from the hit PlayStation 3 title of the same name, The Last of Us’ gripping, character-driven plot exists alongside tense, deadly, moment-by-moment combat encounters. The player, as Joel, must overcome both hostile humans and infected with a combination of stealth, firearms, and crudely improvised weapons. For its first four episodes, HBO’s adaptation has, mostly, prioritized the story elements, choosing in some cases not to recreate memorable action sequences or feature unique, crafted props of the kind we’ve seen in the game. It makes sense for television to focus on the actors and the story, but until now I’ve found the show to be missing that key action ingredient I’ve loved so well, not just from seeing the game, but from playing it.
There’s a reason The Last of Us appears on our list of the best action games you can play this year. With a slower cadence than what you find in something like Naughty Dog’s other recent series, Uncharted, and an emphasis on survival, The Last of Us as a game injects tight, intense, action sequences throughout the narrative, reminding you that, however much things might feel under your control during the narrative downtime, you’re never actually safe in its deadly world.. The action sequences are when the rug has been pulled out from under you and you must deal with a situation in the here and the now. Mess up, and someone’s dying.
Our action game list highlighted the sequel, Part II, as being a bit more flexible, with more options for how you approach and respond to various situations. But the sequel follows what the first game already did so well: Moments where, forgive the cliche, all hell breaks loose and you must respond. Immediately. It’s stress-inducing action for sure, but damn, is it a thrill.
While I would’ve certainly traded the first game’s “upside-down” shootout sequence in the “Bill’s Town” level for the beautiful story of Bill and Frank we got in episode three of the show, I was beginning to worry that HBO’s TV adaptation would continue to leave out other, more explosive sequences rather than attempt to translate the immediacy of the game’s action to the screen. But here we are with episode five’s suburban sniper sequence. This gripping scene not only translates the game’s action particularly well, but does so with a narrative revision that makes the carnage even more intense.
Just like in the game, Joel and Ellie have teamed up with Henry and Sam. But this time, Henry and Sam’s situation is a bit more urgent. Kathleen, the leader of a revolutionary force, obsessively wants to see Henry die for his role in her brother’s death. Like the game, Joel, Ellie, Henry, and Sam must travel down an abandoned suburban street, moving from car to car to avoid getting shot by a sniper overlooking the area.
The TV show does depart a touch from this scenario as it exists in the game. To start, Joel isn’t faced with additional hostile forces on his approach to the sniper’s nest. And it becomes clear once Joel deals with the sniper that this individual belongs to the revolutionaries in Kansas City (the game’s parallel version of these events takes place in Pittsburgh and doesn’t feature Kathleen or any of the revolutionaries introduced in episode four). This is one of the improvements the show makes over the original game, something its sequel also worked harder to achieve: lending faces, complicated motivations, and identities to the antagonists.
But we need to talk about the sound design in the sniper sequence first. Though the show has caught my ear before (a particularly unnerving-yet-satisfying ambient music swell as Joel, Ellie, and Tess ascend the stairs in episode two’s museum is one such example), I am unhealthily obsessed with the gunshots in this scene. The exacting and penetrating strike of the sniper rifle’s shot is chased by a split second of silence that could swallow the universe, followed up with a timeless whisper of air and sensually percussive hits on the bodies and windows of cars. Satisfying bangs funneled into powerful clangs, sharp shatters of glass…heavy metal bands will spend their entire careers trying to deliver something so sonically beautiful and destructive at the same time. This is bliss.
The sounds are loveable as special effects and creations on their own, but the effect really drew me in with an intimacy of the kind I’ve felt in video games—and in particular, the one this show is based on. The scene that mirrors this one in the video game is one example, but the latter half of The Last of Us Part II also has a similar sniper scenario. Cover-to-cover movement with the threat of violence pressing you back is successfully brought to life on screen. But we’re not done yet.
Screenshot: HBO
Like in the game, Joel eventually gets to the top of the sniper’s nest, eliminates the shooter and must then get behind the scope as hostile human forces march forward. In the show, the personality-less mob of foes is replaced by new-character Kathleen on her quest for revenge, with her forces in tow. Joel must make several needle-threading shots, one of which is recreated from the game: Hitting the driver of a hostile vehicle, with the camera going behind the scope of the rifle itself. And yes, like the game, that car crashes into a house…a house which has a surprise in store.
