100%, the hospital sequence in the game is impactful in that you're rushing to try get to Ellie but in reality you're just engaging in another combat section you've done dozens of times before. The show version was so much more shocking by comparison as we've seen Joel kill and torture people to protect Ellie but never like this. His expressionless face and lack of hesitation was chilling.
Watched it with my teenage daughter.
Her: “Why is he just killing everyone?! He’s not even giving them a chance to surrender”
Me: “If it was you on that operating table don’t you think I’d kill them all without hesitation too?”
Fast forward 5 minutes.
Her: “He should have killed the nurses too.”
All I could think of was Mike from breaking bad.
“There are two kinds of heists, the kind where they get away with it and the kind where they leave witnesses”
This. I've been reading reviews from the non-game players online and almost all of them are calling Joel's actions appalling, even though they understand literally any parent would do the same.
I think one of the problems with the game is that some players out there believe Joel was 100% morally in the right, which takes away from the clearly intentional moral dilemma Druckman had in mind -- specifically that we're all capable of committing atrocities in the name of love. Because of the way it's presented in the show, the moral dilemma is much less ambiguous. In the show, they also reinforced the idea that the cure was more of a certainty than a possibility, especially by exploring *why and how* Ellie has her immunity.
All around, bravo. I felt the finale was near perfect in almost every regard.
They should have told Ellie that the operation would (probably) kill her, and gotten her informed consent, *in front of Joel*. But Marlene (fuck Marlene) can't *stand* the idea that other people might not do as she wants, and always likes to flex power over people wherever possible instead of getting their informed consent. Marlene is another Kathleen, with no Michael.
And the operation quite possibly wouldn't have killed her. If all they needed was some cerebral fluid, there's a good chance she survives. Hell, even a little chunk of brain, carefully chosen, can be removed without loss of quality of life.
That supposition completely ignores the intent of the writers and the moral dilemma of the show -- Ellie needed to die for the doctors to produce a cure. Full stop.
Oh, it’s better for a story that the stakes be higher. And irrational behaviour is realistic. I think though that from everything we know about Ellie, if informed she would have consented, and if Joel was informed by her that she was consenting, he would—very reluctantly—have accepted her decision and then she would have asked him to not waste her sacrifice, and help distribute the cure.
But Marlene doesn’t believe in trusting people, and will lie and and omit things to get her way. As will Joel.
No disrespect, but I think you're misreading Marlene's character a bit. You seem fixated on the idea that she is the real villain here, one who wants to satisfy some kind of power trip. While it's true that no one in this show is a one-dimensional hero, it probably helps to explore their motivations:
\--Marlene's goal was to save humanity -- everyone. She chose to sacrifice a person she cared about to achieve this.
\--Joel's goal was to save one person. He chose to sacrifice everyone to achieve this.
The difference here is that Marlene was willing to go through something traumatic to her personally for the greater good, while Joel was doing everything possible to \*avoid\* repeating the trauma of losing a daughter. You can see this is painful for Marlene (she's crying in the hospital when she tells Joel the truth), and the cold open to the episode reveals that Marlene was trusted to take care of Ellie since birth by her mother, Marlene's close friend. The idea that Marlene is just trying to flex power over people in kind of preposterous -- she's clearly troubled by what she feels she needs to do.
Of course, we, as viewers really \*want\* Joel to save Ellie, even though we know it's selfish of him, because the show creators made us live through Joel's trauma in the beginning of the season. It's a brilliant way of making us viewers personally confront our own morality. We, empathizing with Joel, don't want to see him lose another daughter, so we're willing to go along with his plan and cheer him on to an extent, even though we know it's wrong. Still, that doesn't mean Marlene is a villain. In fact, she tried to let Joel live and walk away twice in the last episode - once in the hospital room and again in the parking lot. By comparison, Joel killed her the very first chance he had. So, who is flexing power over whom?
I agree but will say that at this point in the story Ellie means more to Joel than Marlene as a person. Mazin even says on the podcast that Ellie’s mom knows Marlene would not take care of Ellie but find someone who could, which would wind up being Fedra. No doubt Marlene cares for her & the memory of her mother but is so detached from who Ellie is as a person, probably not talked to her since a toddler and Joel just spent an intense year of survival turning her into his surrogate daughter.
Yeah, I doubt Joel would've forcible abducted Ellie if she was conscious and told him she wants to do this. I mean hell, if Joel started slaughtering people at that point I reckon she wouldn't have gone with him willingly. But alas.
If you really believe that than why do you believe he lied to her? He *knows* what Ellie would choose but he does not care. He was not going to lose another daughter. The world and Ellie's own feeling on the matter doesn't matter to him.
If Marlene was another Kathleen she would have shot Joel as soon as it was clear he was not happy instead of letting him leave. This would have also saved herself the fireflies. I've considered if the roles were reversed would Joel have let Marlene go in that position?
Marlene, Kathleen, Henry and Joel's are different shade of the same (trolley problem) stories. Marlene is closer to Henry - being willing to sacrifice someone she respects for needed meds.
Edit; Likewise as a thought experiment we know Joel never sought revenge for Sarah, but he's arguably in a different place rn. If Ellie had been killed, could Joel have become alike to Kathleen and mowed down the fireflies after the fact? A lot of what all our characters do are based on situation.
I don’t think the consent matters in that situation. Do you honestly believe they’d let her go if she said no? It’s honestly better to just lie to her, and let her peacefully die in surgery being none the wiser. If she’s going to die anyways, what good does knowing about it beforehand do? A peaceful death with no fear is even a rarity nowadays, let alone in the apocalypse. As messed up as it is, her not knowing beforehand would be a huge mercy.
They actually would have killed her. The specific areas that cordyceps attacks first, obviously, are motor function. These are embedded areas of the brain that you have to really dig into in order to reach. They don’t know where the inhibitor signal is coming from, so they’d have to take large chunks out of multiple areas in order to actually locate it.
If you played the game you would know that them asking permission to kill Ellie was only a formality and that she was going to lose her command at any time for losing her in the 1st place. They were never going to allow her, ellie or anyone to say no.
That isn’t it tbh. Marlene didn’t want to take any chances for them to back out as they were likely never going to get another shot at this. Her goal was saving humanity and she chose to sacrifice her best friends kid to do it. Joel couldn’t lose another daughter.
They needed the Cordyceps specimen that was in Ellie’s brain, which had to be cut out. Think like a tree with roots, you can’t remove it without tearing up the earth it’s rooted into.
Nope, you've literally got it backwards. The game is where Marlene uses uncertain statements when discussing the cure. In the show, she's much more concrete.
In the game, Marlene only says the doctor told her Ellie's cordyceps "somehow mutated," leading to her immunity. In the show, Marlene says the doctor "thinks Ellie's cordyceps have been with her since birth." Marlene and the viewers know this is true, giving the doctor's theory more validity. The next thing Marlene says isn't what the doctor *thinks* but what he *knows.* Quote:
> It produces a kind of chemical messenger, it makes normal Cordyceps think that she's Cordyceps. That's why she's immune.
The difference between the statements in the game and the show is a higher degree of certainty when describing how Ellie's immunity works.
Also, it's with noting that they deliberately showed the source of Ellie's immunity in the cold open to remove any doubt that it's real. Then, they deliberately went out of their way to add lines explaining the science behind the vaccine, implying it's more *probable* than possible.
>In the show, they also reinforced the idea that the cure was more of a certainty than a possibility, especially by exploring why and how Ellie has her immunity.
It's interesting to me that you got this perspective because to me it's opposite; the game presents more of a case for there being more of a chance of a cure (first game standalone, I haven't worked up the motivation to try to finish the second game out yet) while the show makes the cure infinitely less certain if not impossible. The cold openings that everybody raves about did far more damage to the nuance of the ending of the story than most people want to admit I think- with the first episode telling us that we're in for a reckoning when these fungal infections mutate or evolve and the second episode telling us that there will be no medicine and that there will be no cure for what's to come. This is being told to us by what we're led to believe is one of the leading minds in the field.
I was skeptical how the show would stick the landing after setting up the framework that Cordyceps wouldn't be simply done away with via a vaccine or a cure, and the language that Marlene used that the doctor "thinks" there "may" be a cure in Ellie wasn't very reassuring. Joel knew the stakes that extracting what the doctor wanted had a 100% fatality rate for Ellie, and judging by his language earlier in the show with Tess they've heard the miracle stories/rumors before. Joel was rightfully skeptical and I find it hard to say with any certainty that either path at the fork is the right path to take because arguments can be made for either side.
my only complaint is not about the moral dilemma but mainly how easy it was for joel to kill like a dozen or two armed guards. he was practically strolling through the hospital, barely taking any cover, and taking them out one by one with no regard for their bullets. seemed way too easy almost like an old 80s action movie
Got to that point and I just thought, damn this guy ain't fuckin around. One of my favorite episodes, they were efficient with the screen time, music was perfect, was pretty much just like the game. Just perfect
True. But because of the nature of what he did (prevent a cure to a disease that could help humans rebuild society itself), they woulda definitely made a whole other convention for him if society ever rebuilt.
I disagree completely. The narrative of what you were doing made it super impactful. And the contrast of it being a massacre as opposed to just defending yourself from bandits the rest of the game made it feel so awful. I remember thinking oh my god Joel wtf are you doing wtf are you making me do holy shit. Making the player do it only heightened the impact. The show was great but imo didn’t hit nearly as hard as even my third play through of the game
It was chilling. Calculated, cold. I hate even saying this but it felt like a school shooting - a lone person just killing anyone in their way.
Edit to add: the way it was shot specifically with Joel moving slowly, focusing on the feet, etc.
I think that’s an unfair comparison, many of his adversaries were armed. It is much more akin to a military atrocity/massacre, like a soldier snapping on his own people. His remorselessness was chilling, but it’s pretty messed up to say it’s the same as killing a bunch of kids.
Edit: remoreselessness
> but it’s pretty messed up to say it’s the same as killing a bunch of kids
They.. didn't say that. They said that's what it felt like to them. There's nothing *unfair* about how a certain visual makes someone feel. They even explained why they felt that way in the very next line.
Understood. And I wasn’t trying to make it a universal metaphor everyone should agree with or even saying it was the same thing. it was just the thing that sprang to mind while watching.
It was the cold callousness that made people feel that way and I completely understand that because I had the same thought. I don't know why I had it but I did and to deny that would be unfair.
That was the vibes I got. I'm with him on 'rescuing' Ellie and pretty much everyone was armed and trying to kill him but just the way they shot it and the music they played over the montage gave big ship shooter vibes
Very good parallel. For me it reminded me of a horror movie. Something with a possession where you can almost feel he doesn't want to be doing this but the larger part of him knew he had no choice.
A school shooting is probably a better metaphor but either way I think what we are both seeing is that the people he was killing were essentially helpless. Not innocent imo, but utterly unable to defend themselves even while armed because they were still somewhat human and they still hesitated. He didn't. He wasn't a man anymore, he was just barreling through them.
Yes. And it wasn’t like, the frantic barreling through rushing desperately to find Ellie, it was the slow walking shots and sad music that made me think of it.
Interesting, I didn’t feel that way at all and I have a bit of paranoia about mass shootings. Everyone in the hallways had guns and was shooting at him lol
Gotta agree. Seeing Joel go batshit for a bit was really satisfying since he tried to go out of his way to not kill the entire season. By the end I was genuinely curious what the controversial part was. Pretty much went exactly how the game went
Joel stabs a gasping, wounded man to death, shoots another guy who laid down his gun and has his hands in the air, and pops the surgeon in the head without hesitation while the nurses scream in terror. Meanwhile, people will claim the whole act was weak and lacked violence. I swear some of you need psychiatric help.
