HBO's The Last of Us is Getting Better

so it looks like I've upset the internet yet again I know another controversial synthetic man video imagine my shock and what insane radical opinions that I share this time that earned the wrath of Reddit well I'm glad you asked let's see here I said the episode was just okay that race swapping established characters is bad the show is suspiciously diverse featuring several strong black female characters in just the first episode and that Bella Ramsay is a goblin yup that's it that's all it takes to get dislike bombed in current year the fact that the Overton window has shifted so far to the left that race swapping characters is now accepted by mainstream audiences is mind-blowing to me now we all know it only goes one way if the next Black Panther had blonde hair and blue eyes I bet we'd have another Summer of Love on our hands but I don't even have to use such an extreme example if war machine or Luke Cage or even Iron Heart a character literally nobody likes was whitewashed thousands of people would boycott the next Marvel movie you people aren't just Hypocrites you're mentally ill as for the other criticisms of my video I really don't care if you think I'm racist or sexist you're wasting your time I simply point out things I don't like I've done that since the start of my channel nearly three years ago it has become increasingly apparent to me that nobody actually wants to hear a different opinion anymore you guys just want to see your own beliefs be reaffirmed time and time again gee I wonder is Velma a bad show let me just watch 10 of the same [ __ ] video telling me what I already know just so that I feel better about myself so yeah I'm gonna continue to share my kind controversial opinion if you don't like it [ __ ] off and now let's get to the episode 2 breakdown I was actually surprised at the quality of this one I think it's definitely a step up from the previous one now I do have a couple major issues with it both of it being changes from the game but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it so without further Ado here's episode two episode two begins with another flashback to 2003 taking place in Indonesia and we follow an old professor of mycology who has taken to a research lab and we're shown the beginning of the outbreak essentially and how it spread through our food which makes a lot of sense as to how everyone became infected and there's a lot of build up and tension in this scene and we are led to believe that the body will reanimate and bite the professor but it doesn't happen which actually is a pretty decent subversion I think personally I would have preferred if she would have gotten bit but ah [ __ ] it this was a pretty good horror tactic and the scene ends with Professor suggesting the only way to defeat the fungus is to Fire Bomb everything essentially the Resident Evil method of getting rid of zombies well obviously it didn't work this time back in the present we see Ellie wake up in some abandoned building as Joel and Tess watch over her basically waiting to see if she'll turn this is actually a good change from the game in my opinion as it obviously shows that Joel and Tess don't immediately believe that she's immune to the fungus which you wouldn't after surviving 20 years in this apocalypse I will say the scene drags on a little bit too long and like I said in the previous review they definitely made Ellie more of a [ __ ] in this version which is really not helping on top of the whole Bella Ramsay's face situation to try and put it more lightly this time but overall I'd say it was a good scene now the next scene is actually what makes this episode for me as the destroyed Boston landscape actually looks really faithful to the game and just really high budge in general for a TV show now I know this is HBO and this is kind of their thing but I'm still impressed that they were able to put this much effort into truly making this look like an apocalyptic landscape but the type of Apocalypse with overgrown plants everywhere which is much more rare than the nuclear apocalypse or Mad Max variant during this scene Tess and Ellie are talking and we're told more about her backstory stuff that players of the game already know there's another allusion To the Left Behind DLC which I have no doubt will be a flashback sequence in a later episode and eventually the trio arrive at the abandoned hotel now this might not end up being the case for the entire series but seeing all these locations from the game really has a lot of novelty to it I don't think I've ever seen a video game adaptation be this close to the original except maybe the beginning of the first Silent Hill movie and it's funny I say this because as I'm in the editing process and looking back back through a walkthrough of The Last of Us game it turns out this hotel is from a completely different section much later on when it's just Joel and Ellie instead of a hotel in the original game you were climbing through one of the crashed skyscrapers and during this entire sequence it was still pouring down rain from when they'd escaped the quarantine zone now does this change really matter in the grand scheme of things not exactly because the hotel was still memorable enough that I recognized it as soon as they went inside but I don't know I just thought that was interesting enough to share after climbing up several flights of stairs Tess has to climb up ahead to unlock a door from the other side and we finally get a one-on-one scene between Joel and Ellie and you'll see the first of my two major problems with this show this was something I was worried about in the first episode as