The TV show’s vehicle veers off and crashes to the right side. It crashes on the left in the game; this mirror image of recreated scenes seems to be a common element of the show. Joel and Sarah are flipped in their position on the couch in the opening episode; Joel’s “I am sure you will figure that out” line of dialogue to Ellie asking what the hell she’s supposed to do while he naps in the first episode sees the couch he lays on flipped to the other side of the room.
And while a cluster of infected does ultimately flood the street in the game as well, it’s quite different in the show. Here, the emergence of a horde of infected from underground serves as the payoff to some wonderful foreshadowing in the previous episode and earlier scenes in this one, where we learn that FEDRA had previously chased all the infected underground as a way to “fix” the problem. It’s clear that this is something that will resurface to cause a problem. And in this scene, once you see that truck fall into the house…you know what’s coming, and that the hubris that led Kathleen to go to such extremes will soon claim its price.
Screenshot: HBO
Shattering the calm insanity of Kathleen’s myopic quest for vengeance, the fallen truck and the chorus of screams and roars from the mob of infected it unleashes is a powerful release, snapping us out of the daze of trying to follow Kathleen’s justification for cruelty. We’re barely given time to digest the contours of her bloodlust as the infected’s long-buried rage drowns out all, the great equalizer that considers no one safe and needs no justification for its wrath and violence. At the end of this scene, I felt the instinctual urge to put down the controller and take a breath. Except there was no controller.
Episode five’s sniper scenario doesn’t just adapt a key action sequence of the game, it makes it better. The pacing is tighter, more intense. The narrative wrapping pulls you into what’s at stake in a far more satisfying way, and it earns its zombie mob scene. This is the kind of game sequence adaptation I’ve been waiting for in HBO’s show, and it did not disappoint. Until next time, I’m gonna go see if Whole Foods has crow on sale.
If you just finished watching episode five of HBO’s The Last of Us, you might be wondering just what that giant infected was that the show made a big deal about but didn’t actually bother to explain. Well friends, what you saw is colloquially called a bloater by characters like Joel and Ellie, and it’s a focal point of certain enemy encounters in The Last of Us games. But you wouldn’t know that based on what the show’s actually portrayed so far. So let’s talk about why these big baddies are so impactful to game fans.
What is a bloater?
A bloater is considered to be one of the end stages of infection for victims of the cordyceps fungus ravaging the world of The Last of Us. Unlike the more common clickers, people who have reached bloater stage are pretty much entirely encased in the fungus that grows from out of an infected’s head. This happens when the victim’s been infected for years and has somehow managed to “survive” that long. As Joel mentions in episode two, most infected only live around a month or so, but clickers and bloaters have been infected so long that the fungus has desecrated their eyes and they have to use echolocation to navigate. Clickers are more abundant, but if an infected lives long enough to become a bloater, its hulking frame and exploding pus sacks—oh yes, it has exploding pus sacks that it throws at Joel and Ellie—make it far more dangerous.
How do bloaters work in The Last of Us games?
Bloaters appear as mini-bosses at multiple points throughout both The Last of Us and its sequel. Originally, the enemy made its debut in Bill’s fortified town, but because the show took a very different approach to that story in episode three, the bloater didn’t debut until the Kansas City episodes. A bloater is an especially powerful enemy that, if it grabs you, will take you out in one hit. Perry’s death, in which the bloater tears his head from his body, is an homage to a death animation in the games in which a bloater can grab Joel or Ellie and do exactly that. The games do a hard cut to black before showing the extent of the damage, but still show enough to give a sense of just how gruesome the death will be. Shoutout to HBO for shooting that scene from a distance so we didn’t have to see Perry’s execution in excruciating detail.
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Unlike clickers, bloaters aren’t susceptible to a stealth kill with a shiv or Ellie’s switchblade, so you have to take them out the old-fashioned way with bullets and molotov cocktails. Both games have a few bloaters you can stealth past, though, allowing you to avoid fighting them entirely. But if you can’t manage that, you’ll inevitably use up quite a bit of your supplies taking them out.