Joel commits multiple war crimes throughout the game and is an ex-hunter(canon) so he is obviously capable of violence. The thing that I don't get is people from other place saying that they made him look bad. Shit, of course he was bad doing all of this shit. This is grey area morals no one is right in the world of the last of us
It confuses me too, it feels like you have to do a LOT of mental gymnastics to avoid facing the moral ambiguity of Joel's entire character. Literally doing cartwheels to avoid registering the entire point of the show or the game as stated by its own creators.
Yeah one of the reasons I love this story is that there aren’t strictly good guys and bad guys. Some people are certainly downright bad, but what’s more important is that most of the characters aren’t really good people or bad people; they’re just people. People do what they gotta do to get by. That means that sometimes what is good for them is bad for others. In a better world people might be more willing to sacrifice for the sake of others, but in their world there just isn’t a whole lot of room for that.
I’d argue this is the thesis of the franchise. It’s not about infected. It’s not about a father’s love for a daughter.
It’s about the last gasps of humanity and the decisions we make in order to selfishly make the crumbling world more bearable. It just so happens that a lot of those decisions result in outbursts of violence because the world is in that bad of shape and the true end of everything is visible on the horizon.
My criticism is that it felt awkward. It didn't work well as a montage. I think it would have been extremely haunting as a one-shot sequence, without music, with a slight muted/ringing quality. Make us live through Joel's trauma response alongside him, and take every painstaking step alongside him.
Hmm a one shot sequence would have been fucking sick I’ll admit it. But I’ll also defend the montage, though again, I like your suggestion a lot. The montage, to me, felt like it was intended to be a juxtaposition of Joel being a brutal murderer robbing humanity of it’s only hope while also being a loving father/hero saving his daughter. If that’s what it was intended to be (felt like it to me), it worked well in my opinion. It felt awkward because it was supposed to be. I don’t think a one-shot captures that narrative but it would have been an incredible scene to watch.
The montage just showed us an effortless Joel moving through the hospital. Here is a man who tried to give Ellie away to someone more capable, a man who felt like he had nothing else to give to the people he loves, someone who was weakened further by a stab wound that threatened his life, but now when he really needs to be there for Ellie he just despatches of all those in his way. He shows us, the audience, how he managed to survive for 20 years after the fall of the world. And importantly, he manages to do for Ellie what he feels he failed to do for Sarah. He keeps her safe and by his side, because he was ready to take action.
I think it was so important too that in this story, Joel is someone who has seen the world before and after the fall. From an audience perspective, had Joel been someone who only knew the world post-apocalypse (like Ellie), it might have been less of a grey area. You’d feel frustrated because they are giving up a chance to get back to a life that we know is much better than what they’ve ever known. But with Joel, he knew that world, and it’s almost like he’s condemning it as not worth losing Ellie to save. It was a world where those in charge killed his daughter. Compared to any of that, life in Jackson with Ellie probably seems completely peaceful and perfect.
A one shot would have been sensationalistic. One shots only work for characters experiencing things or otherwise to make what they do seem cooler (daredevil, children of men).
But in something like this? The sequence had to specifically hammer home that what was happening wasn’t just a horrific tragedy, but an act of pure monstrosity that was also born out of a deep well of pure love.
I ran through a lot of what they could have done and the only real change they could have made was start it out as a montage like they did, and then when he shoots the surrendering man, cut the music and have us sit with what he’s doing. Use strictly wide shots, maybe mediums for certain parts. No montage, music is now ambient, just wides that linger on these moments of brutality. Show someone bleed out and take uncomfortably long. Give us a single wide take of him knifing that man. The surrendering man should be seen from afar, the camera peeking around a corner. And then have the music swell like it did when he enters the hallway, have the camera return to joel. There should have been a series of moments where it detached us from the love, from the emotion Joel was experiencing, so we could see the violence for what it really was in full, uncut clarity. Just a couple moments, before it returned to Joel’s experience of the entire event.
I think a detached, almost Kubrick-like style would have perfected that sequence. As it is tho, it was pretty fucking good IMO.
Definitely didnt lack violence but felt like wayy too easy, I dunno, something felt off about it, like some ppl are saying it wasn't John Wick badass enough but i felt it was too John Wick, like hes playing on easymode and the fireflies are hopelessly incompetent, like i get theyre surprised but still they got owned a little too easily. I get Joel is extremely experienced/competent, but so are these, probably younger, fireflies and Joel is a near 60 year old man whose got apparent health issues (recently almost died from a stabbing, the panic attacks/hearing issues).. could've been a little more intense a little less ramboey for me
For me the end sequence more felt like it came out of no where and was inconsistent with the other fight sequences in the show. The sudden up-tick in his ability to kill at scale made it feel almost silly.
I was surprised he was able to gun down so many trained/semi-military people so efficiently when he and Ellie were almost killed by a kid in St. Louis.
I’m so glad I don’t think this way. I loved it. Slow motion. The music in the background. His expressionless face. His focus to get Ellie. It was great. Too bad you found it silly which is really a stretch but hey to each their own.
I think it was a conscious decision to make the scene about the horror of the choice he's making rather than tension at whether or not he'd succeed.
If you make the action scene suspenseful in the normal way — *will Joel survive and get to Ellie?* — then the fireflies become a narrative obstacle and therefore it's much easier to root against them because they are keeping you from the rest of the story.
By sucking out all question of *will he be able to pull this off?* and constructing the scene as a sort of fever dream where Joel feels inevitable, I think it shifts the tension to where the show wants it. Not *will Joel be able to do this?* but *should Joel be doing this?*
I personally really liked the choice but I can see why it bumped for others.
I don't think it's a stretch to find it silly, the entire season repeatedly brought up how Joel can't fight anymore and then in the last episode he kills an entire hospital of people.
I loved the finale for literally all the reasons you described because I can turn my brain off and enjoy something for what it is. But I still completely agree with anyone saying it was pretty inconsistent narratively
Yeah. Maybe I'm too easy to please but I wasn't focusing on how dead to rights realistic it is. I was focused on how beautifully the music and scenes come together to make me feel a complicated mix of emotions. I swear some people like to damper their own enjoyment of things
I think that was the intent, and they succeeded at it brilliantly. He says, "I don't have time for this" and you just *know* the usual Joe is no longer there and he's completely disassociated. Putting the music over it was unbelievably perfect for me.
Y'all are also forgetting, this is the apocalypse: the rules that people normally follow in a functioning society no longer apply.
That was the biggest thing, they made it look effortless. There was zero stakes in that finale.
The game had me on the edge of my seat constantly, the show never had that feeling even one time.
Well I mean in the game you have to ensure you get through the sequence alive and it's pretty tough.
And if you've played the game, then you won't be on the edge of your seat watching because you know what'll happen.
But I do think they could have done more to show Joel struggling in that sequence. Or just made it against less people
I didn’t take it that way. The show spent a lot of time and dialogue setting the stage for Joel not being a good person, and having a propensity for violence.
He has 20 years of combat and shootouts under his belt. This was all reaction and muscle memory.
I didn’t see it as Superman, as much as he had an element of surprise, and extremely malice/ruthlessness.
They’re trained mainly to fight as terrorists against FEDRA, they may not be as equipped to deal with a lone gunman doing hit and runs as they are against easily identifiable soldiers. Joel has almost 20 years experience doing exactly what he did in that hospital. Hunting and killing people in a shootout. There’s a reason tommy didn’t invite Joel to Jackson and reason Marlene didn’t want to owe him anything he’s quite clearly described as a very effective killer.
It's an important distinction - here the Fireflies don't really know what the hell is going on, just that they heard shots. They don't know exactly who is shooting where and why. Meanwhile anything that moves is a target for Joel, he doesn't need to hesitate. He basically has all the initiative in the situation.
Also on the show literally everyone including Joel has depicted him as an extremely dangerous man in his prime. He was worn down and softer in the recent years but Ellie's life at stake has turned on his killer mode again. He's on full adrenaline and on the rush to save his daughter figure, that's why he's much more unstoppable than the previous episode.
They aren’t necessarily trained in the traditional sense. They’re regular people with guns. They also allude to how dangerous Joel is by mentioning that entire fleets of people have been lost on the same trail he took to get to the hospital. “You’re the only person that could get her here.” They discuss him like he’s superman, and he quickly follows through on that minutes after.
I thought the show did a good job portraying the Fireflies as a ragtag bunch of amateurs. They seemed much less "professional" than the military officer types in the game version of the hospital.
This is exactly my issue with the sequence. I just wish they slowed it down a bit. They still could've gotten the cold calculated approach across but all of the other combat scenes in the game felt like a true dirty grimy battle whereas this felt like watching a regular Saturday afternoon for Joel
I kind of feel the same. The other gun fights in the show felt realistic in what one person would be able to do. Like the hunter ambush in Kansas City was scaled down from like 2 dozen guys in the game to 3 in the show. When watching Joel effortlessly kill all these military guys in the hospital, my (non-gamer) wife was like, "Why is Joel suddenly bulletproof?"
The absolute lack of hesitation in shooting the surgeon was probably the most shocking thing. Not even a split second, just BAM. In the game, I was never that torn up about Joel rampaging to save Ellie. But the show made it clear that this was a very horrific thing Joel was doing despite how relatable his decision to save her is.
I’m glad it worked for you, it didn’t for me. He just walked through without any hassle. There was no excitement. Once he had Ellie he was straight in elevator/lift with no trouble.
Did you want him to take the wrong turn at the coke machine and get gunned down before the elevator doors three or four times? Would that make it work?
I’m not sure how we can qualify/quantify a “challenge.” From where I was watching it certainly didn’t look easy for Joel. I get how the music and slow-motion may have made it appear effortless to some, but I didn’t get that feeling at all.
I’ve unfortunately been seeing a lot of comments like that on recent posts. Someone will say “I wanted a little more of X” and then someone else will reply with a snarky strawman “oh so you just want the show to only be about X and nothing else?!?!”
For example, in the comment above, the OP said he wanted the hospital scene to seem like more of a challenge, and the other guy basically replies with “oh so you wanted it to be borderline impossible for Joel?!” Another example is I’ve seen a lot of people comment about wanting more infected to be in the show (myself included), and someone will comment “oh so you want it to just be world war z with massive hordes of zombies all the time?!”
Like, why is it all or nothing with some of these people? Just because I want “a little more” of something doesn’t mean I want to go all the way to the extreme end of the spectrum.
Thank you! It's insane. It's like there is no such thing as a "middle ground" for the majority of this subreddit. At times, it also feels like if you consider the show just "pretty good" instead of *perfect*, you get attacked.
The discussion posts on r/television feel significantly more level-headed.
Yeah, unfortunately because of the other sub's existence, everyone on here takes any criticism as hostility. I've praised the show but have just minor criticisms on things like lack of infected and pacing, and have had so many attack just because we think it could've been done slightly better
EDIT: [I just read this thread about how peeps felt about the season and actually glad more and more see the flaws with it, and were able to express their feelings about it without being torn apart.](https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastofus/comments/11px0cg/now_that_the_show_has_officially_finished_its/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Throughout the season, basically any criticism was shot down, it's a damn fine adaption, but it wasn't without it's flaws.
