The Empty Apocalyptic Horror of THE LAST OF US
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- Опубликовано: 17 фев 2023
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How do we imagine the post-apocalyptic genre in 2023 after we've been through the wringer ourselves? Let's look at The Last of Us and how it fits into the modern entries in the genre, like The Leftovers, Station Eleven, and Chernobyl.
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Dude the functioning anarcho socialist commune is like, next episode. And it’s the nicest place in the series.
Never seen a video essay age so bad so quickly
"We're communists," they said directly and explicitly. I fuckin' loved that. It's depicted in so many mediums, and often in post-apocalyptic media, all the time and yet they never, EVER give it credit.
@@jamesmoore3879 He's gotta delete this lmao
@@samuelstensgaard4828 or create another video. Moar content!
Ooof...he really dropped the ball huh? Lol.
I heavily disagree with your argument given how very clearly political the show is, even compared to the quite political game, it comments on the pandemic, the rise of fascim is the face of the disaster and how the government failed to control the outbreak, it comments on climate change literally in the first 5 minutes, I feel that this analysis is deeply mistaken and that somehow in a capitalist world when the world just falls apart without any societal change that people would just be happy and hopeful, I mean that did not happen with covid and the last of us apocalypse is clearly more severe as there are also literal monsters running around the streets, the show is very political and I highly urge you to reconsider your analysis of it.
I agreed with a lot of this commentary but I agree with you on that. Plus, Walking Dead very much had community aspects involved, several times over. And there are communities in Last of Us as well, ones that aren't as fascistic. It's just not the focus. The focus was always on finding a reason to care and a purpose, and trying to reconcile self-sustaining vicious cycles of revenge-killing.
Deffo agree
It's also about the fact that when materialism and overconsumption is abandoned the things that truly matter are human connections which are now currently commodified in some way...but the last of us shows us going back to our roots of what makes life worth living.
I dunno. They both made people want to buy force multipliers, not join a mutual aid society or learn to garden
Just to be clear, the virus is spread through bites in the game as well-Ellie's unchanging bite mark play a huge part in the story of the game and the show.
Yeah the thing they replaced the spires with is the tendril things. The fact that stepping on a piece of fungus in one spot can wake up an entire horde of infected a mile away and have them sprinting towards you.
"Ellie's unchanging bite mark play a huge part in the story of the game and the show" I agree, it could also be seen as symbolism, a kind of "mark of the beast" that singles her out as possibly "problematic" or "dangerous". It could also be seen as a symbolism for the "L" in LGBT, she has this "condition" (not bad necessarily) that sets her apart from others and its an ongoing struggle that comes into view in the 2nd game. Just my 2 cents..
@@booleanillogical4757 gotcha! I haven’t made it far into the show yet. From the video, he makes it seem like bites aren’t present in the game at all. It’s a shame they completely removed the spores though.
Virus? 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓
@@romancandleofthewild I kind of wish they'd kept the spores but just made them a less frequent threat. Only present in areas of really dense fungal growth or something, that you'd want to avoid anyway because of all the infected that might be present.
There have been a couple scenes they've changed so far, and future scenes they'll have to change, where Ellie's ability to breathe spores without a mask was important, and so far it's been okay but maybe a little weaker. Still, it's a very small issue.
this falls into the camp of me wishing you waited till the end of season 1. really interested in people's perspectives that didn't play the games, but this video is all over the place.
I agree. He's passing judgement too quickly but he does say in the video that he did it because he needs to generate content and since the last of us is trending, let's jump in the bandwagon
Yeah, I dont know how seriously to take him. I mean... much of what he says is not really thought out well and just as ignorant as he claims others are being.
You gotta be careful with The Last of Us fans.
@@SaberRexZealot don’t have to worry that until season 2.
@@almartinet oh god the discourse is gonna get toxic 😬😬
"The show does not want to address the elephant in the room"
Literally the first scene in the show, a scene that is completely a show-exclusive scene, addresses viral pandemics.
Yeah I am normally really happy with his analysis, but this seems just lazy. He seems to be just looking for something to not like about the show.
Also the last of us follows pretty closely the original game which happened many years before COVID. It would be annoying if they tried to change it to shoehorn story points about a pandemic into this.
I think you have some insightful thoughts as always, but your unfamiliarity with where TLOU is heading has diminished your ability to comment effectively on the series. I will not spoil it, but....
It's a subversive interpretation of finding meaning during the Apocalypse and at this point in the show is still very much in the process of establishing and reinforing genre expectations before the emotional narrative swerve.
Moreover, I think the show does purposefully emphasize the value of art, joy, connection, in the face of apocalyptic danger. The art scribbled on the school walls of the bunker under Kansas City, Elle's fixation on her silly joke book as a means to connect with Joel, even Tess' love for Joel, and of course the incredible third episode that could serve as a singular short film treatise on identity, connection, and joy being more necessary than solitary survival.
The games also emphasize the melancholy of what was lost. The cosmic injustice of our entire species having once had such potential, and now being reduced to survival. Elle in the game is obsessed with Space Travel, shuttles, the ISS.
She was born after the apocalypse, and those ideas are stunning to her. Mankind may never make it back to orbit. It's a recurring theme, of what the far future, the post-post-apocalypse, may bring. The real future, the distant, but nonetheless real world that is coming after this horror had passed.
Just as an aside, the showrunners said they nixed the "spores" idea because they consulted with scientists who basically said "yeah that wouldn't make any sense, if it was spores they wouldn't be confined to this one area, they would be everywhere and the whole world would be zombies in a few weeks tops" and decided to change it to be more realistic (and the games had infection transferred through biting too, just also spores on top of that in some sections). So saying this is an example of the show "rewriting the truth" just to avoid, like, masking parallels doesn't seem like a fair criticism at all in this case
Would be interesting to see you revisit your views on Last of Us after the end of the season or in the context of the full story from the second game being adapted as well. While its a post apocalyptic setting the story isn't really about the apocalypse/pandemic. Its more of a morality tale and reflection of what we pretend society is built on, and what its actually built on. The characters are essentially doing the things we already do to each other now.