well but this is just not Joel and Ellie for starters Joel is not nearly as angry or dominant or masculine as his original portrayal in the first game this will be incredibly evident when I do a side-by-side comparison of a later scene instead acting just kind of depressed and distant the distant part is accurate for obvious reasons but God damn dude Pedro Pascal is not selling a survivor of the Apocalypse for 20 years he just doesn't seem hardened he seems like he's given up and then the other problem the real elephant in the room is Ellie and again completely ignoring her appearance she's acting straight up unlikable and listen Ellie had her little [ __ ] moments in the original she absolutely did but that could easily be written off as just a teenager being a teenager this is taking it way too far and so while obviously their characters are going to develop and grow closer over time this is a really bad start and so once our heroes finally make their way to the balcony to see if their long safer path is clear Avi obviously it's not now there's a horde of zombies laying around and we are given the next major diversion from the games where apparently all of the fungal matter that is spread across walls in the floor has some kind of weird hive mind communication with all the zombies if you step on a patch it will somehow alert all of the zombies that are touching the fungus up to like a mile radius or something now honestly conceptually if this was in the game I think it would make for really cool stealth mechanic because you would have to avoid certain parts of the floor but the fact is this is not how the game works and it's gonna have major ramifications for how they navigate the world in the future now I'm not going to judge it yet because maybe it'll make for a cool later plot point but it's kind of a weird change this is essentially what they replaced the Spore infection thing with and so the trio make their way to the museum the shorter more dangerous path and at first they think they're in luck as the fungus has dried up and died inside the museum but of course if you played the game you remember this is where clickers show up and you have a stealth segment and actually just like the games they tried to stealthily sneak around the clickers and I already know one of you are gonna write this in the comments because I already read all the Marlene comments from the last video yes I'm aware these are the same clicker voice actors as from the game yeah that's a cool factoid it doesn't really change anything other than the fact that yeah the clickers sound just like the game and that's cool and so of course just like when I played the Remake remaster on stream they get discovered and have to kill the two clickers and unlike the game Joel gets grabbed and doesn't instantly die and he doesn't have a shiv what the [ __ ] this isn't accurate to the game at all wow a thousand updates thanks for the gold kind stranger jokes inside this sequence is actually pretty intense and specifically the moment where Joel slowly reloads his revolver trying to be as quiet as possible that was actually really well done once the two clickers are dead Ellie discovers that she has been scratched once again which is obviously set up for the last scene of the episode and our heroes make their way to the roof where there's a plank connecting the two buildings now here's another part of the show that wasn't handled so well they made it fairly subtle that Tess got infected in the original game sometime during that fight in this version it is way too obvious now you could attribute part of that to the fact that I obviously know this is when she gets infected but she just acts a little bit too weird too snippy wanting to hurry up yeah okay we get it she's infected this is just too obvious then we end the scene with an iconic line straight from the game is it everything you hope for jury's still out but man you can't deny that for you oh is that everything you hoped for jury's still out [Music] can't deny that view as the trio make their way to the Capitol Building they discover the fireflies are nowhere to be seen and they make their way inside and find that they've all been slaughtered now we get to my other major problem of the episode and definitely the bigger of the two they [ __ ] up this entire scene the first major change is that it's the infected that got to the fireflies and wiped them all out instead of fedra and so of course Joel wants to give up and just go back there's no point in delivering Ellie anymore they don't even know where this mysterious hospital and some other quarantine zone is all they know is it's somewhere out west and so just like the game Tess says she's staying Ellie figures out she's infected Joel asked her to see the bite and at first I thought everything was fine except the acting here is completely [ __ ] wrong without a doubt this part was done way worse than the game I can can just play you some side by sides here what are we doing here this is not us what do you know about us about me I know that you are smarter than this really I guess what we're shitty people Joel it's been that way for a long time we are survivors this is our chance it is over Tess so can you help me no Tess it's over now we tried let's just go home I'm not I'm not going anywhere this is my last stop what our luck had to run out sooner or later you're going on don't touch me holy [ __ ] she's infected we are going home this is not my [ __ ] home our luck had to run out sooner or later Joel let me see I didn't mean show it to me oh Christ show me oops right give me your arm this was three weeks I Was Bitten an hour ago and it's