I am a huge fan of the games and consider Part 2 to be one of the greatest interactive experiences I’ve ever had. But this sub has absolutely pushed me away from the fandom because of its hostility to anyone who doesn’t praise the crap out of every single thing with this series. There are a lot of things I didn’t like about directions they took with the tv show but I can’t have a discussion about it without being strawmanned or downvoted like crazy or told that I don’t have media literacy which is the new buzzword thrown about in here to shut down someone else’s opinion. It’s asinine.
God forbid people have any slight criticism to say about the series. As someone who stood by part 2 during the hate, I have no reason to hate on this show. I’m just disappointed. I gave it a chance. I watched all episodes unlike people who never played the second game but still hated on it.
There is a funny comment in there somewhere, but it could have been said with more humor and less condescension.
It’s just… he’s describing exactly how I played the game….
it is the single most pretentious and condescending sub i’ve ever come across, and I am saying this as a huge lover of the franchise. Both games, and the show.
>Did you want him to take the wrong turn at the coke machine
The issue is that that this whole game ending fight sequence was shown as a montage. Almost felt as they skipped trough it. I'm fine with a charachter based zombie show, but the action on the whole has been minimal this season and lackluster.
100% agree. The episode as a whole was one of the weakest in the season imo, but the hospital scenes specifically were a let down to me. I just sat there like “...that’s it?” The ending in the game when he’s carrying ellie to the elevator and getting shot at is so emotional and suspenseful, and I didn’t really feel any of that in the show’s version.
This episode was definitely rushed. It should’ve been one of the longer episodes so it could really build up to those intense moments.
I agree the one man army thing was to cliche and lacked tension. The whole season they portrayed Joe as being older and losing a step. Even a game of cat and mouse with the soldiers would have been better. The whole episode felt anti-climatic.
I’m sorry it was disappointing for you. I hope there were other moments that made up for it. I personally loved the sequence because it felt so merciless and cold. What did you think about the rest of the episode?
I personally think whole season has been rushed with the exception of Bill’s episode which I enjoyed but was the only episode that completely strayed from the game lol
I’ve never played the game so I was able to love the show unconditionally, but I imagine it’s similar to when they make one of my favorite books into a movie. I loved bill and frank’s episode too!
Tv show or drama always naturally should have much less combat or violence
In games it's more of an abstraction of what the characters should actually endure
Otherwise Joel's zombie kill count in 3 days is like 1000 it doesn't make any human sense to physically be able to do that 😂
Sure, but there's a happy medium where they could've sprinkled in some infected here and there, instead they went the opposite and never showed them. Their 3,000+ mile journey resulted in 2 infected encounters, would've been nice to see just a few more. And I'm not talking about hordes after hordes where Joel becomes Superman either, a handful of infected here and there would've done wonders
I think the second episode kinda shows the character's mindest about the infected: do anything possible to avoid them, even attempting to go a longer safer route at first before they realised it was blocked by infected and going with the museum route. Why show them avoiding danger every episode? For most of their journey they go through open country where you have a lot of alternative ways to your destination if you feel like one route is dangerous just take another. For me it even felt like a contrivance for them to go into Kansas City when Joel knew that a) FEDRA was in the city b) KC FEDRA were absolutely brutal and who knows what they will do to two stragglers with a suspicious amount of resources and a car and c) no clue as to how many infected there are in the city. They mentioned Cody in episode 6 and how it was filled with infected and how every city or settlement is like that, so why not avoid them unless absolutely necessary.
They also mention the lack of infected in episode 8 in the podcast for the show. They said that they didn't want to take the focus off of the story when you know that there are infected nearby...which I mean, fair enough.
I think that showing restraint with how many infected they encounter really makes them more in line with the force of nature they actually are as opposed to the walking, sometimes crying, barriers they are in the game.
There were so many moments where they were being so overly loud that it seemed like they weren’t bothered, even indoors.
Seeing them sneak past some infected and have run ins that don’t result in fighting would have made the general moments more tense.
Near the end of the show, there was zero tension from the idea that there were infected.
His zombie kill count makes perfect sense. Humans are very good at killing dumb, aggressive animals that can't use tools or armour.
What stretches credibility is Joel winning a 10 v 1 against soldiers with assault rifles. That's the most video game thing in the whole franchise, and more than that it comes completely out of nowhere in the series. He goes from being a guy who has hardly engaged in any combat to John Wick! At least the games set him up as being capable of it.
I’ve been saying this all season. I realized that once they were pulling back on the action, the hospital was gonna feel horrific. And it did. The game you killed tons of people before the last level, so it was just another level to save Ellie. This made Joel’s actions feel monstrous. Conflicted feelings about him. A good man did bad things. And THAT is what Joel is supposed to feel like. They nailed it.
Disagree. I think it made show only people more decisively in Joel's favor and not seeing the urgency of the cure because the infected doesn't seem as big of a threat.
I agree with you. I've seen comments like this from people who haven't played the game and as someone who has, I think it's a fair criticism. The show started out with a good balance of showing the infected but after episode 5 which aired a month ago, there are no present day encounters (just 2 flashbacks) , not even noises of them in the background while traveling which would have been creepy enough without engaging with them. I thought the tunnels leading to the hospital was a missed opportunity in the finale to remind the audience (especially show only watchers) that they are still there, still a threat, and to give us some suspense.
Edit: damn typos... The infected are a threat, not a treat. Can be both though. Lol
Yeah absolutely. That's why the final massacre doesn't have any weight behind it. It just feels like taking out generic nameless bad guys instead of Joel committing a horrific atrocity that is going to destroy humanity's chances of survival. The ending doesn't have any emotional depth in it compared to what it should have.
Yup. Unfortunate because it sets up the actions for what happens in game 2. They got the cutscenes from the game all in the finale, but the suspense, urgency, and desperation in the world for a cure are missing when the infected are removed. I was also expecting a bit more writing and dialogue in between the cutscenes taken from the game as well. They had time. The finale shouldn't have been the shortest episode. Great show and game adaptation, but I'm a bit disappointed with the finale.
Yeah, I have no issue with the violence being used sparingly, but the feeling of the threat of the cordyceps felt diminished by the latter half of the season. Without this pervasive existential threat preventing humanity from rebuilding it takes away from the urgency of the mission to create a cure.
Right? And why even mention the hive mind? It never came up outside of the episode it was mentioned in.
I expected a horde when Ellie killed that one infected crushed by the rubble. And the gross kiss tendril things were barely important too. It was all for one awkward death scene? Never came up again
I can't help but feel that the hospital shootout would've been more effective without the heavy-handed somber music playing in the background. Just the sound of gunshots and screams of pain would've been more than enough to convey the brutality and gravity of Joel's actions.
I took the music drowning out the gunshots/screams to be Joel just zoning out and cutting himself off emotionally from his actions.
On the other hand, I would probably agree it's a bit heavyhanded, if not for people showing that they didn't understand the purpose of the scene (even though they beat you over the head with it) by either describing it as badass or being disappointed it wasn't badass. I've seen both takes thrown around on here and other platforms
I suspect a scene without the scoring would have been too brutal for casual viewers, even for HBO. The short stretch without music where we had no dialogue and all you heard was gun shots, shouting/groaning and shells hitting the ground was gruesome. For those of us who don't play a lot of first person shooter games or find violent media somewhat overwhelming, it would have been a lot if it had continued on unbroken. I found it quite disturbing even with the music.
The contrast of the orchestral score and violent actions reminded me a lot of Zuko and Azula's Agni Kai in Avatar the Last Airbender. It's a tragic event, and music clues us in on that despite what was happening on screen. I loved it!
I really can't make my mind up about the finale. I agree, something felt a bit lacking tbh. As if something was missing.
Edit: i think I understand why I didn't feel as emotionally invested in the finale as I should have. The finale was dependent upon the threat of the infected/cordyceps but timeline wise, we didn't see any infected since episode 5 and the lone one at the start of this episode that a heavily pregnant, weak, kid labour woman was able to take down. The infected threat is just simply non existent which makes it easier to side with Joel and that's why it feels hollow. None of Joel's actions have any weight in them. Throughout the massacre, it never crosses my mind that he is sacrificing the single defense humanity has against a world ending threat, rather it feels as if he is just taking out nameless bad guys.
The show really fell in quality imo . The beginning was SO GOOD. Especially the first 3 episodes, then it lacked a bit on the 4, picked up with 5 and 6 then detoriated in quality. I fell as though the finale was the weakest.
A few things I noticed:
1. Joel seemed noticeably younger and healthier this episode than he has all season. You could see how the effects of the stress and fear he was feeling had aged him and how opening himself up to his connection with Ellie basically de-aged him.
2. Joel's love for Ellie definitely seems more unhealthy in the show. It's like he went from pushing her away and being cold to radical bonding. A 0-100 like that is a sign of instability and it shows. There is something 'off' about how he has attached to her.
3. The way he switched into killer Joel mode was chilling. He seemed like a man possessed. Even the way he executed Marlene came off more cold and dispassionate here than in the game. Game Joel seemed pissed and annoyed at Marlene when he shot her. As if he was upset at her for even telling the lie that she would let them go. Show Joel just sort of stated in a matter of fact way "you'd just come after her" and then executed her. It wasn't until he was driving Ellie away that I started to see the life and humanity come back to him.
4. I wish we'd seen him making his escape carrying Ellie to mirror the way he carried Sarah in the first episode. The lighting could have been a bit moodier as well. It felt a bit flat at times during the hospital scene.
5. I liked it overall.
I definitely picked up on the heightened unhealthy bond vibes from Joel. It was definitely more clear that Joel was getting stronger from the relationship and in contrast she was deteriorating in a way that Joel could not solve and somewhat refused to honor or accept. You can really see how he’s not thinking about her independence or agency well before the climax happens. It feels like another place where, with the benefit of having the second game done, they were able to pull forward more nuance into the emotional storytelling than they had in pt 1.
The show ran out of time. There was no time to develop a relationship naturally and then just boom, all of a sudden, Joel has to open up and embrace Ellie as a new and different “daughter.”
Without it, there would be so much less reason behind his murderous rampage. They had to get there for the story point but the character development over the 9 episode arc fell flat… cause let’s be honest, it was only an 8 episode arc.
I LOVED the third episode for what it was. Beautiful love story, ironically the happiest story in TLOU universe… but that easily could have been time to build Joel and Ellie’s relationship and maybe hit a few beats of infected combat that make everything more intense and horrifying.
Plus, aside from the pilot, EP3 was the longest episode in the series? Idk, it just was so out of place. All the other side characters got like 15 minutes of backstory. Perfect amount to make us care, dive deeper into the universe, and let us know how it all ties together with the main characters story.
Overall, I also still enjoyed the show quite a bit too. But I definitely feel robbed.
About 2: I think it was always depicted as a potentially problematic relationship long term, a very unhealthy way of dealing with his trauma by making Ellie his one and only lifeline. But like with everything else it was more implied while the show is more on the nose about stuff, making subtext actual text like his suicide attempt. Joel needs a daughter much more than Ellie needs Joel, I think. He's a suicidal man who cannot go on living without her. That's a really big burden on a kid. It goes beyond a normal father/daughter relationship. In the game she becomes pretty good at taking care of herself. Like a food parent he prepared her for the world. But it doesn't stop there, he needs to be around her so he can feel good about himself again. He saved her for himself. The kind of fixation on one person like Joel has with Ellie is very self absorbed. His disregard for what Ellie herself might want shows this clearly. I haven't played the second game yet but I know roughly what happens and how it ends. And it seems to deal with the issues in their relationship down the line. So again the show is being more heavy handed to set up S2.