So, the last of us isn't about zombies, and it isn't even about the apocalypse or society as a whole. It's a story about a single relationship. It's a story about empathy and trauma and learning to trust and love again.
I love your videos, and you even have great points in this video. I just think you're coming at the last of us through the average zombie apocalypse lense, when the reason it's such a beloved game is because it has little to do with that at all
Yeah, I watched this and couldn't help have a quote from Nando v Movies in regards to his reviews which I'll paraphrase here but he essentially says that he waits until the end of the season - or at least near the end - before chiming in because otherwise he risks making a fool of himself.
PS I love your videos usually, I don't want to be mean, this feels like a rare miss is all.
Exactly, the last of us is a much more grounded and intimate story. Complaining that it hasn't got enough social commentary about society as a whole is just missing the point.
Right, the "apocalypse" is the *setting* for the story in Last of Us... not the story itself
…..but the whole thing about Bill (and Joel) is that they’re WRONG.
Bill met Frank, and built a connection he never would have been able to make before the world ended. Joel’s survival-at-all-costs mentality dies almost immediately, the moment he meets someone worth dying for. He fights it, but the point is Ellie becomes his purpose.
Connection IS purpose in the Last of Us, because the world isn’t worth living for. People are. “I used to hate the world, and I was happy when everyone died. But I was wrong. Because there was one person worth saving.” How is that NOT about connection?
Bill’s entire story is that surviving isn’t enough. That one must have something (someone) to survive for.
The show (and game) may not have much faith in society. And really, what about society as-is suggests that it should be rebuilt, or deserves faith?
But building connections between people in a world that absolutely throws up every barrier to connection possible is the entire story.
You AREN’T supposed to trust anyone, you aren’t supposed to make yourself vulnerable to anyone, and yet…..people do. Trauma and fear will build walls around your heart, but the right person WILL scale those walls….and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop them. Even in a world where love seems impossible, it’s just as inevitable. Perhaps even more so; when you have so much trying to pull you apart, you cling tighter then ever.
Sacrifice for faceless strangers is a nice thought. But…..people fight for those they know. Those they love.
It’s not about saving the world. It’s about saving each other. Because humanity is just a lot of individual people.
Who do you fight for, and why? Are you the bad guy, if your love makes you the villain in someone else’s story? How far will you go to not end up alone?
Because there’s no point to a life lived alone. That’s driven home literally over and over in the Last of Us. People kill themselves, rather than face life alone. They lose their humanity, when they lose their loved ones. Because love, the ones we love, that is what makes us human.
And yeah, it’s pretty bleak, seeing what happens when you do lose your purpose. When you are alone.
But that kind of devastation, the lengths you’ll go to to avoid it, is just a powerful testament to how much people need that love and connection.
At the end of the day, the world can’t be saved. But people can be. What you love, who you love, that is ALL that is worth saving, worth fighting for.
And I think that’s a beautiful idea, if a bit less optimistic than what you seem to be looking for.
beautiful, and accurate
"I struggled a long time with surviving, and -- you keep finding something to fight for."
100% agree
Very well said and very true. No one is an island, or as Terry Pratchett wisely said, "humans need other people to be, well, people." We are social animals and without the brownian motion of interacting with others, we go a bit strange, which is why the pandemic affected so many badly.
Wow, this was beautiful. Was not expecting something so poignant in a RUclips comment ❤
I think it's important to note that The Last of Us is exploring grief and love, what it means to keep going when the world does feel as fog eat dog as the current world is. I think the show is an exploration of our morals now, why we justify the decisions that we make and they are often based in love. The main characters not necessarily the good guys, maybe no one is? It explores what it means to try to lead revolutions in the midst of grief and violence, how many revolutions end up recreating the same issues we have as before. I think this analysis missed the mark, there were some things in there that are interesting points and comparisons but in the end this commentary so soon doesn't allow the show its full potential.
I had the same feeling about this commentary. I think this season explores a lot of love and kindness that people have within themselves, despite all the cruelty all around them :3
Yes! Thank you for expressing this. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but you hit the nail on the head. Post Apocalypse media is essentially sci-fi media. And while science fiction often takes place in the future, it more often than not is talking about today. I'm surprised that Step Back didn't see that here.
The Last of Us is about love and the things that it does. It's about grief, how suffering creates suffering, and the cycle of violence. I don't really think its about how you can't trust anyone.
The cycle of violence being resistance against colonisation btw.
@@aj7058 I'll look for that I didn't even pick up on that
@@aj7058 I don't see that at all. Not so far in the show and not in either game. The cycle of violence in the game was purely about interpersonal vengeance and what it does even to the "winner," if such a thing even exists in that scenario.
@@furiousapplesack yeah that's it. One of the creators is Israeli and has said that aspect of it - a cycle of interpersonal vengeance - is inspired by the Israeli colonisation of Palestine because that's how he views it.
@@aj7058 Ok, yeah. That makes sense. So it's about cycles of interpersonal vengeance, but was inspired by Israel's actions against Palestine. I appreciate the info, didn't know that. I might've picked up on it if the story had been more about whole communities going to war, the revenge aspect on a larger scale, but they kept it to two small groups within different communities forming a beef with each other.
Kinda crazy that you posted this right before the collectivist commune episode lol
chief im gonna cut you some slack bc the shows not over and we have yet to see where it takes joel and ellie, but as far as the game goes (light spoilers ig), the story was about how joel stopped letting the world change him and how he could make steps to change his own world after tragedy. the reading that its "just another zombie post apocalypse" feels a little rushed, especially knowing how granular the scope gets as we start to focus in on how exactly the last 20 years in a hopeless society changed people and how those changes are a fart in the wind. its super easy to say "oh you just dont know the source material" but in this instance, even though that source material isnt like groundbreaking or anything, you really should give it a gander bc the story is much more meaningful than "suspicion and hatred of your fellow man is always justified". in fact, the entire plot of the second game, start to finish, is about how that philosophy also kind of sucks, and how meaning is found in an empty world not buy shouldering these massive generational vendettas and grudges but by going out and finding it with people you decide to trust simply because you decide to trust them.
