Who would have thought that the collaboration of HBO, Chernobyl writer Craig Mazin and game director Neil Druckmann would not only create a solid adaptation of the game, but also have excellent reception in the process.
On January 15th, HBO’s The Last of Us will debut its first episode, but the embargo has lifted and ratings are pouring in. As it stands, its Rotten Tomatoes score is sitting at 97% with 36 critics and about 82 in Metacritic with 18 critics – this is huge for the series and its looking like another flagship series for HBO.
The video game to film adaptation curse has been lifted for some time with the launch of Netflix’s The Witcher, Edgerunner, Sonic and so on, but with these films there’s alterations from the source material that works, but never 1:1. The Last of Us seem to be almost exactly like the game albeit some changes to scenery. It seems to adapt the same lines from the games and even the pacing which has been done before, but not nearly as good as we’d hoped it to be.
The general consensus seems to be that the show adapts all of the qualities we’d come to expect with A-listed casting, immeasurable writing that pulls on the heart strings. Sounds about right.
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