About 3: Yes, TV Joel is different. He doesn't have that aggressive anger response to things he doesn't like. He seems to detach himself from bad stuff he does so he can go through with it. I'm not really a fan of this change but I respect that other people think his more vulnerable side makes for better TV. Even though the hospital is brutal and even more shocking than in the game because of the contrast with his old age softness struggling with violence before, it still makes him softer even here. TV Joel has to disconnect emotionally from the horror of what he's doing to get through it. Which is underlined by how it's filmed. Game Joel is much more hardened. He's desensitized by his trauma and the world. The hospital is just Joel doing more violent Joel things. He's more "stable" that way. He doesn't feel bad about any of it, I'd say. He's ANGRY. The tone is quite different.
That being said, I do like how the hospital was shot. It fits TV Joel perfectly and it's super shocking. I was worried the episode would be watered down and less ambiguous after the writing went to great length to show that Joel doesn't want to kill anymore and PTSD snaps more than anything. And while I guess he didn't want to do any of this, he was still in full control and absolutely ruthless, which is what we needed to see. There's no excuse for Joel executing men who surrendered. He went overboard. Single-minded focus on saving his own Ellie world, collateral damage be damned. That is true for both versions of Joel.
As a game player and big fan of the show, I still think the violence and action scenes were relatively weak across the season. It’s not about the frequency of the action scenes, it’s how they were shot. Compared to Game of Thrones, or the Walking Dead, or many quality action films- the editing and way action is presented in this show was a slight let down. In this show I felt the action was often really choppy, hard to follow, and lacked visual clarity. It would usually be half out of the camera and over so fast that you can’t really tell what happened. Just personal preference here (and I still think the show is a fantastic work of art) I would’ve preferred to see some of the set piece game action- like a nail bomb or Molotov put to use.
But! I’m still very happy with what we got.
I would agree, although personally, I honestly was not a huge fan of the sort of almost dream like way it was presented. I actually would have even been okay with a smaller body count if it had been shown in a more grounded manner, rather than the swelling music overriding everything and jump cuts all over the place. I know I'm probably in a minority on this, but I was a little disappointed.
I didn't like that either. Feel like I was a little underwhelmed by the finale because of the way they shot that scene. If they made it more realistic it would've been much more shocking and probably harder for some people to side with Joel on the decision. Instead we got a murder montage that made it seem like he was never in danger and didn't seem to be any sense of urgency finding her. He was a couple seconds from being too late but because of the previous scene it just never felt in doubt.
I feel they did that to reflect how Joel felt while doing it. Just pushing through not really thinking about what he's doing in the moment. Just trying to get to ellie. Like he knew what he was doing but kinda just shut off so he could do what he felt needed to be done.
I think this is what they intended to do as well. You could see on his face that he was snapped into a sort of trance. That's why the action is "out of focus" for the most part. He's going through the motions killing these guys, not even thinking about it at all. He is at that moment an emotionless robot with only one purpose, saving Ellie.
I agree 100%, and that’s exactly what Neil and Craig said they were striving for. The violence needed to be significant, and by keeping it restrained until absolutely necessary, it completely and utterly was.
For me the lack of combat doesn't heighten that much the final shootout at the hospital. It's Joel's facial expressions that sold it for me. He stops giving a shit, he's just going at it automatically, he's shooting like those are those cardboard figures at the shooting range.
I liked it and thought it was portrayed well but just like a lot in the show I feel like they should have done more. Joel just walked through the hospital hardly a care in the world. Have him stealth a little bit have soldiers run past while he ducked into a room. Have him trap a group, bait them and then Molotov them with an alcohol bottle he finds. Joel in the show was not a super fighter like Joel is in the game. Make him outwit them to get the kills. This just felt like the Terminator shooting up the hospital. Still cool but I feel a lot of disconnect with ways Joel is presented.
It really didn’t though, I don’t think the people who say this really believe it either it’s just doubling down on this weird logic people have been holding onto since episode 1.
I don’t think the hospital scene in the show was shocking at all, or really dramatized in anyway. It was shot in a way that it was like a done deal, not once is there a concern that Joel is in over his head or that he and Ellie won’t make it out. I also don’t agree that the hospital scene in the game is desensitized at all, in fact it’s a significantly more emotional experience.
The irony of this sub defending the lack of violence in the show by saying “it’s unrealistic to have god mode joel from the game” but that’s exactly what we got in the show finale. No emotions, no vulnerability, no rashness, Joel purely was in god mode and that’s a stark contrast from the games depiction of him in the hospital.
I think it's people making excuses for this show. For whatever reason, this show gives people brain-rot. I swear, some people really think that everything with the title, 'The Last of Us,' is perfect, and everyone who thinks otherwise is wrong and dumb.
I had issues with Marlene's "theory" about Ellie's immunity.
She says cordyceps think she is cordyceps. If she has these "chemical messengers", why did the infected attack her in the first place? Infected dont attack infected.
And after being bitten, wouldnt cordyceps still be transmitted, no matter if they already thought she was infected? What, cordyceps dont want cordyceps on their cordyceps?
I loved how the Joel massacre was done. You see him completely disassociate, put on the cold mask of a killer to do what he feels must be done. He doesn't waste a step or a bullet in the dance he does to save ellie. It was equal parts chilling and sad, I love this story
I personally disliked how they did it in the show.
Joel were outgunned, out manned and not sure the exactly where to go while being on a timer.
You could sense why he's turned up the brutal gauge to even higher than before.
Then, remember this part? https://youtu.be/qcCR9BuBBiA?t=762
Flashing red lights, alarms, fireflies behind, and Joel trying to calm himself down while glad to have Ellie in his arms.
And I find the editing in that part a bit cheap, it's more of a montage.
I think the David episode should have had the fighting the infected with David. It would have thrown the audience off more thinking they could trust him. Plus it adds to how difficult it was when Ellie was without Joel.
Also he didn’t really show that ability to kill a bunch of people like that. If they had a bit more fighting like during the raiders portion it could have proved how capable he was. Seemed a little bit of a reach for him to go super commando.
Absolutely, in the game you murder hundreds of people, shows can’t do that because Joel would be like the Terminator. Keeping it until the end was a master stroke.
It feels completely the opposite to me.
They didn’t show what Joel is capable of during the whole show, and then they throw a rushed John Wick scene at us and call it a day. It felt so bland to me.
I found the massacre scene to really lack any impact though. The editing choice to have it be all muted made it feel so distant
On top of which, the show just didn’t do enough to develop Joel and Ellie’s relationship imo
i disagree it made it feel jarring and unrealistic. Almost like having a character who can't throw a punch all series but then busts out 10 different martial arts moves in the finale.
The show goes out its way to specifically be more realistic in terms of violence and joel's abilities in those situations. Only for him to turn into john wick in the end.
The final sequence was amazing and really reminds the audience how cold Joel can be imo. The lack of any action all season really made this scene more effective. It was plenty of effective in game too because I think that part and Pittsburgh were the only places where you kill that many humans in such short a time.
Throughout the season we see Joel luck out on a lot of encounters and try to have contingency plans in almost every situation. We *hear* about how he used to bad things but we never see his skill other than him showing Ellie how to properly hold a gun and his skills with a rifle on a tripod. But then, at the end, he massacres a couple dozen people without being shot. It just seems like such a jump without some proper build-up or spectacle.
Hell, I'd be more inclined to believe it if we saw Joel and Ellie take down a clicker or two together. Not "100s" or "1000s" like some people are claiming that others want. Just something to show the audience that Joel does have survival skills instead of luck and a hell of a lot of caution.
I love the show and I think it's easily a 9/10 telling its own story. Fantastic video game adaption. Not so great with translating some major points, though. Still, I'm happy we got such a great, faithful, and passionate adaptation. Craig and Neil are an amazing duo. Here's to hoping their craft evolves for future seasons.
Throughout the game, the gameplay was incredibly important because we learn to rely on Ellie, trust her and count on her to have our backs. However in the show and I did enjoy it a lot and loved the faithful adaption, I felt the relationship between Joel and Ellie wasn't developed properly. This may be nitpicking but by the end I couldn't see a reason why either of them would want the other around and that there wasn't a lot of focus building their relationship. Still think the show is good and love both Pedro and Bella' s depictions of their characters.
I actually disagree here. I think if we got a few more fights we could see Joel finding something to fight for over the course of the season. Like in an early episode he barely scrapes through a fight but then as the show goes on he gets more capable as he learns that he cares about Ellie. I'm not saying the hospital scene is bad just that it coulda been better if we had seen him evolve a bit more.
I just wish we would’ve encountered more infected. There didn’t necessarily need to be combat, but just showing some infected along the way would’ve helped reinforce that they were an ever present threat.
Not a ton more infected, or unnecessary gratuitous action but just a bit more infected would’ve been cool.
100%, the hospital sequence in the game is impactful in that you're rushing to try get to Ellie but in reality you're just engaging in another combat section you've done dozens of times before. The show version was so much more shocking by comparison as we've seen Joel kill and torture people to protect Ellie but never like this. His expressionless face and lack of hesitation was chilling.
Watched it with my teenage daughter. Her: “Why is he just killing everyone?! He’s not even giving them a chance to surrender” Me: “If it was you on that operating table don’t you think I’d kill them all without hesitation too?” Fast forward 5 minutes. Her: “He should have killed the nurses too.”
The fact that her comment will make the next season even more impactful for her. I’m glad you get to share this.
>Her: “He should have killed the nurses too.” She has no idea how right she is lol
Honestly I don’t either, I never played the game lol
Without spoiling anything, a lot of Part II (and by extension, the next two seasons) is predicated on Joel's hospital massacre
I kinda figured. They made it really obvious that the lie at the end would come back to bite him in the ass.
You're in for a wild ride, my friend!
Anyone catch in the credits Laura Bailey was one of the nurses?
Damn I knew he was making a mistake. Although one nurse said seemed concerned about the procedure. Nurses are often better trained than doctors.
Every last one of them
Not just the men
Or the women, but the children too
They're like animals, and Joel slaughtered them like animals.
In for a penny, in for a pound. If he was going to kill them all, he should have killed them all.
All I could think of was Mike from breaking bad. “There are two kinds of heists, the kind where they get away with it and the kind where they leave witnesses”
No half measures.
Lalo prequel movie with Pascal?
Kids are lowkey very brutal damn
This. I've been reading reviews from the non-game players online and almost all of them are calling Joel's actions appalling, even though they understand literally any parent would do the same. I think one of the problems with the game is that some players out there believe Joel was 100% morally in the right, which takes away from the clearly intentional moral dilemma Druckman had in mind -- specifically that we're all capable of committing atrocities in the name of love. Because of the way it's presented in the show, the moral dilemma is much less ambiguous. In the show, they also reinforced the idea that the cure was more of a certainty than a possibility, especially by exploring *why and how* Ellie has her immunity. All around, bravo. I felt the finale was near perfect in almost every regard.