ITS GOOD
I absolutely agree with you here. I think the show is good as someone who has also played the game. But I think on its own it can be seen as a tad flat due to just sticking to main plot points. I think to get the full scope it would be necessary to play the game or watch a play though to get a better sense of its source material. To better understand the intent behind a show based on another media form, it needs to be addressed. Certain points and emotions can be lost in translation from one media form to the next, so to honestly judge the show and the way it was reworked we have to see its origin. I watch all of skip into's videos and think he has a lot of great points, even in the video but it is still clearly through one POV. I also get a bit of a vibe, based off of his comment of not playing a game since the early 2000s that he doesn't take media in video game form as seriously.
I don’t necessarily agree that it is but saying TLOU feels out of date, played out for the genre and doesn’t comment on COVID / current events when it’s literally a close adaptation of a story that is a DECADE old is… 💁♀️ I dunno what to tell you, man. no it doesn’t directly comment on the recent pandemic, it was written well before 2013.
Right lol, if anything they've added in a couple of flashback scenes that DO touch on it without feeling like they derail the plot, which I think they did well. But yeah, they made the game before we had covid - why expect it to take current events into account any more than it has? If they changed the whole narrative just to comment on covid I would have found that extremely disappointing anyway.
I'm not saying it will for sure change your opinion, but I would be interested to see a follow up video when you see where its been going. Last of Us as a setting is largely about its characters, grief, and love, and is strong when that is the focus, cause you're right that the sort of setting it portrays is played out. Which is why with the show its so clearly about now, and how now feels. Consider that for Bill and Frank, if they had found each other and had no apocalypse the world would not have felt all that different from fungusland.
Omg im early. But i will push back a bit on your initial argument...it very obviously was commenting on our pandemic (which is very much still going on and killing hundreds of thousands of people every day and disabling everyone else). The indonesia plot made that especially clear. Its a very political show so idk, its got a lot to say aboit various things? But especially the pandemic and fascism.
THIIIIIS.
Facts
He's passing judgement to the show too quickly, we're barely at the mid point
Infection spreads through the bites in game as well, however that isn't how society collapses in either medium. And it happening very quickly is the point.
If the world ended we wouldn't all suddenly be holding hands, it'd be a messy scramble. The Last of Us gives us both visions, a dog eat dog world of old, and the commune in Ep 6. The Last of Us isn't a survivalist "don't trust anyone" show, the whole point of the show is a character learning to connect again, to be human again. The core of the show is connection, hell Kathleen does what she does over connection!
In the Last of Us, "the world ended in a day" is an oversimplification of what actually happened, and it's ultimately unimportant. Why? You'll have to keep reading.
The show isn't about building a new world, although it clearly has elements of that in other characters, it's not about grappling with the world ending, not exactly. It's about Joel's grief, his PTSD, and his calcified self dealing with the fact he has someone new in his life that he's growing attached to. It's about the characters, not big ideas. Or is it?
Actually, the characters are a mirror of the apocalypse. Joel IS dealing with the world ending, his world ended when his daughter died. He never got to think about building a new world because his world died, that's why we skipped ahead 20 years! Because those 20 years did not matter to Joel. Only with Ellie is he finally starting to thaw, is he starting to think past tomorrow. Notice the differences between Joel and Tommy, Joel never got to move on, but Tommy has! Tommy lives in a commune meanwhile Joel was selling stuff as a smuggler. Tommy is living in a new world, Joel never escaped the old.
Only now, with Ellie, is Joel finally starting to deal with the world ending, and with "building a new one" for himself.
This is my favourite show of 2023 so far. It's well acted, written, edited and directed, and I'm excited that it's getting a second season already!
It feels like this video should have had Chernobyl in the title instead of Last of Us, just because it feels like half the runtime is spent saying "hey remember how Chernobyl was insanely good?"
Gotta get those SEO bucks I guess lol (no judgment, we all gotta eat, but I do think it was maybe not so great of an idea to make so many criticisms about a show that's not even finished yet without knowing where it's going)
All I can say is - wait for it.
However, let's look at the reality of the human psyche in survival situations. During the recent pandemic there was a scarcity of certain goods, some because of interruptions to the supply chain, but some due to people hoarding so they could sell it at greatly inflated prices, and a much smaller group who wanted to make sure their group had enough and to hell with others. The last group was a very small amount of people who tried to help others. This was just a preview of how things would be in a worse situation.
The Last of Us has a pretty realistic approach to life after an apocalyptic event where the threat is still present 20 years later. The larger safe zones would, by necessity, be run by militaristic groups with the resources and training to keep people safe from the threat, and with very strict rules to keep the people safe from each other. The smaller safe zones would still require people who have the ability to fight off the threat even if they were more cooperative about the everyday life part of things. There would also be groups who were low on supplies and prepared to get them by any means necessary, even raiding and killing others.
In the midst of this we have two people who have suffered multiple traumas who are learning to care about each other in a trek across some very dangerous country in order to maybe restore hope to a broken world. This story chooses to focus on these two, their evolving relationship, and the different groups of people they meet along the way in order to answer a question that is posed at the end of season 1.
I like watching the various takes on survival after the world as we know it ends because I enjoy seeing how the characters deal with the situation and each other. And no one can deny that The Last of Us gave everyone a beautiful love story in episode 3.
Interesting video and work done here but The Last of Us is about Ellie and Joel getting through the events because as you point out nothing ends it’s just something we go through. So the story is about how these two continue on and not about the wider apocalyptic world. These two aren’t a team in the beginning but slowly bond through experiences, trauma, and purpose. Those are points in your video, you also take about “zombie media” being more about human stories than the zombies or post apocalyptic world but then dig at the last of us for those elements. Majority of people that love the story will point to the relationship between Ellie and Joel, which could be argued are the same points you brought up for station eleven, Chernobyl, and some of the others that you said had a more compelling story. I think the bigger miss here is that you say you don’t know the story or where it’s going but also with the timing/footage used you’ve seen five episodes and not ones later that show how dangerous yet heartening the relationship is to Joel and Ellie.