In theory, a standard infected will either survive long enough to become a bloater, or they’ll die and the cordyceps fungus will continue to grow out of their bodies and into the environment around them. In episode one, Tess and Joel stumble upon a dead infected which was pretty much grown into the wall in the Boston quarantine zone. However, as The Last of Us Part II illustrates, environmental factors can influence how the cordyceps evolves at different stages of infection.
The Last of Us Part II takes place primarily in Seattle, and while there, Ellie faces a different variation of late-stage infection called shamblers. Similar to bloaters, these infected are covered head to toe in the cordyceps fungus, but rather than slinging fungal explosives at the player, Shamblers spray acid from their bodies and explode when killed. Though the reason for this divergence in infection is never confirmed, the player can find notes around Seattle that theorize it was due to the rain and moisture in the city. This seems reasonable enough, but shamblers also appear in Part II’s late-game Santa Barbara sections. This might just be an example of gameplay getting in the way of worldbuilding, but whatever the case, there are other possible fates for an infected beyond turning into a bloater…though we might not see them in the show until the upcoming second season.
The most advanced form of infection The Last of Us has shown was in an infamous boss fight in Part II with an entity called the Rat King. This was the culmination of multiple infected growing into each other to create one giant, vicious beast in the lower floors of a Seattle hospital, which was the city’s infection ground zero. This phenomenon has only been seen once in the series so far, and occurred in such specific circumstances that it seems incredibly rare in the world of The Last of Us.
While the bloater is a rarity in The Last of Us’ universe, every time they appear in the games it’s an impactful moment. The bloater’s first appearance in HBO’s show was pretty major, but we’ll have to wait and see if anyone actually bothers to explain why it was significant in a future episode.
It’s all over. Long gone are the days where you log into your ex’s Netflix account and binge-watch the latest episodes of Stranger Things. Yep, Netflix took note that you were 1 of 10 people on the same account and eradicated password sharingcompletely.
Netflix’s cruel and unusually punishing anti-password agenda includes re-connecting to your home Wi-Fi network every 31 days or they block your account! Come March, you’ll have to pay for password sharing in general. But don’t fret! A temporary code can be requested for users outside your Wi-Fi for 7 whole days’ access.
Can I get a sigh of relief, anyone? No??
While Netflix thought this so-called “genius” ploy would force streamers to purchase their own account at a whopping $19.99/month… that is not happening. Apparently, we are not having it. Because – sadly – they don’t have enough thrilling shows to keep me coming back. In fact, the entire world currently prefers HBO Max.
Coming from the company that once tweeted, “love is sharing a password,” it’s clear that Netflix is its own worst enemy. They simply can’t compare to HBO Max, which currently has four shows tracking at 15+ million viewers per episode: Euphoria, The Last Of Us, House Of The Dragon, and The White Lotus.
Although Netflix once was the OG streaming service, it’s time to say goodbye. Since there’s a trillion platforms out there, each with their own subscription fee and better options, I’ll be taking my business elsewhere.
HBO Max’s The Last of Us is proving to be incredibly popular. That’ll only be helped by the fact that they’ve made the first episode free on their platform. If you’re in the U.S., you can access the first episode without a subscription using the HBO Max app. If you’re in the U.K., you can access the episode on SkyTV, or even on YouTube.
Reviews for the show have been resoundingly positive everywhere, which is kind of huge. It’s not often that TV and movies that use video games as source material come out to much fanfare, but The Last of Us has managed to pull it off. The first season of the show is nine episodes long, and it follows Joel (portrayed by Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they navigate their way through a post-apocalyptic environment. The world has been ravaged by the Cordyceps fungus, turning most of humanity into creatures very much resembling zombies.
Perhaps one of the main reasons for the show’s success was the cinematic nature of the original games. They’re filled with well-acted and well-directed cutscenes. Additionally, Neil Druckmann, the writer and creative director behind the games in the franchise, co-created the series for HBO with Craig Mazin. This obviously made for an incredibly faithful adaptation. So far, it’s widely considered to be one of the best video game adaptations ever.