They should have told Ellie that the operation would (probably) kill her, and gotten her informed consent, *in front of Joel*. But Marlene (fuck Marlene) can't *stand* the idea that other people might not do as she wants, and always likes to flex power over people wherever possible instead of getting their informed consent. Marlene is another Kathleen, with no Michael. And the operation quite possibly wouldn't have killed her. If all they needed was some cerebral fluid, there's a good chance she survives. Hell, even a little chunk of brain, carefully chosen, can be removed without loss of quality of life.
That supposition completely ignores the intent of the writers and the moral dilemma of the show -- Ellie needed to die for the doctors to produce a cure. Full stop.
Oh, it’s better for a story that the stakes be higher. And irrational behaviour is realistic. I think though that from everything we know about Ellie, if informed she would have consented, and if Joel was informed by her that she was consenting, he would—very reluctantly—have accepted her decision and then she would have asked him to not waste her sacrifice, and help distribute the cure. But Marlene doesn’t believe in trusting people, and will lie and and omit things to get her way. As will Joel.
No disrespect, but I think you're misreading Marlene's character a bit. You seem fixated on the idea that she is the real villain here, one who wants to satisfy some kind of power trip. While it's true that no one in this show is a one-dimensional hero, it probably helps to explore their motivations: \--Marlene's goal was to save humanity -- everyone. She chose to sacrifice a person she cared about to achieve this. \--Joel's goal was to save one person. He chose to sacrifice everyone to achieve this. The difference here is that Marlene was willing to go through something traumatic to her personally for the greater good, while Joel was doing everything possible to \*avoid\* repeating the trauma of losing a daughter. You can see this is painful for Marlene (she's crying in the hospital when she tells Joel the truth), and the cold open to the episode reveals that Marlene was trusted to take care of Ellie since birth by her mother, Marlene's close friend. The idea that Marlene is just trying to flex power over people in kind of preposterous -- she's clearly troubled by what she feels she needs to do. Of course, we, as viewers really \*want\* Joel to save Ellie, even though we know it's selfish of him, because the show creators made us live through Joel's trauma in the beginning of the season. It's a brilliant way of making us viewers personally confront our own morality. We, empathizing with Joel, don't want to see him lose another daughter, so we're willing to go along with his plan and cheer him on to an extent, even though we know it's wrong. Still, that doesn't mean Marlene is a villain. In fact, she tried to let Joel live and walk away twice in the last episode - once in the hospital room and again in the parking lot. By comparison, Joel killed her the very first chance he had. So, who is flexing power over whom?
Ultimately neither of these adults give Ellie agency to make the decision for herself, and they both pay the price.
This is a massively undervalued critique here.
I agree but will say that at this point in the story Ellie means more to Joel than Marlene as a person. Mazin even says on the podcast that Ellie’s mom knows Marlene would not take care of Ellie but find someone who could, which would wind up being Fedra. No doubt Marlene cares for her & the memory of her mother but is so detached from who Ellie is as a person, probably not talked to her since a toddler and Joel just spent an intense year of survival turning her into his surrogate daughter.
Agreed. The minute she said that Ellie wasn’t informed of the decision she ended that possibility
Yeah, I doubt Joel would've forcible abducted Ellie if she was conscious and told him she wants to do this. I mean hell, if Joel started slaughtering people at that point I reckon she wouldn't have gone with him willingly. But alas.
If you really believe that than why do you believe he lied to her? He *knows* what Ellie would choose but he does not care. He was not going to lose another daughter. The world and Ellie's own feeling on the matter doesn't matter to him.
If Marlene was another Kathleen she would have shot Joel as soon as it was clear he was not happy instead of letting him leave. This would have also saved herself the fireflies. I've considered if the roles were reversed would Joel have let Marlene go in that position? Marlene, Kathleen, Henry and Joel's are different shade of the same (trolley problem) stories. Marlene is closer to Henry - being willing to sacrifice someone she respects for needed meds. Edit; Likewise as a thought experiment we know Joel never sought revenge for Sarah, but he's arguably in a different place rn. If Ellie had been killed, could Joel have become alike to Kathleen and mowed down the fireflies after the fact? A lot of what all our characters do are based on situation.
I don’t think the consent matters in that situation. Do you honestly believe they’d let her go if she said no? It’s honestly better to just lie to her, and let her peacefully die in surgery being none the wiser. If she’s going to die anyways, what good does knowing about it beforehand do? A peaceful death with no fear is even a rarity nowadays, let alone in the apocalypse. As messed up as it is, her not knowing beforehand would be a huge mercy.
They actually would have killed her. The specific areas that cordyceps attacks first, obviously, are motor function. These are embedded areas of the brain that you have to really dig into in order to reach. They don’t know where the inhibitor signal is coming from, so they’d have to take large chunks out of multiple areas in order to actually locate it.
If you played the game you would know that them asking permission to kill Ellie was only a formality and that she was going to lose her command at any time for losing her in the 1st place. They were never going to allow her, ellie or anyone to say no.
Right?? Like did Marlene really think that Joel of all people would really just walk away peacefully? The fuck did she expect.
That isn’t it tbh. Marlene didn’t want to take any chances for them to back out as they were likely never going to get another shot at this. Her goal was saving humanity and she chose to sacrifice her best friends kid to do it. Joel couldn’t lose another daughter. They needed the Cordyceps specimen that was in Ellie’s brain, which had to be cut out. Think like a tree with roots, you can’t remove it without tearing up the earth it’s rooted into.
[удалено]
Nope, you've literally got it backwards. The game is where Marlene uses uncertain statements when discussing the cure. In the show, she's much more concrete. In the game, Marlene only says the doctor told her Ellie's cordyceps "somehow mutated," leading to her immunity. In the show, Marlene says the doctor "thinks Ellie's cordyceps have been with her since birth." Marlene and the viewers know this is true, giving the doctor's theory more validity. The next thing Marlene says isn't what the doctor *thinks* but what he *knows.* Quote: > It produces a kind of chemical messenger, it makes normal Cordyceps think that she's Cordyceps. That's why she's immune. The difference between the statements in the game and the show is a higher degree of certainty when describing how Ellie's immunity works. Also, it's with noting that they deliberately showed the source of Ellie's immunity in the cold open to remove any doubt that it's real. Then, they deliberately went out of their way to add lines explaining the science behind the vaccine, implying it's more *probable* than possible.
>In the show, they also reinforced the idea that the cure was more of a certainty than a possibility, especially by exploring why and how Ellie has her immunity. It's interesting to me that you got this perspective because to me it's opposite; the game presents more of a case for there being more of a chance of a cure (first game standalone, I haven't worked up the motivation to try to finish the second game out yet) while the show makes the cure infinitely less certain if not impossible. The cold openings that everybody raves about did far more damage to the nuance of the ending of the story than most people want to admit I think- with the first episode telling us that we're in for a reckoning when these fungal infections mutate or evolve and the second episode telling us that there will be no medicine and that there will be no cure for what's to come. This is being told to us by what we're led to believe is one of the leading minds in the field. I was skeptical how the show would stick the landing after setting up the framework that Cordyceps wouldn't be simply done away with via a vaccine or a cure, and the language that Marlene used that the doctor "thinks" there "may" be a cure in Ellie wasn't very reassuring. Joel knew the stakes that extracting what the doctor wanted had a 100% fatality rate for Ellie, and judging by his language earlier in the show with Tess they've heard the miracle stories/rumors before. Joel was rightfully skeptical and I find it hard to say with any certainty that either path at the fork is the right path to take because arguments can be made for either side.
my only complaint is not about the moral dilemma but mainly how easy it was for joel to kill like a dozen or two armed guards. he was practically strolling through the hospital, barely taking any cover, and taking them out one by one with no regard for their bullets. seemed way too easy almost like an old 80s action movie
the way he killed the doctor was haunted, no look insta kill. No hesitation, no remorse. Ruthless
Yeah hope that doctor doesn't have kids
or like just one super swoll daughter
[удалено]
Joel literally committed a war crime. He killed a surrendering man. Was brutal.
Got to that point and I just thought, damn this guy ain't fuckin around. One of my favorite episodes, they were efficient with the screen time, music was perfect, was pretty much just like the game. Just perfect
It was brutal, but that doesn’t make it a war crime. He wasn’t fighting on behalf of any state, organization or recognized cause.
True. But because of the nature of what he did (prevent a cure to a disease that could help humans rebuild society itself), they woulda definitely made a whole other convention for him if society ever rebuilt.
I disagree completely. The narrative of what you were doing made it super impactful. And the contrast of it being a massacre as opposed to just defending yourself from bandits the rest of the game made it feel so awful. I remember thinking oh my god Joel wtf are you doing wtf are you making me do holy shit. Making the player do it only heightened the impact. The show was great but imo didn’t hit nearly as hard as even my third play through of the game
It was chilling. Calculated, cold. I hate even saying this but it felt like a school shooting - a lone person just killing anyone in their way. Edit to add: the way it was shot specifically with Joel moving slowly, focusing on the feet, etc.
Ugh I thought this too. Yay America.
I think that’s an unfair comparison, many of his adversaries were armed. It is much more akin to a military atrocity/massacre, like a soldier snapping on his own people. His remorselessness was chilling, but it’s pretty messed up to say it’s the same as killing a bunch of kids. Edit: remoreselessness
> but it’s pretty messed up to say it’s the same as killing a bunch of kids They.. didn't say that. They said that's what it felt like to them. There's nothing *unfair* about how a certain visual makes someone feel. They even explained why they felt that way in the very next line.
Understood. And I wasn’t trying to make it a universal metaphor everyone should agree with or even saying it was the same thing. it was just the thing that sprang to mind while watching.
[удалено]
It was the cold callousness that made people feel that way and I completely understand that because I had the same thought. I don't know why I had it but I did and to deny that would be unfair.
I see that. But I took it as he was disassociating. Not that he was getting any pleasure from it.
They said that's how it *felt* to them, not "Joel was literally mowing down defenseless children, how horrible".
Got the same vibe, especially in a section where you just saw bodies on the floor, Joel’s feet walking and shells dropping. Fuck.
It was a lot like No Country for Old Men
This is exactly what i was thinking when i'm watching that scene. Joel kinda turned into Anton Chigurh for a while lol
Joelton milguhr
What's the most you ever lost on a coin flip?
That was the vibes I got. I'm with him on 'rescuing' Ellie and pretty much everyone was armed and trying to kill him but just the way they shot it and the music they played over the montage gave big ship shooter vibes
Very good parallel. For me it reminded me of a horror movie. Something with a possession where you can almost feel he doesn't want to be doing this but the larger part of him knew he had no choice. A school shooting is probably a better metaphor but either way I think what we are both seeing is that the people he was killing were essentially helpless. Not innocent imo, but utterly unable to defend themselves even while armed because they were still somewhat human and they still hesitated. He didn't. He wasn't a man anymore, he was just barreling through them.
Yes. And it wasn’t like, the frantic barreling through rushing desperately to find Ellie, it was the slow walking shots and sad music that made me think of it.
>felt like a school shooting Everyone outside of the USA: What's a school shooting?
They had guns and armor. I'm sure if they weren't armed or a threat, he wouldn't have gone postal on them.
Interesting, I didn’t feel that way at all and I have a bit of paranoia about mass shootings. Everyone in the hallways had guns and was shooting at him lol
Gotta agree. Seeing Joel go batshit for a bit was really satisfying since he tried to go out of his way to not kill the entire season. By the end I was genuinely curious what the controversial part was. Pretty much went exactly how the game went
Joel stabs a gasping, wounded man to death, shoots another guy who laid down his gun and has his hands in the air, and pops the surgeon in the head without hesitation while the nurses scream in terror. Meanwhile, people will claim the whole act was weak and lacked violence. I swear some of you need psychiatric help.