So about the bites/spores. The game isn't consistent with how parasitic fungi work, it's an amalgamation of different parasite strategies:
On one hand they took inspiration from Ophiocordiceps unilateralis, which infects ants and manipulating it to climb up a straw, bite into it and then die. The fungus grows it's fruit body, releases it's spores, which then infect other ants...
This would make a very unlikely candidate for the fungus in TLOU to have evolved from, since, while an infection is always deadly for the unfortunate ant and the spores can travel long distances, there is only ever a few ants in any given colony getting infected and it's life cycle has evolved to not kill entire colonies...
On the other hand i feel like they took inspiration from Sacculina spec., these are not fungi, but an arthropod that took the same ecological niche as Cordiceps: the female Sacculina infects female crabs, by stinging them and leaving a tiny part of themselves inside (the remaining 99% of the body die, which is thought of as the most radical form of skin shedding observed in nature), the infecting part growing inside their host's shell & around their muscles, Sacculina's gonades are placed underneath the crabs abdomen, where the crab would normally keep her eggs. A male larva will infect after that and start fertilizing the female's eggs, which the crab will protect as if it were their own.
Than you have the intelligent mycelian underground network, which is mostly found in phyto-symbiotic fungi and slime mold (which isn't a fungus or parasitic, but moves as efficiently towards food sources as the fungus in game does towards potential hosts)...
That considered it made sense for the show, to go with spores in grain... after all phyto-parasitic fungi like ergot are very deadly to humans and do influence behaviour, although ergotism is poisoning not parasitism...
Given the fact that the world mostly relies on a few countries for e.g. weat supply (which btw is why war in Ukraine causes a food crisis around the world) only one contaminated harvest would indeed hit in a lot of places at once... especially considered if there was a certain dose of spores needed to effectively infect a human, so you have to eat a certain amount of contaminated food, before you rapidly fall ill and start to actively spread the fungus to other hosts, the world would go to shit pretty fast...
It is a ludicrous coincidence that I watched both the Leftovers and Chernobyl for the first time within the last week to fill the extended wait between Last of Us episodes, and then you drop this video in my lap today.
Man that must have been tough. The Leftovers and Chernobyl are some of the bleakest shows ever made and you watched them all in a short span of time
I was already dead inside to begin with
I get that this show is probably blessed by the algorithm so maybe you need to make a video about it RIGHT NOW, but it just feels a little irresponsible to criticize it midway through the first season without knowing where it's going. Endings can change everything and will shed light on what TLoU is actually about.
I watched on nebula but came here to comment, and as someone who has played the game I hope you revisit the show when it’s done! It’s really interesting to hear the perspectives of people halfway through the show who haven’t played the games
Without spoiling the show, I recommend you watch on while reflecting on these ideas & themes. Get that money tho
I have pretty much only play elder scrolls, fallout and 80's NES RPGs, but I truly loved the Last Of Us games, beautiful pieces of art filled with nuanced developed characters, pathos, and actually with a smidge of commentary, I spent both games bawling.
Yeah, The Last of Us isn't about an apocalypse. That's just the backdrop. It's about the power and toxicity of love.
I watched this this morning knowing tonight's episode would undermine some of your points about the work not being interested in alternate visions of society; but damn did the show deliver far beyond the game and my expectations
I understand and really appreciate your points. They're well reasoned given the first 5 episodes of the show. However given the information I know from playing the games I don't think all of this video will age that well. Also though I could be wrong. Even though I know the games ending I don't know how they may potentially divert from that. Given season 2s confirmation I can't imagine it'll change that much though. And if season 2 follows the second game it's arguably even less about the apocalypse than the first. The second game basically just happens to take place during an apocalypse while the apocalypse informs part of the motive and events or the first game.
The first thing you have to understand is that the genre of the Last of Us isn't zombies. This show is a neo-western along similar lines to Logan.
I think tlou is more about living vs survival, but it goes about it in a completely different way by focusing on two individuals. It's a story about a small family rather than the collective, so it discusses similar themes in a very different way. Also if you haven't played the game you don't know the ending. Honestly, make a follow up vid after the series ends and talk about how your opinion changes.
1:26 SNL did do a Mario Kart x Last of Us crossover.
Children of Men and Chernobyl are the best apocalyptic pieces of work
Mad max ?!
I have also tired of this type of rugged survival apocalypse, and I even agree with a lot of the points you have about the cynicism. I do recognize that you nod to this that the show has a fair amount of redeeming qualities.
And while I haven't seen the most recent episode, the rest I think the show is critiquing survivalism. It failed Bill. If he'd gone that direction, he would've been lonely miserable and gained nothing more than time to wait to die. And so far survivalism and rugged individualism is failing Joel. Even Bill's last wish for Joel as being a protector is wrong. Bill's idea of protecting the small ground you can hold is misplaced. Frank made Bill safe. Bill's isolationism puts so much on himself that even when he does get hit by raiders, if he'd been alone he would've died. Reaching out and community were answers and not problems.
This leads to where Joel is conflicted. He is having trouble teaching Ellie not to enact violence because Joel is too engrained in this cycle. Really hope that this will be the slow truth that unravels as the season progresses that lone gunmen/scrappy bands of rugged individualists are weak and brittle. You can only go so far before it starts catching up to you. Bill and Frank episode are meant to emphasize the flaws, and not just be a meet cute.
It’s interesting you mentioned the essay about the rich in the apocalypse. I haven’t personally read it but discussed it with my gf. One of the things I noted was they all have the wrong idea about how to survive - instead of hoarding, they would be much better served sharing and finding ways to help the community that exists after the
majority of existing systems have collapsed. If they just hoarded the resources they’d just end up speeding up their death - something that is equally as true in the early days of climate change (which tbh is displaying signs of the beginning of the apocalypse as I type this)
You've now convinced me to watch Station Eleven
imo you won't regret it... still sits with me months later!