Initially, the series was going to be a feature-length film, but after years stuck in development hell, plans changed. Eventually, in 2020, it was announced that a TV series was in its planning phase. There were a few stumbling blocks here and there, but overall, the production was smooth. In fact, it’s believed to be one of the biggest productions in Canadian history.
You can watch the first episode on HBO Max for free right here.
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Spoiler alert! Spoilers ahead for episode 2 of The Last of Us, titled “Infected”.
Sunday’s episode of The Last of Uskept the emotions coming as fans got to see one of the most heartbreaking deaths in the game canon play out onscreen.
Following her introduction as Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) partner and companion in the premiere, Tess (Anna Torv) met her tragic end in episode 2, as she realized she had been infected and made the decision to sacrifice herself in order to save Joel and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) from a hoard of infected attackers.
Torv admitted to ET’s Ash Crossan that she’s “not a very good gamer” and didn’t have much knowledge of The Last of Us prior to taking the role. She read the scripts and watched cutscenes from the video game to learn Tess’ story, and worked with Pascal to develop their on-screen dynamic.
“Pedro and I talked a bit,” she recalled. “We were both in agreement that these guys had been together for quite a long time, like years and years and years and years, and that they’re partners in life. They work together and they’re lovers and I think they might’ve had a good time… I think they’re each other’s best friend.”
However, as a pair of survivors in post-apocalyptic Boston, the actress admitted that “there’s not that many opportunities” to show the lighter side of the pair’s relationship.
“You have to be true to the characters… There’s no part of Joel that’s touchy-feely. There’s no part of Tess that’s gonna be like, ‘Let’s have a deeper, meaningful [conversation] about where we’re at.’ There’s no option to kind of show that, it would do a disservice to the game.”
“So you kind of steal your minutes,” she continued. “I mean, the first time you see them, Tess has been beat up, Joel’s knocked himself out. She comes in and crawls into bed and he rolls over and she puts her arm around him and I think you kind of don’t really need any more. That sort of just says it all, who they are to each other, in just that little gesture.”
Despite her character’s early and tragic fate, Torv said she never second-guessed taking on the role.
“I wanted to work with Pedro,” she admitted with a laugh. “But, the very first question that I asked Craig was, ‘Were you wanting to replicate [the game] or are you wanting a different thing?’ He said, ‘No, a different thing.’”
“Then when I went in for hair and wardrobe and the whole bit, I love that they aged her up,” she added. “[The show] is its own thing. We get to make it our own.”
In fact, as a non-gamer, the actress offered a unique perspective for fans who might find themselves upset at the ways the show’s plot or characters occasionally deviate from the game.
“It’s like a play, you know?” she said. “You have a really great play that gets put on in different cities, with different casts, and different actresses, and some productions lean this way or lean that way, but at the end, it’s ultimately the same story and the same characters when they’re well drawn.”
“We had a couple of Tess’ big, memorable lines still in it verbatim,” she noted. “I didn’t consciously want to be different or consciously want to be replicating… I don’t even think it’s interpretation, I just think it’s through a different lens.”
The Last of Us debuts new episodes Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
The biggest production in Alberta’s history debuts this weekend and many in the local film industry hope the highly anticipated show, as well as other prominent productions, spur more Hollywood interest in the province.
The post-apocalyptic HBO series The Last of Us premieres on Jan. 15, and shooting took place at several locations across Alberta over the last two years.
“This is monumental,” International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) 212 president Damian Petti said.
“I think everyone takes a certain pride in this particular project.”
IATSE 212 represents southern Albertan stage, motion picture and scenic artists and technicians across 23 departments that include grips, and special effects.
According to Petti, more than 900 crew members worked on the enormous production over 17 months, not including crew from the Teamsters, the Directors Guild of Canada, or the performers.
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“Those 900 people worked very close to one million hours on this project,” Petti said. “So the size of it and the growth of the industry that just comes from this one project is huge.”
From left, Lamar Johnson, Jeffrey Pierce, Storm Reid, Nico Parker, Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Merle Dandridge and Gabriel Luna, cast members in “The Last of Us,” pose together at the premiere of the HBO series, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023, at the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles.
Chris Pizzello, AP Photo
The show stars Game of Thrones actors Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.
