Before getting into the best of this episode
in which Joel, Tess, and Ellie have to maneuver through a Museum of clickers, I want to acknowledge
the cold open again. I find it really interesting the direction
that Craig Mazin is going for the start of these episodes because it feels like the book
for World War Z so far. This is also assuming that this continues
to be the case for the following episodes, but in the book World War Z, it was essentially
a collection of different points of views throughout the world during a zombie outbreak. It was a great read because it offered a lot
of variety and substance because every perspective the book explored was unique. So the last of us so far is kind of going
down this route because we have two new and original perspectives that further expand
upon the world. For this one, it was intriguing to see the
initial start of the outbreak and to have someone explain with expertise and fully educate
the audience as to how someone gets infected and for it to be more believable. Which makes this scenario even more realistic
and thus scary. Craig Mazin again is great at hitting you
with this gut-punch feeling of dread in which the scientist acknowledges that this is an
extinction-level event and advises the military officer to bomb the city. Truly a crushing form of advice that the scientist
gives, but she knows it’s necessary to save the world. And this even has a callback in the episode
where Joel, Ellie, and Tess come across a crater. For this cold open, it obviously isn’t in
the game because it would destroy any sort of momentum in the gameplay if you cut to
some random scientist halfway across the world. However, for a show, you don’t have to constantly
keep the player engaged with action. For the point where we're at in the show,
there were about 7 action setpieces in the game thus far. So I saw some people complaining about there
not being enough action and the show was boring in comparison, but do you realize how much
that would ruin the tense nature of the show. For action to be satisfying, there has to
be stakes for it, build up, and by having too much of it, you lose out on character
development opportunities. Especially in the show that is more of a tense
thriller survival. If you are constantly having Joel kill dozens
of infected in every other scene then the factor of danger starts to diminish because
the show would now be establishing the main character as an action hero. For the game, you kind of are that, but you
have to keep in mind how many times you died while playing the game assuming what difficulty
you played on. Because I hate to break it to some people,
but you can’t respawn in a TV Show. Along with the fact that Joel had an extremely
hard time killing one clicker. So the mechanics in which you keep the player/viewer
scared for the well-being of the character work differently. One is grounded in realism that we are forced
to watch and be on the edge of our seat, while the other one is more of a challenging experience
and punishes you if you die. The show not having hours worth of action
is not a bad thing and if anything is a great benefit that the show takes advantage of. Any of that lost time in terms of the game’s
length is converted into original scenes. Craig Mazin is able to simultaneously turn
the reduction of action into a double positive because it frees up time for new material
and it gives the show a better pace and allows the infected to be more intimidating. Because we aren’t constantly mowing them
down and we can use them in more of a horror angle. Also through the show, Joel is able to have
a deeper impact through him killing a FEDRA officer. In the game, you essentially kill dozens of
them and as the player, you become desensitized to that violence. The show is able to make Joel even more human
because he’s dealing with the emotional consequences of taking one human life. And to also do this, you need that good pace
within the script so that we can have character-focused scenes after big events. As an example, this scene where Joel and Tess
are observing to see if Ellie turns wasn’t in the game. It creates this balanced flow so that the
characters can properly process and react to what recently happened. And again this is a great original scene. It’s filled with good character-focused
conflict because they don’t buy the fact that she’s actually immune and it offers
Ellie to try to disarm their fears with a funny moment. Then before going into the terrifying scene
with the clickers I want to gush about how beautiful the production design and set decoration
is in this show. I was really excited to see how it was going
into this episode, but it thoroughly exceeded my expectations with how insanely detailed
and worn down every square inch of this world is. From vines and vegetation covering almost
every surface, flooded areas, animals roaming, dilapidated structures, fungus sprawling from
decomposing corpses, gorgeous vistas that are aided by seamless and abundant VFX, and
a frog that knows how to play the piano. This show is completely astounding as to how
detailed the world is and I’m dying to know how much this aspect alone costed HBO in terms
of the budget. Because off of looking it up, each episode
has a budget of somewhere in the range of 10 to 15 million and it is really paying off. With that magnificent aspect of the show out
of the way, let’s finally get into the clicker scene. To say that this scene was just scary or tense
would be an understatement because there are so many aspects that make this a perfect horror
and action scene. From the prior set-up of our characters being
like oh shit there’s a variant in this building. The false sense of success that our characters
gain when they navigated through this mad house until the unlucky collapse of a roof
near them. The really slow build-up of the clickers making
their way to our protagonists and us hearing them. Not giving the audience a clear view of the
clickers to make us even more terrified of the unknown. The genius set location where there are glass
cases in which you can see clickers pass by on the other side. The atmosphere of the room being dark and
foggy with the flashlights barely making out the moving subjects. Our characters being absolutely scared to
the bone that they are about to die. And the final release of tension into chaotic
action with the close-up of the clicker screaming was amazing. Every single aspect within this scene is perfect
and is all intelligently designed to elevate the horror. I also love how the characters didn’t even
knock anything over to alert the clickers and was purely just from Ellie breathing too
hard. It makes them that much more terrifying when
they can hear breathing because it’s almost impossible to suppress that when your heart
is racing from fear. Then the action segment was just as good as
the horror build-up because of how hard these clickers were to overcome. That’s one issue within the game because
you have an ability in which you miraculously get echo-location in which you can see every
zombie through walls. This essentially destroys any scary aspect
within the game when you are trying to stealth because it’s much easier when you have wall
hacks. However, in the show, Joel doesn’t have
superman X-ray vision and they have to pray to god that they don’t get found by the
clickers. Another thing that you may not realize is
that reloading your gun can make noise. One of my favorite moments in this scene was
Joel slowly trying to reload and minimizing his noise while a clicker slowly approaches
him. The cinematography of this moment aids the
suspense because the camera moves to a close-up on Joel as the frame leaves out the clicker
and we don’t know how close it’s getting. We essentially enter Joel’s frightened perspective
and then move with him as we reveal the clicker again. And even the pesky glass from the game that
you can step on makes an appearance and quickly turns the scene into a helpless struggle. If the rest of the show is able to consistently
execute scenes of this caliber then I can honestly find no faults. Like this is just unmatched quality that has
every aspect of production firing on all cylinders to deliver one of the best visual products
on the market right now. Then obviously the narrative continues to
hit some great beats in which Tess actually got bit and is forced to stay behind and kill
the infected. An interesting change here is that Craig Mazin
made it to where the fungus is a single organism that can be alerted miles away if you step
on its tendrils. It Makes for a great mechanic to further increase
the suspense because the characters are screwed if they happen to step on it. Even Neil Druckman admitted that this was
a change that he loved. Episode 2 of The Last of Us continues the
outstanding opening of the season and manages to create one of the most scary and intense
scenes in a zombie movie or show in a long time. And to think that the show is already seeming
like it's peaking now is a crazy thing because there are still so many great sequences to
come. This episode proves that the first episode’s
quality wasn’t a fluke and again the execution is practically perfect. Thank you for watching and let me know what
you thought about this episode in the comments.