I love your work and you raise interesting points (and make me want to rewatch Chernobyl for the fourth time), but I have to agree with a lot of the comments here. I have not played the game so I have no idea where the show is going, but from what I've seen so far the apocalypse itself is more important as a setting for the story of Ellie and Joel. I've been listening to the writers podcast and pretty much all their discussions are about the characters and their relationships. Particularly the fears of a parent who has gone through a horrific loss, and the joy and fear of becoming a parent again - they gain a connection that makes life worth living again (the explicit theme of episode 3) but with it comes the fear of losing again. The apocalypse is simply the medium through which they're exploring these ideas, and the way the writers talk about it is fascinating to me - these connections are inevitable and necessary and wonderful and dangerous all at once; they bring out the best and the worst of the characters (I could talk forever about episode 5). When you watch the show through that lens its a character piece more than anything. I mean, it is also definitely zombie escapism which I'm personally minimally interested in - but I'm engaged because I care about Ellie and Joel and the people they meet. Then again maybe the fact that I never watched The Walking Dead helps because it means I'm less exhausted by the genre, and I don't have that baggage going in when watching TLOU. Aside from The Girl With All The Gifts (another fungi zombie story I recommend) most zombie media I've watched/read has mostly covered the outbreak itself rather than the post-outbreak world. Thank you for adding Station Eleven to my list though!
I love your videos and think you’re super dope. I also love “The Last of Us” and think you might be focusing on the wrong part of the story. You like looking at society and the things that affect people as a whole, and you can look at this story and find flaws on that level because it doesn’t care about telling that story. It doesn’t care about the apocalypse as anything more than set dressing, in my understanding. It is much more concerned with looking at the individual journey of Joel and Ellie and how relationships develop in broken people, dealing with loss on a near constant basis, and how far are you willing to go for those you love. Your argument feels valid, but missing the forest for the trees. It feels to me like judging a Jackson Pollock art piece to a Da Vinci, you can try but it will never really feel genuine because they are focused on invoking different responses. Once again. Nothing but love.
I'm a big fan of your content, but this video is a bit of a misstep for me. I appreciate the discourse, but commenting on an existing narrative and choosing to wilfully not engage with it (you've only seen half the show, and have no reference point for the 2013 game) is a poor decision for good-faith analysis. The Last of Us doesn't lionize or validate "don't tread on me" or survivalist-types - in fact, it does quite the opposite.
Using your conclusion at 24:10, with Rushkoff's words: "Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It's a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together." That's the precise conclusion that the Last of Us comes to, both in the game, and very likely in the show as well. Joel is not the main character, Ellie is. And as she says to Sam at the end of episode 5, her greatest fear is ending up alone. Contrast that to what Joel says in Episode 4. Ellie starts, "If you don't think there's hope for the world, why bother going on?" Joel responds, "You keep goin' on for family." He then goes on to specify that she's cargo, not family. I don't think it's a major revelation to predict that, by the series finale, she will transcend cargo and become family to Joel.
Prior to meeting Ellie, both in the game and the show, there's a harsh 20-year cut, from Outbreak Day (the apocalypse) to current day (the post-apocalypse). We can infer from the worldbuilding and dialogue that it has been a grim 20 years, with banal survival trumping any form of human altruism. This is cut precisely because the narrative ISN'T focusing on what you're accusing it of focusing on. The narrative focuses on Joel and Ellie's relationship, and how their bond transforms their will to 'Endure & Survive'.
TLDR: I love you man, but you're wrong here. The Last of Us agrees with you. It's not about validating lone-wolf individualism, it's about the threads that bind us and the dangers of perpetuating cycles of violence.
Excellent comment!
Something I appreciated about Angela Cang's run on the Walking Dead (she took over some years ago and guided the show through to its end last year) is that her vision for the show felt a lot more hopeful and community focused than what came before. It's epitomized in the way the title sequence shifts from entirely dour to flowers growing over ruined buildings, with windmills and horses showing up. It's not a huge shift, but she added a bunch of new fun, diverse found family characters, and shifted the MC status onto Daryl. The two major villain groups in her run are first a group of people who have given up on every piece of humanity but what helps them survive, and the other is a mini-state which functions in basically the same way as society now (though a bit more militaristic and monarchic) with capitalism and a deeply hierarchical structure, but also kind of a welfare system and secret fascistic and colonialist tendencies. Idk, the show is not perfect in any way and I think the messaging could be poked holes in, especially since the show stops just as they've beaten the last group, but I felt that an attempt was made to make the show something besides the nihilism-factory it had been prior. I kept watching the show even when I felt it was itself a zombie, rather than just a zombie show, (I just love Darryl and Carol's characters), but after Cang's takeover I actually begun looking forward to the show.
Trust the process, almost all of your questions are answered. You’d know that if you’ve played the game. (Also, the game was released in 2013)
Love your vids but please do better research. Spores weren't "changed to bites". In the game, the fungus spreads through bites as well as through spores. Matter of fact, you could say the entire game revolves around one bite: Ellie's. And how she has not become infected.
This aged well.
They’re about to get to society and all that stuff in TLOU
I think the specific framing is a little out of bounds but I definitely understand that after the major socio-political events of the past few years a kind of longing for something more substantial when it comes to a revisioning of society may not be satisfied with The Last of Us. Even episode 6 with the commune doesn't really engage with the ideas that come from a commune, it just mentions the fact they're communists and moves on. I think this is especially the case when it feels like the world refuses to change. After the Soviet Union fell there was the idea of "the end of history". It can be frustrating that we haven't really seen any other instances of trying to try a new way of organizing society in recent years. Even the concept of the multiverse just seems to focus on the same style of living only slightly different. But I think framing this video as what The Last of Us fails to do might not be the best way of approaching it. I feel like if it was more like what The Last of Us dose well and what it's not focusing on that future shows of the genre could tackle would be more productive.
I'm fascinated by all the commentary by people who haven't played the games and don't know where it's going. It's not about the world, it's a story about a single relationship between a found father/daughter, and the positive and negative effects of Love.
I agree, most zombie stories being rightwing is just stupid and sad. When the only way people would be able to live in such a world would actually be mutual-aid and community. But it's not what the show is aiming to explore.
Love your stuff, it's usually quite thoughtful, but I think this one is a misfired rapid take.