Last week, Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi attended the show’s premiere in Los Angeles, where they were joined by other representatives from Alberta.
🧵 While on a personal trip to help our daughter settle into her new home in LA, I was able to represent Edmonton at the premiere of @HBO’s “The Last of Us”, (the series that was partially shot in Edmonton last year). pic.twitter.com/3ddtFjBOTc
Gondek said she was “blown away” by the production, and said producers of the show expressed gratitude to the province for “being so welcoming.”
“We’ve all been pulling together to make sure people understand how film and TV friendly we are, and it’s paying off,” Gondek told reporters Thursday.
“‘The Last of Us” HBO television production set on Rice Howard Way in downtown Edmonton, Alta. on Wednesday, October 6, 2021.
Chris Chacon/Global News
The series is based upon the critically acclaimed video game about a smuggler named Joel, who is tasked with escorting a teenage girl, Ellie, out of an oppressive quarantine zone and across post-apocalyptic America.
“‘The Last of Us” HBO television production set at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton, Alta. on Wednesday, October 6, 2021.
Chris Chacon/Global News
During filming, streets in downtown Edmonton and Calgary were transformed into urban battlefields and even structures like the Alberta legislature were covered in vines and decay for the production.
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However, The Last of Us isn’t the only recent television show that will feature some local landmarks that some might recognize.
The FX miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven premiered last spring on Disney+ in Canada after shooting in and around Calgary and across southern Alberta.
The true-crime drama is based on Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith about the history of the Mormon religion, and has an ensemble cast that includes Andrew Garfield, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Gil Birmingham.
Local actor Emily James, who landed a part in the FX mini-series ‘Under the Banner of Heaven.’.
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Emily James, born and raised in Calgary, successfully landed a role in the show as actor Sam Worthington’s daughter.
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“I was very excited, it was my first time on a big set,” James told Global News.
The TV series tells the story of the real-life 1984 brutal murders of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter Erica, juxtaposed with the origin and evolution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and extremist fundamentalist offshoots of the religion.
“Because it’s such a heart-wrenching story and it is a true story, I was excited to be a part of something so big and getting the chance to be a part of that story,” James said.
After splitting time between Calgary and Los Angeles, James will soon be making the move to California to continue pursuing her acting career.
“I was very excited to see that bigger productions are making their way to Alberta,” James said. “I definitely think there is a chance for more to come to Calgary.”
‘A perfect storm’
With a lot of the success in Alberta’s film industry being attributed to a change to the province’s film and television tax credit, industry experts also cite expanding production infrastructure like the Calgary Film Centre, and more trained workers.
“It’s the perfect storm,” Petti said.
“The community’s worked very hard to get to this stage and we think 2023 will be a strong year.”
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Petti said there are several productions eyeing shoots in Alberta this year.
Road closure on Calgary’s 4 Avenue flyover for filming continues for HBO’s “The Last of Us” on Oct. 23, 2021.
Global News
Keep Alberta Rolling Ltd. is a non-profit organization created to showcase the benefits and potential of the Alberta’s screen industry.
According to head of advocacy Brock Skretting, Alberta’s ability to pull off a production with the the size and scope of The Last of Us is expected to help attract more Hollywood blockbusters to the province.
“The crew are known for handling any logistical problems, never complaining about the difficulty of it — in fact, embracing the difficulty of of hard shows: we do the biggest and we do the best,” Skretting said.
One of the challenges that has faced the local film industry is always having a solid base of trained and experienced crew members.
But Petti said thanks to recent productions in the province, growth in IATSE 212 is up 35 per cent, and there are now 500 more Albertans trained in the industry and ready to get to work.
“To grow an industry, you do need a steady and stable supply of work,” Petti said. “We can grow the crew base no problem, if there’s a steady supply of work.”
The province has hosted several notable productions in the past: 2016’s The Revanant starring Leonardo Dicaprio, the 2005 American neo-Western romantic drama Brokeback Mountain, as well as the more recent Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2019.
Brad Pitt spent time in Edmonton in 2005 while filming The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford at Fort Edmonton Park.