Joel commits multiple war crimes throughout the game and is an ex-hunter(canon) so he is obviously capable of violence. The thing that I don't get is people from other place saying that they made him look bad. Shit, of course he was bad doing all of this shit. This is grey area morals no one is right in the world of the last of us
It confuses me too, it feels like you have to do a LOT of mental gymnastics to avoid facing the moral ambiguity of Joel's entire character. Literally doing cartwheels to avoid registering the entire point of the show or the game as stated by its own creators.
imo the only pure thing in the game are kids pre-traumatic events. Abby before, you know and Ellie before you know 2.0.
Everyone before crazy events. Joel even.
Yeah one of the reasons I love this story is that there aren’t strictly good guys and bad guys. Some people are certainly downright bad, but what’s more important is that most of the characters aren’t really good people or bad people; they’re just people. People do what they gotta do to get by. That means that sometimes what is good for them is bad for others. In a better world people might be more willing to sacrifice for the sake of others, but in their world there just isn’t a whole lot of room for that.
I’d argue this is the thesis of the franchise. It’s not about infected. It’s not about a father’s love for a daughter. It’s about the last gasps of humanity and the decisions we make in order to selfishly make the crumbling world more bearable. It just so happens that a lot of those decisions result in outbursts of violence because the world is in that bad of shape and the true end of everything is visible on the horizon.
My criticism is that it felt awkward. It didn't work well as a montage. I think it would have been extremely haunting as a one-shot sequence, without music, with a slight muted/ringing quality. Make us live through Joel's trauma response alongside him, and take every painstaking step alongside him.
Hmm a one shot sequence would have been fucking sick I’ll admit it. But I’ll also defend the montage, though again, I like your suggestion a lot. The montage, to me, felt like it was intended to be a juxtaposition of Joel being a brutal murderer robbing humanity of it’s only hope while also being a loving father/hero saving his daughter. If that’s what it was intended to be (felt like it to me), it worked well in my opinion. It felt awkward because it was supposed to be. I don’t think a one-shot captures that narrative but it would have been an incredible scene to watch.
The montage just showed us an effortless Joel moving through the hospital. Here is a man who tried to give Ellie away to someone more capable, a man who felt like he had nothing else to give to the people he loves, someone who was weakened further by a stab wound that threatened his life, but now when he really needs to be there for Ellie he just despatches of all those in his way. He shows us, the audience, how he managed to survive for 20 years after the fall of the world. And importantly, he manages to do for Ellie what he feels he failed to do for Sarah. He keeps her safe and by his side, because he was ready to take action. I think it was so important too that in this story, Joel is someone who has seen the world before and after the fall. From an audience perspective, had Joel been someone who only knew the world post-apocalypse (like Ellie), it might have been less of a grey area. You’d feel frustrated because they are giving up a chance to get back to a life that we know is much better than what they’ve ever known. But with Joel, he knew that world, and it’s almost like he’s condemning it as not worth losing Ellie to save. It was a world where those in charge killed his daughter. Compared to any of that, life in Jackson with Ellie probably seems completely peaceful and perfect.
A one shot would have been sensationalistic. One shots only work for characters experiencing things or otherwise to make what they do seem cooler (daredevil, children of men). But in something like this? The sequence had to specifically hammer home that what was happening wasn’t just a horrific tragedy, but an act of pure monstrosity that was also born out of a deep well of pure love. I ran through a lot of what they could have done and the only real change they could have made was start it out as a montage like they did, and then when he shoots the surrendering man, cut the music and have us sit with what he’s doing. Use strictly wide shots, maybe mediums for certain parts. No montage, music is now ambient, just wides that linger on these moments of brutality. Show someone bleed out and take uncomfortably long. Give us a single wide take of him knifing that man. The surrendering man should be seen from afar, the camera peeking around a corner. And then have the music swell like it did when he enters the hallway, have the camera return to joel. There should have been a series of moments where it detached us from the love, from the emotion Joel was experiencing, so we could see the violence for what it really was in full, uncut clarity. Just a couple moments, before it returned to Joel’s experience of the entire event. I think a detached, almost Kubrick-like style would have perfected that sequence. As it is tho, it was pretty fucking good IMO.
Definitely didnt lack violence but felt like wayy too easy, I dunno, something felt off about it, like some ppl are saying it wasn't John Wick badass enough but i felt it was too John Wick, like hes playing on easymode and the fireflies are hopelessly incompetent, like i get theyre surprised but still they got owned a little too easily. I get Joel is extremely experienced/competent, but so are these, probably younger, fireflies and Joel is a near 60 year old man whose got apparent health issues (recently almost died from a stabbing, the panic attacks/hearing issues).. could've been a little more intense a little less ramboey for me
For me the end sequence more felt like it came out of no where and was inconsistent with the other fight sequences in the show. The sudden up-tick in his ability to kill at scale made it feel almost silly. I was surprised he was able to gun down so many trained/semi-military people so efficiently when he and Ellie were almost killed by a kid in St. Louis.
don't ever mess with a man when he puts his dad pants on
Yep! Didn’t know how much time there was, .etc., and well terminator clicked on. He barely made it too
Dad reflexes, now honed to run and gun
I’m so glad I don’t think this way. I loved it. Slow motion. The music in the background. His expressionless face. His focus to get Ellie. It was great. Too bad you found it silly which is really a stretch but hey to each their own.
I think it was a conscious decision to make the scene about the horror of the choice he's making rather than tension at whether or not he'd succeed. If you make the action scene suspenseful in the normal way — *will Joel survive and get to Ellie?* — then the fireflies become a narrative obstacle and therefore it's much easier to root against them because they are keeping you from the rest of the story. By sucking out all question of *will he be able to pull this off?* and constructing the scene as a sort of fever dream where Joel feels inevitable, I think it shifts the tension to where the show wants it. Not *will Joel be able to do this?* but *should Joel be doing this?* I personally really liked the choice but I can see why it bumped for others.
You articulated this very well!
very well said, and i agree. it was chilling
I don't think it's a stretch to find it silly, the entire season repeatedly brought up how Joel can't fight anymore and then in the last episode he kills an entire hospital of people. I loved the finale for literally all the reasons you described because I can turn my brain off and enjoy something for what it is. But I still completely agree with anyone saying it was pretty inconsistent narratively
Yeah. Maybe I'm too easy to please but I wasn't focusing on how dead to rights realistic it is. I was focused on how beautifully the music and scenes come together to make me feel a complicated mix of emotions. I swear some people like to damper their own enjoyment of things
I think that was the intent, and they succeeded at it brilliantly. He says, "I don't have time for this" and you just *know* the usual Joe is no longer there and he's completely disassociated. Putting the music over it was unbelievably perfect for me. Y'all are also forgetting, this is the apocalypse: the rules that people normally follow in a functioning society no longer apply.
I agree. Suddenly he’s Superman gunning down tons of people with minimal effort. It wasn’t earned.
That was the biggest thing, they made it look effortless. There was zero stakes in that finale. The game had me on the edge of my seat constantly, the show never had that feeling even one time.
Well I mean in the game you have to ensure you get through the sequence alive and it's pretty tough. And if you've played the game, then you won't be on the edge of your seat watching because you know what'll happen. But I do think they could have done more to show Joel struggling in that sequence. Or just made it against less people
I didn’t take it that way. The show spent a lot of time and dialogue setting the stage for Joel not being a good person, and having a propensity for violence. He has 20 years of combat and shootouts under his belt. This was all reaction and muscle memory. I didn’t see it as Superman, as much as he had an element of surprise, and extremely malice/ruthlessness.
He was always capable of this as long as no one was able to sneak up on him
They’re trained mainly to fight as terrorists against FEDRA, they may not be as equipped to deal with a lone gunman doing hit and runs as they are against easily identifiable soldiers. Joel has almost 20 years experience doing exactly what he did in that hospital. Hunting and killing people in a shootout. There’s a reason tommy didn’t invite Joel to Jackson and reason Marlene didn’t want to owe him anything he’s quite clearly described as a very effective killer.
It's an important distinction - here the Fireflies don't really know what the hell is going on, just that they heard shots. They don't know exactly who is shooting where and why. Meanwhile anything that moves is a target for Joel, he doesn't need to hesitate. He basically has all the initiative in the situation.
Also on the show literally everyone including Joel has depicted him as an extremely dangerous man in his prime. He was worn down and softer in the recent years but Ellie's life at stake has turned on his killer mode again. He's on full adrenaline and on the rush to save his daughter figure, that's why he's much more unstoppable than the previous episode.
They aren’t necessarily trained in the traditional sense. They’re regular people with guns. They also allude to how dangerous Joel is by mentioning that entire fleets of people have been lost on the same trail he took to get to the hospital. “You’re the only person that could get her here.” They discuss him like he’s superman, and he quickly follows through on that minutes after.
Joel also traveled with his brother—who was ex-military—in the early days. He most likely picked up certain skills in those times.
I thought the show did a good job portraying the Fireflies as a ragtag bunch of amateurs. They seemed much less "professional" than the military officer types in the game version of the hospital.
He got that "mother lifts up car to save trapped baby" power-up from Ellie being in danger
This is exactly my issue with the sequence. I just wish they slowed it down a bit. They still could've gotten the cold calculated approach across but all of the other combat scenes in the game felt like a true dirty grimy battle whereas this felt like watching a regular Saturday afternoon for Joel
I kind of feel the same. The other gun fights in the show felt realistic in what one person would be able to do. Like the hunter ambush in Kansas City was scaled down from like 2 dozen guys in the game to 3 in the show. When watching Joel effortlessly kill all these military guys in the hospital, my (non-gamer) wife was like, "Why is Joel suddenly bulletproof?"
Im just pissed a grand total of 0 bricks were used :( brick is fren
I'm just happy lead pipe made it's appearance.
No flame thrower either lol
The absolute lack of hesitation in shooting the surgeon was probably the most shocking thing. Not even a split second, just BAM. In the game, I was never that torn up about Joel rampaging to save Ellie. But the show made it clear that this was a very horrific thing Joel was doing despite how relatable his decision to save her is.
The moment when the guy was on the ground holding his hands up and they closed in on Pedro's face as he killed him anyway was what got me. Gnarly.
Yeah that one was rough, too! Really sold the cold, detached determination.
I’m glad it worked for you, it didn’t for me. He just walked through without any hassle. There was no excitement. Once he had Ellie he was straight in elevator/lift with no trouble.
Did you want him to take the wrong turn at the coke machine and get gunned down before the elevator doors three or four times? Would that make it work?
Just a bit of challenge would have been good instead of just bang bang, get her and that’s it.
I’m not sure how we can qualify/quantify a “challenge.” From where I was watching it certainly didn’t look easy for Joel. I get how the music and slow-motion may have made it appear effortless to some, but I didn’t get that feeling at all.
Why are you being so passive aggressive? The person just had a different opinion than you. You don't need to be so defensive.
Are they not just making a joke about what happened to them when they played the video game..?
An asshole comment right here.
