the past few years have seen the dawn of a new era for video game adaptations yeah they definitely been attempted before with varying degrees of success but it's only in the past 5 years or so that Hollywood has seen the true potential of stuff like this and decided to exploit it and who could blame them really the amount of money being made by the video game industry absolutely dwarfs what Tinsel Town manages to bring in each year the budgets for AAA games make a mockery of even the most bloated of Blockbusters which is kind of
creating its own set of problems but that's a topic for another video the point is I can totally understand why the fine people of Hollywood want to jump on this particular bandwagon it allows you to exploit a vast back catalog of pre-existing characters and storylines without going through the difficult process of coming up with original ideas there's a huge buil-in audience that should in theory be super hyped for your product and you could even tie your big movie release into the game with special downloadable content creating some weird AA borus of entertainment anyway so far
the results have ranged from good to bad to ugly to downright baffling but one of the big success stories in this confusing Patchwork was The Last of Us based off the bestselling video game series by Naughty Dog I mean as far as Source material Goes The Last of Us was kind of a no-brainer really the game was as close to being a movie as the John Wick films were to be in video games and so it lent itself pretty naturally to a TV adaptation yeah it might not have been perfect it definitely dragged by badly
in places the two main characters weren't as welld developed or likable as in the game the casting was questionable at best and for a post-apocalyptic Zombie Survival show there was a distinct lack of zombies towards the end but overall I think people were fairly happy with it but there was a problem looming on the horizon dear viewer and that problem came in the shape of season 2 oh man oh god oh man see much like season 1 took its inspiration from the first game in the franchise season two was going to have to draw on
its sequel to carry on the story and well there's no getting around this one The Last of Us Part Two was a bit of a [ __ ] pig no matter how many slobbering games journalists fell over themselves to fate Neil duckman's throbbing shaft and no matter how many meaningless industry Awards it got showered with the fact remains that The Last of Us Part Two was at best one of the most divisive and damaging games in the history of the medium whether it was the brutal and mean-spirited execution of beloved characters finish him fatality the
reconning of past events to demonize people who made completely understandable choices at the time the insufferable girl bosses who could do anything beat up guys twice their size and don't take no [ __ ] from no man what you got there bigot sandwiches Ellie's gay by the way or whatever the hell this ridiculous slab of beef was supposed to be he you [Applause] it all added up to a game that left a sour taste in people's mouths that felt like it was made by a completely different creative team with completely different objectives in mind and
that trampled all over the legacy of its predecessor to achieve it it was basically the gaming equivalent of The Last Jedi and it had a similar effect on the fan base the upshot of all of this is the HBO Now find themselves in a bit of a no- win situation with season 2 where any course of action is going to end up alienating a good chunk of Their audience if they deviate from the plot of the game and change key events in response to audience backlash it's going to massively piss off fans of part two
and yes apparently such people do exist then again there's also people who find fat girls attractive it makes no sense to me but each to their own I guess on the other hand if they stick closely to the plot of the game which is what they did with season 1 then it's going to piss off basically everyone else and here's the thing if I had to make a prediction here I'd say they're probably going to take the second option yeah it flies in the face of logic common sense and basic human decency but when Neil
dman is your showrunner you don't need to worry about stuff like that see Last of Us Part Two was very much Neil duckman's baby his magnum opus and changing key parts of it for the TV adaptation would be an emission of defeat and his Eagle just won't allow for that in fact to cement this idea he even brought in hi gross the co-writer for the game to work on this season which you'd really tell you everything you need to know about where this Show's heading creatively it's going to do what the game did and probably
double down on it while I'm here there's a few other concerns that I might as well mention now because I think they're going to factor into the show's overall reception the first of which is the casting yeah we all meme on Pedro Pascal for showing up in basically everything these days and while I'm sure he'll turn in the same reliably acceptable performance that he brings to every one of the 500 or so projects he shows up in every year you're never going to get me to concede that he was the right guy to play Joel
just like he wasn't the right guy to play General a Casius in Gladiator 2 yeah he was perfectly fine in the role I guess because he's a good enough actor to make most characters work to some degree but you could tell that it didn't really fit with his sensibilities as a performer I get the impression that he's actually a bit of a sensitive soul in real life probably more inclined towards flawed and vulnerable characters with a lot of emotional expression wearing nice fluffy jumpers and doing bouncy Showbiz interviews but for some reason Hollywood keeps trying
to Market him as a rugged grizzled tough guy like he's the next Charles Bronson or Clint Eastward or something and it feels about as authentic as zenia's career all of this is to say that I don't think he was the right choice to play Joel I don't especially like what he did with the character in season 1 and I don't expect it's going to get any better in season 2 but okay fine I guess that's a problem that will solve itself eventually the bigger issue is Ellie let's be real with ourselves gentlemen I think pretty
much everyone agrees that Bella Ramsey was a bad choice to play this character like I don't want to [ __ ] on someone's appearance but the job of any actor is to physically and emotionally embody the character that they're playing and be honest here out of all the teenage actresses who would have jumped at the chance to play Ellie Are you seriously telling me this was the best they could come up with season 2 is also supposed to take place 5 years after the events of the first season with a much more grownup ell taking
on the lead role in The Narrative the problem is that Bella Ramsey somehow still has the face and build of a 12-year-old girl even though she's like 21 now so I've got no idea how they expect to make that one work especially the action scenes where has to come across as a dangerous fighter who'd RI your throat out if you messed with her Jesus at least teach her how to throw a punch appearances aside though this season's also going to need her to do a lot of heavy lifting from an acting point of view and
honestly I don't really think she has the range or the Charisma to pull it off she could manage a kind of smarmy prickly aggressiveness but that's basically the only thing I got from her in season 1 Ellie's unique combination of Plucky bravery fake bravado childish innocence and emotional vulnerability from the games was replaced by a kind of sneering arrogant overconfidence where she was able to verbally spar with adults far older and more experienced than herself that made it pretty hard to like or even care about her after a while and honestly I don't know how
they expect to get over that the casting of Abby was always going to be a point of contention too and to be fair they've at least found an actress who looks like an actual human female this time around instead of whatever the [ __ ] this was supposed to be seriously though Caitlyn dver is a pretty good actress and if you haven't watched her in dope sick then I can definitely recommend that show if you don't already hate the pharmaceutical industry with every fiber of your being then you definitely will after that anyway the downside
though is that the role of Abby is kind of a poison chalice and I think she's going to come in for a lot of criticism no matter how well she plays it I don't like it but that's the hostile environment that the game created now this last one is purely one of those gut instinct things but I get the feeling that season 2 is going to go all in on the message we already know that like that is close to Neil duckman's heart and he certainly injected every ounce of it into the second game but
while season 1 generally managed to avoid being too overt with its political message and you could always kind of feel it there lurking in the backgrounds so uh communism N N I didn't like that it is that literally this is the commune we're Communists but the show Runners knew they had to win people over with that all important first season otherwise there wouldn't be anymore and so they were smart enough to keep it dialed down to some degree but now that they've gotten over that initial hurdle well I'd expect to see it fully Unleashed with
season 2 remember Westworld anyone remember how that show fell off a cliff after an incredible first season and basically devolved into a tedious female empowerment wank Fest well there's your patient zero right there ultimately we're not going to know for sure until season two releases and it might still turn out to be an amazing product that somehow pleases both sides of the heavily divided fan base but if I were you I would go into this one with a healthy dose of skepticism anyway that's all I've got for today go away now