It isn’t just movies either: Fargo, inspired by the 1996 Coen Brothers film of the same name, returned to film a fifth season in Alberta after relocating to Chicaco to film the fourth season.
Alberta’s TV and film production booms following tax credits
Alberta is currently ranked fourth among Canadian production jurisdictions.
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Industry experts said it may take some time to catch up to other provinces like B.C. and Ontario, which have had a competitive advantage for longer, but the hope is growing interest from The Last of Us will help Alberta climb those standings.
“It’s just economic development through and through,” Skretting said.
“To have millions of dollars spent on the projects, putting hundreds of people to work and then on the back end, everybody gets to see the projects market the province around the world.
“So we’re really excited for the year coming up.”
The Last of Us series contains nine episodes and will air weekly on Sunday nights through the Crave streaming app.
The casting of The Last of Us for HBO wasn’t an easy thing. Unlike many other big shows for the premium network, The Last of Us also came with a dedicated fanbase that rivals that of HBO’s other huge franchise: Game of Thrones. But where the two differ is that I don’t remember there being a ton of pushback over the casting of the original GoT series, but with The Last of Us, fans have been dream-casting who should play Joel and Ellie for years.
So when the inevitable casting for these two iconic roles was announced, instead of being excited that the series was finally coming to life, many logged onto message boards to complain because it wasn’t who they thought it should be. There were Pedro Pascal-haters thinking Joel should be played by someone else, and “fans” who were furious that Bella Ramsey was cast as Ellie. Why? Because they wanted Kaitlyn Dever and made sure to make that fan-cast everyone else’s problem.
Through it all, Ramsey saw their comments. In a cover story for The Hollywood Reporter, both Pascal and Ramsey talked a lot about taking on these beloved game characters and addressed the “fan” opinions about their casting. For Ramsey, all the negativity that came from years of “fan-casting” led the young actor to try not looking at the comments. But eventually, Ramsey did. (Ramsey uses she/her and they/them pronouns. We will be using both while talking about Ramsey and using she/her when speaking about her character Ellie Williams in The Last of Us.)
“I’ve seen everything,” Ramsey said, with what James Hibberd described as “a note of steely and fuck you all defiance familiar to anyone who watched Lyanna Mormont dress down Jon Snow.” Ramsey went on to talk about how it was their first encounter with fans responding this way to casting, saying, “I’m aware of all of it. It was my first experience, really, with a lot of negative reactions.”
But Ramsey didn’t let the negativity stop them. “Ellie felt like a character I already had in me,” Ramsey said. “Like the skins that you wear in a video game? She was one of my skins already.”
Hating a casting decision before you see the performance is a choice
Not only is hating on a young actor for being cast as a character truly and honestly weird, but with The Last of Us, many fans also said that Ramsey didn’t “look the part”. First of all, it is a video game character. Casting someone just because they look exactly like the character instead of casting the best actor for the job isn’t going to make a show good. It’s just going to make people who have some warped casting ideas in their head happy while the show itself suffers.
Ramsey has not once put out a bad performance. Everything they’re in is fun, and Ramsey’s performance is often the heart of whatever character is being brought to life. Catherine Called Birdy worked because of Ramsey. Lyanna Mormont worked because of Ramsey. And I have a feeling that Ellie is going to be the same. Being angry you didn’t get your way doesn’t change the fact that the creators of The Last of Us saw Ellie in Ramsey, and based on that, I cannot wait to see what they deliver.
The Last of UsHBO series will be hitting our screens on January 15, 2023 and fans are pretty excited to see this adaptation of the hit video game. However, this The Last of Us TV show isn’t the first time someone has thought of adapting the game. In fact, Sam Raimi was supposed to direct a film adaptation and that fell through.
Sam Raimi is primarily known for The Evil Dead film franchise (minus Evil Dead 2013) and the Spider-Man trilogy. It’s therefore not a stretch to think he could’ve done The Last of Us. But why didn’t the film happen, though? Was there some drama behind the scenes? Let’s put on our backpacks and go on a short adventure to uncover the truth.