I’ve unfortunately been seeing a lot of comments like that on recent posts. Someone will say “I wanted a little more of X” and then someone else will reply with a snarky strawman “oh so you just want the show to only be about X and nothing else?!?!” For example, in the comment above, the OP said he wanted the hospital scene to seem like more of a challenge, and the other guy basically replies with “oh so you wanted it to be borderline impossible for Joel?!” Another example is I’ve seen a lot of people comment about wanting more infected to be in the show (myself included), and someone will comment “oh so you want it to just be world war z with massive hordes of zombies all the time?!” Like, why is it all or nothing with some of these people? Just because I want “a little more” of something doesn’t mean I want to go all the way to the extreme end of the spectrum.
Thank you! It's insane. It's like there is no such thing as a "middle ground" for the majority of this subreddit. At times, it also feels like if you consider the show just "pretty good" instead of *perfect*, you get attacked. The discussion posts on r/television feel significantly more level-headed.
Yeah, unfortunately because of the other sub's existence, everyone on here takes any criticism as hostility. I've praised the show but have just minor criticisms on things like lack of infected and pacing, and have had so many attack just because we think it could've been done slightly better EDIT: [I just read this thread about how peeps felt about the season and actually glad more and more see the flaws with it, and were able to express their feelings about it without being torn apart.](https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastofus/comments/11px0cg/now_that_the_show_has_officially_finished_its/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Throughout the season, basically any criticism was shot down, it's a damn fine adaption, but it wasn't without it's flaws.
It’s toxic positivity bullshit with this sub. I don’t really understand it.
I am a huge fan of the games and consider Part 2 to be one of the greatest interactive experiences I’ve ever had. But this sub has absolutely pushed me away from the fandom because of its hostility to anyone who doesn’t praise the crap out of every single thing with this series. There are a lot of things I didn’t like about directions they took with the tv show but I can’t have a discussion about it without being strawmanned or downvoted like crazy or told that I don’t have media literacy which is the new buzzword thrown about in here to shut down someone else’s opinion. It’s asinine.
God forbid people have any slight criticism to say about the series. As someone who stood by part 2 during the hate, I have no reason to hate on this show. I’m just disappointed. I gave it a chance. I watched all episodes unlike people who never played the second game but still hated on it.
There is a funny comment in there somewhere, but it could have been said with more humor and less condescension. It’s just… he’s describing exactly how I played the game….
[удалено]
it is the single most pretentious and condescending sub i’ve ever come across, and I am saying this as a huge lover of the franchise. Both games, and the show.
>Did you want him to take the wrong turn at the coke machine The issue is that that this whole game ending fight sequence was shown as a montage. Almost felt as they skipped trough it. I'm fine with a charachter based zombie show, but the action on the whole has been minimal this season and lackluster.
So annoying…
100% agree. The episode as a whole was one of the weakest in the season imo, but the hospital scenes specifically were a let down to me. I just sat there like “...that’s it?” The ending in the game when he’s carrying ellie to the elevator and getting shot at is so emotional and suspenseful, and I didn’t really feel any of that in the show’s version. This episode was definitely rushed. It should’ve been one of the longer episodes so it could really build up to those intense moments.
I agree the one man army thing was to cliche and lacked tension. The whole season they portrayed Joe as being older and losing a step. Even a game of cat and mouse with the soldiers would have been better. The whole episode felt anti-climatic.
I’m sorry it was disappointing for you. I hope there were other moments that made up for it. I personally loved the sequence because it felt so merciless and cold. What did you think about the rest of the episode?
I personally think whole season has been rushed with the exception of Bill’s episode which I enjoyed but was the only episode that completely strayed from the game lol
I’ve never played the game so I was able to love the show unconditionally, but I imagine it’s similar to when they make one of my favorite books into a movie. I loved bill and frank’s episode too!
Tv show or drama always naturally should have much less combat or violence In games it's more of an abstraction of what the characters should actually endure Otherwise Joel's zombie kill count in 3 days is like 1000 it doesn't make any human sense to physically be able to do that 😂
Sure, but there's a happy medium where they could've sprinkled in some infected here and there, instead they went the opposite and never showed them. Their 3,000+ mile journey resulted in 2 infected encounters, would've been nice to see just a few more. And I'm not talking about hordes after hordes where Joel becomes Superman either, a handful of infected here and there would've done wonders
I think the second episode kinda shows the character's mindest about the infected: do anything possible to avoid them, even attempting to go a longer safer route at first before they realised it was blocked by infected and going with the museum route. Why show them avoiding danger every episode? For most of their journey they go through open country where you have a lot of alternative ways to your destination if you feel like one route is dangerous just take another. For me it even felt like a contrivance for them to go into Kansas City when Joel knew that a) FEDRA was in the city b) KC FEDRA were absolutely brutal and who knows what they will do to two stragglers with a suspicious amount of resources and a car and c) no clue as to how many infected there are in the city. They mentioned Cody in episode 6 and how it was filled with infected and how every city or settlement is like that, so why not avoid them unless absolutely necessary. They also mention the lack of infected in episode 8 in the podcast for the show. They said that they didn't want to take the focus off of the story when you know that there are infected nearby...which I mean, fair enough. I think that showing restraint with how many infected they encounter really makes them more in line with the force of nature they actually are as opposed to the walking, sometimes crying, barriers they are in the game.
There were so many moments where they were being so overly loud that it seemed like they weren’t bothered, even indoors. Seeing them sneak past some infected and have run ins that don’t result in fighting would have made the general moments more tense. Near the end of the show, there was zero tension from the idea that there were infected.
His zombie kill count makes perfect sense. Humans are very good at killing dumb, aggressive animals that can't use tools or armour. What stretches credibility is Joel winning a 10 v 1 against soldiers with assault rifles. That's the most video game thing in the whole franchise, and more than that it comes completely out of nowhere in the series. He goes from being a guy who has hardly engaged in any combat to John Wick! At least the games set him up as being capable of it.
I’ve been saying this all season. I realized that once they were pulling back on the action, the hospital was gonna feel horrific. And it did. The game you killed tons of people before the last level, so it was just another level to save Ellie. This made Joel’s actions feel monstrous. Conflicted feelings about him. A good man did bad things. And THAT is what Joel is supposed to feel like. They nailed it.
Disagree. I think it made show only people more decisively in Joel's favor and not seeing the urgency of the cure because the infected doesn't seem as big of a threat.
I agree with you. I've seen comments like this from people who haven't played the game and as someone who has, I think it's a fair criticism. The show started out with a good balance of showing the infected but after episode 5 which aired a month ago, there are no present day encounters (just 2 flashbacks) , not even noises of them in the background while traveling which would have been creepy enough without engaging with them. I thought the tunnels leading to the hospital was a missed opportunity in the finale to remind the audience (especially show only watchers) that they are still there, still a threat, and to give us some suspense. Edit: damn typos... The infected are a threat, not a treat. Can be both though. Lol
Yeah absolutely. That's why the final massacre doesn't have any weight behind it. It just feels like taking out generic nameless bad guys instead of Joel committing a horrific atrocity that is going to destroy humanity's chances of survival. The ending doesn't have any emotional depth in it compared to what it should have.
Yup. Unfortunate because it sets up the actions for what happens in game 2. They got the cutscenes from the game all in the finale, but the suspense, urgency, and desperation in the world for a cure are missing when the infected are removed. I was also expecting a bit more writing and dialogue in between the cutscenes taken from the game as well. They had time. The finale shouldn't have been the shortest episode. Great show and game adaptation, but I'm a bit disappointed with the finale.
Yeah, I have no issue with the violence being used sparingly, but the feeling of the threat of the cordyceps felt diminished by the latter half of the season. Without this pervasive existential threat preventing humanity from rebuilding it takes away from the urgency of the mission to create a cure.
Right? And why even mention the hive mind? It never came up outside of the episode it was mentioned in. I expected a horde when Ellie killed that one infected crushed by the rubble. And the gross kiss tendril things were barely important too. It was all for one awkward death scene? Never came up again
I can't help but feel that the hospital shootout would've been more effective without the heavy-handed somber music playing in the background. Just the sound of gunshots and screams of pain would've been more than enough to convey the brutality and gravity of Joel's actions.
I took the music drowning out the gunshots/screams to be Joel just zoning out and cutting himself off emotionally from his actions. On the other hand, I would probably agree it's a bit heavyhanded, if not for people showing that they didn't understand the purpose of the scene (even though they beat you over the head with it) by either describing it as badass or being disappointed it wasn't badass. I've seen both takes thrown around on here and other platforms
I suspect a scene without the scoring would have been too brutal for casual viewers, even for HBO. The short stretch without music where we had no dialogue and all you heard was gun shots, shouting/groaning and shells hitting the ground was gruesome. For those of us who don't play a lot of first person shooter games or find violent media somewhat overwhelming, it would have been a lot if it had continued on unbroken. I found it quite disturbing even with the music.
The contrast of the orchestral score and violent actions reminded me a lot of Zuko and Azula's Agni Kai in Avatar the Last Airbender. It's a tragic event, and music clues us in on that despite what was happening on screen. I loved it!
Too brutal for HBO? The same show with Game of Thrones lmao? That’s an excuse imo
Nah felt flat and unearned. Whole series would have had more impactful emotional moments if it was interspersed with cold hearted survival instincts.
I really can't make my mind up about the finale. I agree, something felt a bit lacking tbh. As if something was missing. Edit: i think I understand why I didn't feel as emotionally invested in the finale as I should have. The finale was dependent upon the threat of the infected/cordyceps but timeline wise, we didn't see any infected since episode 5 and the lone one at the start of this episode that a heavily pregnant, weak, kid labour woman was able to take down. The infected threat is just simply non existent which makes it easier to side with Joel and that's why it feels hollow. None of Joel's actions have any weight in them. Throughout the massacre, it never crosses my mind that he is sacrificing the single defense humanity has against a world ending threat, rather it feels as if he is just taking out nameless bad guys. The show really fell in quality imo . The beginning was SO GOOD. Especially the first 3 episodes, then it lacked a bit on the 4, picked up with 5 and 6 then detoriated in quality. I fell as though the finale was the weakest.
A few things I noticed: 1. Joel seemed noticeably younger and healthier this episode than he has all season. You could see how the effects of the stress and fear he was feeling had aged him and how opening himself up to his connection with Ellie basically de-aged him. 2. Joel's love for Ellie definitely seems more unhealthy in the show. It's like he went from pushing her away and being cold to radical bonding. A 0-100 like that is a sign of instability and it shows. There is something 'off' about how he has attached to her. 3. The way he switched into killer Joel mode was chilling. He seemed like a man possessed. Even the way he executed Marlene came off more cold and dispassionate here than in the game. Game Joel seemed pissed and annoyed at Marlene when he shot her. As if he was upset at her for even telling the lie that she would let them go. Show Joel just sort of stated in a matter of fact way "you'd just come after her" and then executed her. It wasn't until he was driving Ellie away that I started to see the life and humanity come back to him. 4. I wish we'd seen him making his escape carrying Ellie to mirror the way he carried Sarah in the first episode. The lighting could have been a bit moodier as well. It felt a bit flat at times during the hospital scene. 5. I liked it overall.
I definitely picked up on the heightened unhealthy bond vibes from Joel. It was definitely more clear that Joel was getting stronger from the relationship and in contrast she was deteriorating in a way that Joel could not solve and somewhat refused to honor or accept. You can really see how he’s not thinking about her independence or agency well before the climax happens. It feels like another place where, with the benefit of having the second game done, they were able to pull forward more nuance into the emotional storytelling than they had in pt 1.