Facts, idk why he made a whole video about it when he aint play the game and the season not even finished yet lol
Yeah, way too early imo. But I guess it get views? 🤷♂️
Agreed. I don't love TLoU (games or show) but this is very much judging the work before it's even reached act 2 of part one. Especially weird, because I feel like the show is already highlighting that Joel and Bill's stance is wrong? Like, the whole point of the episode was that Bill thought survival was enough, and found out that he was wrong. That survival without connection and community is pointless.
I mean, the show does explore the world. It gives us flashbacks and it gives us context on how society collapsed and it gives us factions waring against each other. I agree that it's not the central theme, but it very much plays within the genre and has something to say about the world, about both the society of before the apocalypse and the one after. I'm loving the show (and I have played both games) but I do find its world to be over the top grim in many places and it has a very cinical view of humanity as a whole. Which is a staple of the genre at this point, but it doesn't have to be, and that was the point of this video.
@@adonisgeovanni5430 Yeah, he raises some good points about the zombie genre as a whole. But Neil I think was using typical conventions to explore a different type of story. Can we be a little disappointed he used typical tropes of raiders and whatnot as a framework? Maaaaybe. But why most zombie stories fall into those tropes is a whole other discussion entirely. Did the last of us fail at telling a great story inside typical zombie ideas? No, it's one of most original of the last decade. If he played the games, he'd know in the second one they do settle in a community. There just is more conflict that unsettles that. lol
Pretty unwise to attempt to analyze the overarching themes of a show that is only 5 episodes in, especially when you're unfamiliar with the source material.
Lmao exactly
A lot of your criticisms are unfounded because they are addressed in the material and will without question, be explored more in the adaptation.
And some are just not paying attention.
I've been a big fan of Station Eleven since it came out, but in the first several weeks of the pandemic, I ended up rereading it in a single afternoon, I could not put it down. There really is something just so comforting about it, even if it is a rather sad story. I just love it, and I love the series too.
Your points are pretty interesting and well-thought, I believe (for what we've seen in the show so far). However, you have to keep in mind that:
-The story is pre-COVID (the added parts are new, so that's probably why you like them, they probably took the pandemic into consideration and align more with what you're looking for).
-Kinda [SPOILERy]? People do form communities, and the protagonists get to live in one of these. In these, people work together and share resources, they still live, fall in love, trust, hope, etc.; life keeps going. The world is not so dark and stale without purpose, it's just the world we see at the beginning.
-Leaving that behind: the story is not about forming community after a disaster, it's about one's humanity after a disaster. This is mainly told through the character of Joel and his relationship with Ellie.
The dystopian world of The Last of Us is there to bring humanity to its limit and accentuate the beauty and horror that humans are able to do. Yes, the scope of the story is more individualistic and introspective than the examples you gave; but I think the [full] story is a beautiful take on what it means to be human. So far, the show already showed us that Joel is a monster and has done horrible things in the past (and in camera); these are not flashy demonstrations of force so the public gets to see some classic HBO gore, it's the show telling you who Joel -the hero, the human- is.
[edit]: I forgot to close the comment with a goodbye.
Great videos! Hope to see a new video in the future revisiting the series.
Have an amazing day! Hugs.
Aaaaand this is why waiting for the finished product is so important 😐
I can definitely see the arguments for and against the changing of the spread through spores to only through bites. I personally have two issues with the change, in the game you have select areas where the characters actually wore a mask so if they are worried about the mask covering the face too much...just do it sparingly. Second issue is that by changing it to a bite only I think it diminishes the reality of how Fungus spreads through the air. I get it, in reality spores are flying everywhere, all the time and in reality this fungus would be far more serious an issue but its fiction...you can play with the rules here and there. With that said, I do think how they showed the fungus spreading underground and alerting infected somewhere else really adds another level of fright because you may not even realise what you stepped on just alerted a mob 😵.
There isn't change from spores to only bites. I find it hard to understand how he came to that conclusion even though he shows clips of scenes where it is explicitly said that isn't the case.
@@martinsriber7760 it came from interviews with the show creators, they wanted to make the change for the reasons he stated.
@@Maya_Ruinz No. They scrapped the spores and said why, but they didn't change it to only bites. Bites were always present and it is NOT how infection spread so much so quickly.
Yup it spread through the food supply. It is explicitly stated.
4:16 Fun Fact, nearsighted glasses are concave. Lenses used to start fires are convex. It is impossible to use just light and a concave lens to start a fire without something else.
I understand creators want to be the first to release a video on a new show, but I don't think it makes any sense releasing one before it has even ended (especially if you haven't played the game). The points you make around it are valid though. :)
I don’t necessarily need to say that TLOU is not about society and zombies like many other comments have done so well. But I think it’s so easy to see how the last of us (both the game and the show) are really realistic and to what would happen. Even more so post pandemic where we see economic failing, the rich people still getting richer whilst everyone else gets poorer by the second, the rise of alt right beliefs etc. like many of us have said so many times recently , the world feels like it’s going backwards. The last of us is about love and finding purpose despite all of it
I feel like your overall point would have been better with a review of something like dont look up because the last of us "zombie apocalypse" is really just a background for a story about trauma and relationships
Collapse is not a singular event, it's a process that has already begun.
I've been burned out on post apocalypse since like 2016. It doesn't appeal to everyone. I'm only watching this video because I like you and your fun little hat.
I'm not sure if this interpretation is born of what is on the screen or what your expectations were going in - and I don't think I can sort it out, since I played the game before watching the show; I know where it's headed.
I would suggest you set aside your ideas of what the show should be and try to *really* see what it is. Maybe wait until the last episode of the season and see what happens. Approach the analysis with the full context of the season to work with. Right now you have a lot of ideas about what the show should be and I think they are getting in your way of seeing what it actually is.
On the other hand, if it's just not for you right now, that's okay too.
This video is officially certified by the Recommending Ones & Zeros.
Yeah COVID really has changed a lot. It's hard to look as we act as if it's over now and take no more precautions. Not that we ever did much.
This missed the mark. The whole point is that, in the end, the survivalists and individualists are the bad guys. The game invites us to sympathise with people and understand why they make bad decisions while also seeing that their decisions are clearly bad.