The reason why Sam Raimi’s The Last of Us fell through
In 2014, a film adaptation of The Last of Us was announced, with Neil Druckmann behind the script and Sami Raimi set to direct. People often jump to conclusions when films or TV shows don’t get made. In reality, studios do interfere and don’t have the same vision for a film—and that’s what happened to this failed adaptation.
Neil Druckmann mentioned back in 2021 why the film fell apart and here’s what he had to say on the matter:
“When I worked on the movie version, a lot of the thinking and notes were like ‘How do we make it bigger? How do we make the set pieces bigger?”
“I think that’s ultimately why the movie wasn’t made.”
– Neil Druckmann
Apparently, Sony executives wanted ‘bigger and sexier’ when it came to the adaptation. Unfortunately, Sony’s vision for the film just didn’t line up with what Druckmann was envisioning. Ultimately, it’s probably for the best that he didn’t give in to what they wanted anyways. Druckmann did trust Sam Raimi to direct the film, so at least there’s no bad blood there.
What can be expected with the upcoming The Last of Us series
The upcoming HBO series was created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann and isn’t looking to be sexy or larger than life. The Last of Us series will have the feeling of an indie film, according to Druckmann:
“Our approach for The Last of Us was ‘Let’s make it as an indie film. Let’s approach it as an indie film team, the way it’s shot [and in terms of] how small and intimate it feels.”
“And with the show, we get to lean into that even more because we don’t have to have as many action sequences as we do in the game.”
The Last of Us will be a series that emotionally destroys us (in the best way), and we know this from how the game uses its story to make you quickly fall in love with characters before having them meet their demise. We know that the series will be different from the game, but I do think that certain beats may be similar.
Spoilersahead for The Last of Us game
… Which is why I don’t have the highest of hopes for Sarah Miller. In the beginning of the game, when the Clickers begin to take over, Joel and Sarah Miller run from their home with Joel’s brother Tommy. In the midst of their escape, they find some people and think they can help them, but it ultimately results in Sarah’s death (this is years prior to the major arc of the gameplay). Sarah’s death leads Joel to his new life and helps inform his relationship with Ellie, and I don’t really foresee that changing, which is why all the promo pictures of Sarah really hurt.
The series is coming to us in January 2023, and the more they show of Nico Parker as Sarah Miller, the more I just feel my heart breaking into a million pieces. So today, when the official HBO series account shared an image of Parker with her hand in a sprinkler under the caption “Another day in Austin, TX,” I just felt like I wanted to curl up into a ball and sob.
If you want to know how everyone is coping with Sarah’s inevitable fate, all the replies to this tweet are from people who are already upset and emotional—and we haven’t even met Parker’s take on Sarah yet. It’s going to be hard to watch.
The opening of this show is going to hurt
One of the biggest draws to the game is just how cinematic and heart-wrenching that prologue is. It’s like watching a movie; it’s so beautifully explored that it really does leave you sitting in silence once you’ve completed it. Imagining that in a television format is overwhelming.
I wish there was a way that Sarah didn’t have to die because I don’t really want to see Nico Parker die. And I don’t want to see Joel miserable as a result of his daughter’s death. I’d love it if he had to take Ellie to the fireflies while Sarah is alive and well somewhere, but I just don’t see how that would function in the story. Sarah sort of has to die and if they find a way around it? Great! I’d love more of Nico Parker in the show.
But right now, I just don’t know how that would work. Knowing Sarah’s fate from the game just makes all these promotional pictures of Parker as Sarah hurt that much more. I just want Joel and Sarah Miller to be happy, but I know I’m just going to be crying instead.
HBO released the official trailer for its zombie apocalypse series based on the popular video game series “The Last of Us” on Saturday.
Pedro Pascal stars as the gruff survivor Joel who is tasked with transporting a young girl named Ellie, played by Bella Ramsay, across a zombie-infested America. The girl may be the key to saving humanity in a post-apocalyptic world.
“If you don’t think there’s hope for the world, why bother going on?” Ramsay asks as the threatening shadows of the zombies loom in the foreground.
The cast includes Gabriel Luna, Nick Offerman, Graham Greene and Elaine Miles. The original voice actors for Joel and Ellie, Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker, also appear in the show in the roles of a pregnant woman, Anna, and a senior member of a group of survivors named James respectively.