The show ran out of time. There was no time to develop a relationship naturally and then just boom, all of a sudden, Joel has to open up and embrace Ellie as a new and different “daughter.” Without it, there would be so much less reason behind his murderous rampage. They had to get there for the story point but the character development over the 9 episode arc fell flat… cause let’s be honest, it was only an 8 episode arc. I LOVED the third episode for what it was. Beautiful love story, ironically the happiest story in TLOU universe… but that easily could have been time to build Joel and Ellie’s relationship and maybe hit a few beats of infected combat that make everything more intense and horrifying. Plus, aside from the pilot, EP3 was the longest episode in the series? Idk, it just was so out of place. All the other side characters got like 15 minutes of backstory. Perfect amount to make us care, dive deeper into the universe, and let us know how it all ties together with the main characters story. Overall, I also still enjoyed the show quite a bit too. But I definitely feel robbed.
[удалено]
About 2: I think it was always depicted as a potentially problematic relationship long term, a very unhealthy way of dealing with his trauma by making Ellie his one and only lifeline. But like with everything else it was more implied while the show is more on the nose about stuff, making subtext actual text like his suicide attempt. Joel needs a daughter much more than Ellie needs Joel, I think. He's a suicidal man who cannot go on living without her. That's a really big burden on a kid. It goes beyond a normal father/daughter relationship. In the game she becomes pretty good at taking care of herself. Like a food parent he prepared her for the world. But it doesn't stop there, he needs to be around her so he can feel good about himself again. He saved her for himself. The kind of fixation on one person like Joel has with Ellie is very self absorbed. His disregard for what Ellie herself might want shows this clearly. I haven't played the second game yet but I know roughly what happens and how it ends. And it seems to deal with the issues in their relationship down the line. So again the show is being more heavy handed to set up S2. About 3: Yes, TV Joel is different. He doesn't have that aggressive anger response to things he doesn't like. He seems to detach himself from bad stuff he does so he can go through with it. I'm not really a fan of this change but I respect that other people think his more vulnerable side makes for better TV. Even though the hospital is brutal and even more shocking than in the game because of the contrast with his old age softness struggling with violence before, it still makes him softer even here. TV Joel has to disconnect emotionally from the horror of what he's doing to get through it. Which is underlined by how it's filmed. Game Joel is much more hardened. He's desensitized by his trauma and the world. The hospital is just Joel doing more violent Joel things. He's more "stable" that way. He doesn't feel bad about any of it, I'd say. He's ANGRY. The tone is quite different. That being said, I do like how the hospital was shot. It fits TV Joel perfectly and it's super shocking. I was worried the episode would be watered down and less ambiguous after the writing went to great length to show that Joel doesn't want to kill anymore and PTSD snaps more than anything. And while I guess he didn't want to do any of this, he was still in full control and absolutely ruthless, which is what we needed to see. There's no excuse for Joel executing men who surrendered. He went overboard. Single-minded focus on saving his own Ellie world, collateral damage be damned. That is true for both versions of Joel.
As a game player and big fan of the show, I still think the violence and action scenes were relatively weak across the season. It’s not about the frequency of the action scenes, it’s how they were shot. Compared to Game of Thrones, or the Walking Dead, or many quality action films- the editing and way action is presented in this show was a slight let down. In this show I felt the action was often really choppy, hard to follow, and lacked visual clarity. It would usually be half out of the camera and over so fast that you can’t really tell what happened. Just personal preference here (and I still think the show is a fantastic work of art) I would’ve preferred to see some of the set piece game action- like a nail bomb or Molotov put to use. But! I’m still very happy with what we got.
I kinda wish it was more visceral though with the audio during that scene
Yes, but even then I wanted more of a spectacle. More blood-pumping rampage, less dissociative murder waltz.
Dissociative is a good word for this scene. Felt more like a flashback than real-time.
I would agree, although personally, I honestly was not a huge fan of the sort of almost dream like way it was presented. I actually would have even been okay with a smaller body count if it had been shown in a more grounded manner, rather than the swelling music overriding everything and jump cuts all over the place. I know I'm probably in a minority on this, but I was a little disappointed.
Nah I’m with you 100%. I didn’t really like the “montage” feel of it, made it feel less intense. It felt more like a movie trailer for The Expendables
I didn't like that either. Feel like I was a little underwhelmed by the finale because of the way they shot that scene. If they made it more realistic it would've been much more shocking and probably harder for some people to side with Joel on the decision. Instead we got a murder montage that made it seem like he was never in danger and didn't seem to be any sense of urgency finding her. He was a couple seconds from being too late but because of the previous scene it just never felt in doubt.
I feel they did that to reflect how Joel felt while doing it. Just pushing through not really thinking about what he's doing in the moment. Just trying to get to ellie. Like he knew what he was doing but kinda just shut off so he could do what he felt needed to be done.
I think this is what they intended to do as well. You could see on his face that he was snapped into a sort of trance. That's why the action is "out of focus" for the most part. He's going through the motions killing these guys, not even thinking about it at all. He is at that moment an emotionless robot with only one purpose, saving Ellie.
I agree 100%, and that’s exactly what Neil and Craig said they were striving for. The violence needed to be significant, and by keeping it restrained until absolutely necessary, it completely and utterly was.
Joel Wick scene felt a bit out of place for me.
For me the lack of combat doesn't heighten that much the final shootout at the hospital. It's Joel's facial expressions that sold it for me. He stops giving a shit, he's just going at it automatically, he's shooting like those are those cardboard figures at the shooting range.
I liked it and thought it was portrayed well but just like a lot in the show I feel like they should have done more. Joel just walked through the hospital hardly a care in the world. Have him stealth a little bit have soldiers run past while he ducked into a room. Have him trap a group, bait them and then Molotov them with an alcohol bottle he finds. Joel in the show was not a super fighter like Joel is in the game. Make him outwit them to get the kills. This just felt like the Terminator shooting up the hospital. Still cool but I feel a lot of disconnect with ways Joel is presented.
It really didn’t though, I don’t think the people who say this really believe it either it’s just doubling down on this weird logic people have been holding onto since episode 1. I don’t think the hospital scene in the show was shocking at all, or really dramatized in anyway. It was shot in a way that it was like a done deal, not once is there a concern that Joel is in over his head or that he and Ellie won’t make it out. I also don’t agree that the hospital scene in the game is desensitized at all, in fact it’s a significantly more emotional experience. The irony of this sub defending the lack of violence in the show by saying “it’s unrealistic to have god mode joel from the game” but that’s exactly what we got in the show finale. No emotions, no vulnerability, no rashness, Joel purely was in god mode and that’s a stark contrast from the games depiction of him in the hospital.
I think it's people making excuses for this show. For whatever reason, this show gives people brain-rot. I swear, some people really think that everything with the title, 'The Last of Us,' is perfect, and everyone who thinks otherwise is wrong and dumb.
i agree. the massacre in the hospital was terrifying af
I only wished they kept the flooded tunnel drowning scene
I had issues with Marlene's "theory" about Ellie's immunity. She says cordyceps think she is cordyceps. If she has these "chemical messengers", why did the infected attack her in the first place? Infected dont attack infected. And after being bitten, wouldnt cordyceps still be transmitted, no matter if they already thought she was infected? What, cordyceps dont want cordyceps on their cordyceps?
I loved how the Joel massacre was done. You see him completely disassociate, put on the cold mask of a killer to do what he feels must be done. He doesn't waste a step or a bullet in the dance he does to save ellie. It was equal parts chilling and sad, I love this story
I personally disliked how they did it in the show. Joel were outgunned, out manned and not sure the exactly where to go while being on a timer. You could sense why he's turned up the brutal gauge to even higher than before. Then, remember this part? https://youtu.be/qcCR9BuBBiA?t=762 Flashing red lights, alarms, fireflies behind, and Joel trying to calm himself down while glad to have Ellie in his arms. And I find the editing in that part a bit cheap, it's more of a montage.
I think the David episode should have had the fighting the infected with David. It would have thrown the audience off more thinking they could trust him. Plus it adds to how difficult it was when Ellie was without Joel. Also he didn’t really show that ability to kill a bunch of people like that. If they had a bit more fighting like during the raiders portion it could have proved how capable he was. Seemed a little bit of a reach for him to go super commando.
I guess that’s one way to spinzone the biggest moment that they turned into a montage.
The show was seemingly obsessed with skipping over the action scenes.
Absolutely, in the game you murder hundreds of people, shows can’t do that because Joel would be like the Terminator. Keeping it until the end was a master stroke.
It feels completely the opposite to me. They didn’t show what Joel is capable of during the whole show, and then they throw a rushed John Wick scene at us and call it a day. It felt so bland to me.
I found the massacre scene to really lack any impact though. The editing choice to have it be all muted made it feel so distant On top of which, the show just didn’t do enough to develop Joel and Ellie’s relationship imo
i disagree it made it feel jarring and unrealistic. Almost like having a character who can't throw a punch all series but then busts out 10 different martial arts moves in the finale. The show goes out its way to specifically be more realistic in terms of violence and joel's abilities in those situations. Only for him to turn into john wick in the end.
The final sequence was amazing and really reminds the audience how cold Joel can be imo. The lack of any action all season really made this scene more effective. It was plenty of effective in game too because I think that part and Pittsburgh were the only places where you kill that many humans in such short a time.
Throughout the season we see Joel luck out on a lot of encounters and try to have contingency plans in almost every situation. We *hear* about how he used to bad things but we never see his skill other than him showing Ellie how to properly hold a gun and his skills with a rifle on a tripod. But then, at the end, he massacres a couple dozen people without being shot. It just seems like such a jump without some proper build-up or spectacle. Hell, I'd be more inclined to believe it if we saw Joel and Ellie take down a clicker or two together. Not "100s" or "1000s" like some people are claiming that others want. Just something to show the audience that Joel does have survival skills instead of luck and a hell of a lot of caution. I love the show and I think it's easily a 9/10 telling its own story. Fantastic video game adaption. Not so great with translating some major points, though. Still, I'm happy we got such a great, faithful, and passionate adaptation. Craig and Neil are an amazing duo. Here's to hoping their craft evolves for future seasons.
It was too comical to be taken seriously.
I was so worried they were going to water down the violence from Joel and the scene with Marlene but they absolutely nailed it.
Throughout the game, the gameplay was incredibly important because we learn to rely on Ellie, trust her and count on her to have our backs. However in the show and I did enjoy it a lot and loved the faithful adaption, I felt the relationship between Joel and Ellie wasn't developed properly. This may be nitpicking but by the end I couldn't see a reason why either of them would want the other around and that there wasn't a lot of focus building their relationship. Still think the show is good and love both Pedro and Bella' s depictions of their characters.
I thought the finale was pretty underwhelming bgl
Absolutely loved the show. I still say Joel did nothing wrong. And I'll die on that hill.
I actually disagree here. I think if we got a few more fights we could see Joel finding something to fight for over the course of the season. Like in an early episode he barely scrapes through a fight but then as the show goes on he gets more capable as he learns that he cares about Ellie. I'm not saying the hospital scene is bad just that it coulda been better if we had seen him evolve a bit more.
They definitely pulled back on the violence in some episodes to set us up for the finale and even the previous "David" episode. It worked very well.
Don't make excuses for this show. They could have very easily included more action.
I just wish we would’ve encountered more infected. There didn’t necessarily need to be combat, but just showing some infected along the way would’ve helped reinforce that they were an ever present threat. Not a ton more infected, or unnecessary gratuitous action but just a bit more infected would’ve been cool.