I will say that the show hasn't laid the groundwork here as well as the game. For instance, the sequence where they find the overrun hideout with all the toys in the show is hugely abridged from that sequence in the game. In the game, you slowly (and reluctantly) unravel the story of the people who lived there through primarily environmental storytelling. It's a story with a mixture of tragedy and hope. The show reduces a very complex set of feelings and ideas down to a much more flatly pessimistic and individualist message. I was pretty disappointed by that part in particular, though there are a lot of small changes like that where they condensed the story in a way that is ultimately more rightwing.
I hope he found the Mario Kart x Last of Us SNL skit
Station 11 is seriously amazing though. Needs more views tbh.
The spread of cordycepts 'zombies' in the game was also primarily through bites. Spores as well but most people checking others are looking for bites.
I know you want to rush out a video about this show like everyone else, but maybe don't analyze the themes of a show that isn't done yet.
Also one of the main themes of the Bill and Frank relationship is that Bill learns through his partner that surviving ISN'T enough, that's what makes the scene with the strawberries hit so damn hard.
He also clearly doesn't pay attention. "They changed it from spores to bites." - No, they fucking didn't.
@@martinsriber7760 Yeah also the scene where he showed Bill saying he is self-sufficient is literally about him being wrong about that. Joel tells him moments after he cut that clip that he needs their trade to continue. He tells him that his fence will be breaking down within the next year and Joel can get him things that Frank doesn't have at their little gated community.
Great video man! BTW, Is that a post-apocalyptic sweater?😅
the single most memorable line, and the thematic revelation, to come from Chernobyl was one of the plant managers, when told the reactor core was burning - a fact the technician had witnessed! - replied (paraphrasing), "Unless you can tell me how an RBMK reactor core CAN explode, then it cannot have exploded." The level of managerial, Cover Your Ass, la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you! doublethink you need to engage in (which, I think the series says was endemic in the Soviet Union) to say something like that is awesome (in the terrible way. Kind of like that pillar of radiation shooting straight up out of #4 reactor and the sight from the bridge...)
i think the last of us is a story of hope. but the hope is grounded in the reality of life as is now. where you hope for good things, but it just doesn't always turn out that way. it asks the question, what if we survive, but because of the brokenness of the world, we struggle to rebuild what is left?
personally, i love the covid anxiety the show purposefully puts you through. it really puts things of what happened in perspective.
By the way, apocalypse means revelation or uncovering, not destruction or holocaust. I think people mix up apocalypse and armageddon (which refers to a mountain in the region that the final war was believed to occur IIRC; colloquially it means the prophesized final war itself). Neither is reallly an appropriate descriptor for biological catastrophes like this, though (that would usually be called pestilence in the same context).
Good video, but I do think your perspective as somebody who is unfamiliar with the games does kind of show a bit, and in particular I disagree with the assessment that the Infected don't represent a political statement. The outbreak took place in 2003, unlike in the games, and the plane crash sequence in the first episode was an original choice for the TV show. To me, it was pretty clear from that point that the show was trying to go for a post-9/11 narrative, with it being set the year the Iraq war broke out and the fungal infection representing the dangerous hivemind mentalities that spawned from it. Community is a huge theme in both the show and the games, and the far more dynamic and complex civilisations that spawned from the apocalypse are greatly contrasted to the incredibly homogenic yet stagnant and dangerous Infected.
I'm always excited to see a new video from you, but I can't wait until you actually review a show or movie that I'm interested in watching.
I also found myself liking the flashbacks more and eps 1 is my favorite so far
Hopefully we get more in later episodes
I will commend this video for making me want to re-watch Chernobyl, it's the only thing it accomplished.
This is why you should wait for a story to be finished before you make a 27 minute video about how you didn’t get the show 😂
Loved your insight in modern apocalyptic entertainment the pandemic genre the spreading of the virus airborne, bites fluid exchange radiation. Have you ever seen the show Counterpart very unique show about a pandemic, cheers.
I’m a new follower and I liked the topics he talked about to before (except the video about you, it’s annoying how he doesn’t see that show is more about a trash show but a show that is perpetuating toxic ideas), but this video is just all over the place, I don’t understand. It’s like he’s just complaining against everyone who are praising this show just to be different.
zombies did not first appear in notld. it actually originated from 1932s white zombie. But the idea of zombies have existed even before that.
Brilliant video essay sir!
I don't think the last of us is really about the zombies, it's a story about loss and rediscovering what you lost and how far you are willing to go to protect it. The post apocalyptic world is used as a story telling device to raise the stakes (and to create obstacles for player in the games). If you read it as just another post apocalyptic story then yeah it's very basic and doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. I hope you make another video on this after watching the whole show, or at least playing the games or getting the whole story.
I like a lot of your work man, but this one really missed the mark. I get you've got to generate that content, but you're laying down some really strong opinions about a story that hasn't even finished act 2 of part 1. I don't want to spoil too much, but assuming they're staying true to the games, the anarcho-socialist commune is literally in the next episode, and it's basically the nicest place in the TLoU world, not to mention the series as a whole comments quite heavily on the whole "rugged individualist survivor" types and how they're not the good guys that so much other zombie media portrays them as. TLoU as a whole is very much pro-love, pro-community, etc. it just shows it in a bit of a different way (where something like Station Eleven shows the value of such things, The Last of Us instead focuses more the unfortunate consequences of straying away from them).
You make some decent points regarding zombie media as a whole, but as you'll probably see in the coming episodes (and in season 2), I don't think they apply as much to The Last of Us as you might think.
came here from watching on nebula to make this exact point just to find you made it better than i could. really feel like i'd have enjoyed this more if he'd waited til the end of season 1 to make these points, especially in light of how the literal next episode goes
Nah It's the ending of this series that will be stuck in your mind for a long time questioning things.