already worse this is [ __ ] real Joel you've got to get this girl to Tommy's he used to run with this crew he'll know where to go no no that was your Crusade I am not doing that yes you are look there's enough here that you have to feel some sort of obligation to me so you get her to Tommy's oops oops this is real that's just [ __ ] real you know I can't they won't take her they're not gonna take her because you'll convince I I never ask you for anything not to feel the way I felt not to shut the [ __ ] up because I don't have time this is your chance I mean come on at what point can you not deny this is a different Joel this is not our Joel the whole point of his [ __ ] character is that he's supposed to be borderline unlikable because of all the horrible tragedies he's been through he's closed his heart to any other people so of course he's cold and constantly angry and has no hope for the future Pedro Pascal's Joel keeps the no hope for the Future Part but the rest is completely missing he's much more bland much more submissive he's an emasculated new male that is somehow survived 20 years in the apocalypse and of course in another major change from the game he kills one of the surviving infected but he stands on a patch of fungus and so a horde of zombies a mile away suddenly wake up and are rushing toward the Capitol building so just like the game Tess decides to stay behind but unlike the game there's conveniently oil barrels around and grenade AIDS which she spills all over the room Joel and Ellie leave but for some reason Ellie wants to stay behind even though she's barely gotten to no Tess and the acting does not convey in any way that she was emotionally attached to her so that was a [ __ ] weird choice and in the weirdest choice of the episode the zombies break in one eventually sees Tess walk straight up to her as she's attempting to spark her lighter which keeps failing like some cliche [ __ ] movie and then in what can only be explained as the writers barely disguised fetish the fungus pours out of the zombie's mouth and he kisses her like what the [ __ ] I'm telling you this is fetish content you can't convince me otherwise So eventually the lighter works and the building explodes killing all the infected Inside the episode ends with Joel and Ellie taking one last look and then Ellie just kind of standing there staring into the camera so in conclusion this episode was actually pretty good I was definitely entertained it easily kept my attention for the full 50 minutes I think the portrayal of post-apocalyptic Boston was fantastic but not even just because it looks like the game but it just looks good period in the museum scene with the clickers was tense it was decently well choreographed and the clickers look great so this episode certainly had a lot of good elements that being said my question from the first episode still stands what is the point of this adaptation and don't you worry I also read all the comments saying that you can now watch this with your mother and she can enjoy the story of The Last of Us what a weirdly specific statement so many of you have did none of you have fathers oh wait don't answer that you're editors but seriously I don't think that's a terrible reason to want a TV adaptation if you really enjoy a story from a game but look you should know this by now if you watch the channel I'm not a story guy for games that doesn't mean I hate every story I think Silent Hill 2 story is [ __ ] fantastic but when it comes to the Sony cinematic movie games there's almost no point to having an adaptation of them because they're movie games and I don't think I like the story of any of them enough to want my parents to see them but whatever I suppose your reason is as valid as any my real problems with the episode are what I already stated before one that Joel and Ellie so far are not accurate to their game portrayal and both for the negative absolutely not improvements whatsoever especially Joel who's just forgettable at this point and I think I actually can blame Pedro Pascal's acting but I don't know if it's because of his skill as an actor or just how he was directed to act anyone who's played the game knows Joel is a [ __ ] ball of rage dude you can pick any random cut scene and he's pissed off about something thing and he's usually Justified and then of course you have Ellie which I'm going to refrain from making any obvious statements I already made but yeah let's just say I don't like this portrayal either Tess is dead so I guess it doesn't really matter either way I think she did fine other than the fact that they obviously made her uglier for no reason so all in all definitely a solid episode just with some flaws that I worry are going to continue into the rest of the series I'm still interested this is still definitely better than Halo or Resident Evil and sadly it's probably one of the best video game adaptations of all time because most of them are so [ __ ] bad but I'm not gonna say the show is amazing but I'm also not going to say it's terrible because it's not terrible so if that pisses you off somehow I don't know how to [ __ ] help you dude but because forespoken and Dead Space remake are about to come out I'm gonna cut it here I'm probably not going to review the next episode I wasn't even originally going to review you this one immediately but I had nothing better to do someone said I'll probably review episode three and four or three four and five depending on if anything major happens in the next two that's about it see you next time guys

Channel: Synthetic Man

Views: 47,765

Keywords:

Id: N3C2kOTrcIQ

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023