I very much agree that the apocalypse isn't a single event with a before and after, it's a process. William Gibson painted a picture of this in Peripheral - there was "the jackpot", a series of events that reduced the earth's population to 1 billion, and made everything worse (e.g. corrupt governments, organized crime, inequality, etc). There's a show from this book, which I haven't gotten around to watching yet. Reviews of the show said that it was confusing - I will note that Gibson's work is generally intended to be confusing. It's a stylistic choice, and one that I think works quite well. His main characters get pulled into large systems and happenings and don't really know what is going on, and so the characters' confusion mirrors our own.
Amazing video. While I immensly enjoy The Last of Us, you make some great points here. If you do continue, your opinion on the human survival in episode 6 would be interesting!
That’s interesting as I don’t think he makes any salient points about The Last of Us. It’s just a mouthpiece for him to talk about post-apocalyptic stories in general. Nothing here is specifically about The Last of Us, which is telling in how many times he describes to a tee what The Last of Us is about, yet pretends, (or worse unaware what it’s actually about) like it’s just about survival and mistrust.
Cried thinking about how good station eleven was I have to rewatch it
Also there’s a great (sorta) show that examines an apocalypse through the lens of escapism in “the 100”
I'm a big fan of the Last of Us story, so treat my remark accordingly - it's based on a game released in 2013 and started development in 2009. It was a time where the "zombie apocalypse" / "people being bad after the fall of society" were nowhere near as saturated as they are now.
I've been arguing that we're living in what is basically a set of small-scale dystopias for at least a couple decades that we don't recognize because we think dystopias are supposed to be these large, dramatic departures from what we consider the norm. But that's just the popular conception of dystopia. What if dystopia is mundane, and it simmers us, where we are just short of the discomfort that would tip us into upheaval?
I don't really agree with your analysis here ENTIRELY but I agree with your criticisms of the zombie genre as a whole. I'm disillusioned with most of it because of this rabid individualism. I think Ron Swanson's character was meant to have been repeatedly proven wrong by his misanthropy. He was alive because he cut himself off from the world, sure, but he wasn't living until he let people back in. The show is about growing from this impulse to see the world as "every man for himself." It's about trying again no matter how many times you get hurt.
Anyway anybody looking for zombie media that isn't hyper-individualistic and annoying should watch Train to Busan. The display of cultural collectivistic values in that movie makes for such a refreshing change compared to the toxic masculinity vibes of the Walking Dead.
Side note, I was happy when my conservative friends spoke so highly of episode 3. Good storytelling unites us.
I noticed this with the more conservative people in my life too! I was really happy the well-written relationship hit them just as hard as it did me. Obs there are always going to be some people who think having gay characters at all makes something "political" (there were people who criticized it in the game even though all we got was a breakup note and a skin mag lmao), but I heard a lot fewer of these complaints than I expected
i’m immediately amazed by how much pushback this video is receiving, including my knee jerk disagreement with your argument. but i’m sitting with those feelings instead of rushing to correct you, because i think you raise really wonderful questions.
i didn’t play the game, but i know the story, and i do i think some of its narrative choices are directly related to the original format. you have to mistrust people, you have to leave everyone you come to know, because it’s a game. you need more settings. you need opponents and bosses. you need things to collect, lose, and shoot at, or else where is the game play? not to mention, it seems like the last of us is most concerned with intimate relationships vs. collective futures, like a lot of people are saying. (which i find compelling but i don’t necessarily think is transgressive-romantic and familial love are more valued societally.)
it’s important to recognize, like you have, that the last of us (a pre-covid property) has been tasked with a during-covid responsibility to grapple with what we have learned/are learning in the wake of global devastation. it IS meaningful that everyone we’ve encountered in the show who survived the initial apocalyptic event is either dead or murderous, but we’ll see what it’s able to do, now that ellie and joel are coming to love & acknowledge their love for each other, and as they encounter a new society in the next episode. maybe it’s early to make this video, but it made me think, and i’m glad it did. it’ll shape the way i engage with the rest of the season, for sure.
I guess you should film an addendum after last week's "Kin" episode... Since Jackson kinda nixes a large chunk of what you said about TLOU...
1:49 😅😂
I LOVE the soft apocalypse stories 💕💕
Interesting commentary. I appreciate you relating it to covid and other disasters. Also timely with what just happened in Ohio. These sorts of disasters happen all the time, and continue to happen, because acknowledging it means having to address it, and we are notoriously bad at wanting to address things. I've not played the game (nor seen the show, I do not like zombies lol), but I do know the story, and your criticisms of it add words to a lot of the things I couldn't find the words for myself. It is very much another zombie story, and while I do know what happens in the game, so I know the payoff of what they're trying to tell, it would've been interesting to see them play a little more with the genre and commentary on us. Cheers :)
I don't think that's an entirely fair read of Chernobyl. There are several characters who take the scientists seriously and act accordingly. Including Gorbachev and Shcherbina and the army dude who drives up to get the real reading and ultimately the State goes to extraordinary lengths to protect the water supply and evacuate etc. And while they cover it up, they did retrofit all the other reactors to fix the problem.
And of course, yeah, communists do show up in the Last of Us and they are lovely and are doing so well they almost have bacon.
Only a minute and a half in, but you should know there is a Last of Us/Mario crossover over on @NorthoftheBorder's channel. It's very cool, I thought you might like to be able to envision what that crossover would really look like.
As an autistic person the way neurotypical people treat me is very much similar to Bill. Neurotypical people are mostly not to be trusted. ANY show of my true self behind my masking is met with suspicion, ridicule and dehumanizing treatment. I am surviving in a world of liars of people who see me as other, as lesser. And they almost ALWAYS disappoint, hurt or abuse me. Finding that ONE person, neurodivergent it not, can sometimes seem like an impossible dream. Not all humans connect in the same way, not all humans relate in the same way. Not all humans can connect socially in the same way. I find more beauty, more hope in a love story between two men who share little moments of love than any one size fits all humanity message. Some of us are just surviving, with little moments of love, little moments of joy. I am tired of " humanity" being defined through a neurotypical lens. We are as human as you. We are outside your society, but we are real, we are human.
Curious what you think about Cloud Atlas's version. It spans centuries. It has a futuristic society until civilization falls and then it splits off like you said for the privileged into space while the leftovers on Earth go back to tribal societies.