In 2013, a game exploded worldwide as soon as it was launched, selling more than 10 million units.
The apocalyptic scenes and delicate emotions in the game have countless fans, and they have been named "the most fun game in the world" and won the Golden Joystick Award in the game industry - Best Story Story Award in one fell swoop.
(Image source: Netflix official)
In a poll launched by the well-known website IGN, "which game adaptation are you most looking forward to", the game topped by an overwhelming margin.
Therefore, HBO started, up is an investment of 100 million, full of blood.
As soon as the series was broadcast, it received numerous praises, allowing netizens at home and abroad to boast of a new height and go straight to the annual drama king.
Today, let's have a good chat with you about this live-action drama:
"The Last of the Survivors"
How explosive is this show?
At present, 5 episodes have been broadcast, and nearly 50,000 people on Douban have scored a high score of 9.1, of which nearly 70% have given 5-star praise.
With a stable IMDb score of 9.2, a Rotten Tomatoes freshness rating of 97%, and an average Metacritic score of 84, both gamers and ordinary viewers were so impressed that even critics praised it as the best game adaptation series in history.
The premiere exceeded 4.7 million viewers, making it the second-highest premiering episode on HBO, and viewership continues to grow.
Even the newspaper sister who chased 6 episodes was also addicted to it.
Coincidentally, the setting of the story is also 2023.
Unlike the real 2023, this is an era on the verge of doom.
Cities are collapsing, viruses are raging, and humans are struggling to survive in dilapidated quarantine areas for self-preservation.
It's fungi that cause all this.
As early as 1968, epidemiologists proposed that once fungi evolved to use humans as hosts, they would start a raging epidemic of human-to-human transmission.
Psychedelics are extracted from a fungus called ergo.
So once the fungus invades the human body and enters the human brain through the circulatory system, the person will be like a psychedelic drug, and the mind will be disordered. Fungi begin to control human behavior, devouring human flesh, so that humans live like puppets, and will use all necessary means to infect everyone.
No one cared at the time.
But with global warming, everything came true.
In 2013, a mutated strain, Cordyceps, appeared, which entered homes through contaminated starch and began to grow and spread wildly in the human body as humans ate.
Infected humans are extremely aggressive and will indiscriminately bite everyone they encounter, turning them into violent man-eating zombies.
As the number of infected days increases, the infected person will become more ferocious, and the flesh will gradually be devoured by the fungus, and the body will be covered with fungi.
Until the final host was killed, the fungus hardened, and it turned into the "Demon King" form, and its infectiousness and combat effectiveness exploded.
And humans, there is no cure, no preventive measures, and no antidote.
Society is falling apart, and humanity has completely lost all control.
The protagonist Joel (Pedro Pascal) originally lived a peaceful life with his brother and daughter.
After the fungus outbreak, Joel fled with his family, his daughter died tragically in his arms on the way, and his brother was separated from him.
Twenty years later, Joel's eyes have lost their light.
Half-haired, with a beard, he mechanically did the job of a corpse porter.
Even if the body of the girl that others could not bear to carry, he still took it without changing his face and threw it into the fire.
Joel, who shuttles through all kinds of dirty work every day, is also engaged in the smuggling business.
He bought off the soldiers, got "luxury goods" such as cigarettes and medicines from outside the quarantine area, and sold them in the quarantine area. Joel, desperately saving money, has a big plan brewing.
He wants to get a car and cross the quarantine area to find his lost brother.
At that time, the city became more deserted, and humans established isolation areas to prevent zombies and viruses, and lower-level organs were set up in and out to achieve the ultimate control.
The Federal Disaster Response Agency replaces the government and regulates the residents of the quarantine area.
If someone tries to escape the quarantine area, they are directly and publicly hanged.
Infected people who want to enter quarantine, even dying little girls, are euthanized and then incinerated.
Under high-pressure control, people lived like concentration camps.
However, both inside and outside the quarantine area, there is another force - Firefly.
This organization is dedicated to finding light in the darkness and trying to confront the Federal Disaster Response Agency to save humanity from fire and water.
Coincidentally, the Firefly Organization found an asymptomatic infected person - Ellie (Bella Ramsay).
Ellie grew up in a military camp in quarantine and had never seen the outside world, not even coffee.
After being bitten, she did not develop the disease for a long time, and was used by the firefly tissue as her last hope against the fungal virus.
Firefly's leader plans to send Ellie out of quarantine and take her to a lab for vaccine research.
By mistake, Joel became the best person to escort Ellie out of town.
After some trading, they hit the road.
One is an indifferent and desperate middle-aged orphaned father, and the other is a stubborn and rebellious orphan girl, crossing the line of fire, waiting for them step by step horror layer after layer.
I have to say that HBO production must be a boutique.
The creation of a post-apocalyptic atmosphere in the play makes people's scalps numb.
Panicked crowds, fleeing like ants; Out-of-control vehicles collided with each other, instantly igniting a fire; The zombie-like infected roared and attacked humans, falling to the ground after a gunshot.
The movie-level texture allows the audience to immerse themselves in the horror and suffocation of the zombie slaughter city.
The restoration of details in the play can be called accurate.
In addition to the theme music directly following the game, many scenes are 1:1 reproductions, and the narrative and camera movements are almost completely reproduced in the game, poking at the player's emotional points.
Of course, the essence of the original game is the moving emotional presentation and human characterization.
To this end, HBO invited game screenwriter Neil Drachman and "Chernobyl" director Craig Machin to continue the core of the game and amplify the character charm of the characters to the extreme.
In the game, Ellie is timid and insecure, but Ellie in the play is constantly foul and shoots the bad guy in the head in an emergency, which makes people shout fiercely.
Behind the raw is the disguise of insecurity.
Ellie and Joel on their thrilling journey through the United States, from just completing the post-mission to feeling each other's inner vulnerability, a large and a small bond is formed.
Playing Joel is the red viper Pedro Pascal in "Game of Thrones", who is also the soul of the show.
With South American ancestry, his eyes are full of wind and frost, and he plays the heartbroken father who is deeply in the pain of losing his daughter.
Playing Ellie is Bella Ramsay, the bear girl in Game of Thrones.
She has an unruly face and curly hair, and she is unconcerned in the face of Joel's initial indifference, but she gradually relies on Joel in the day-to-day relationship.
She was afraid of losing everything, afraid of being alone, and the unruliness of a girl and the loneliness in her heart jumped on the screen.
In addition to the two who team up to fight monsters, the side plots in the play are also very moving.
Evading the evacuation of the government, Bill alone built his own Doomsday Empire outside the quarantine area.
With protective nets against the infected, plenty of guns and ammunition, inexhaustible food and gas, he thought he had nothing else to ask for.
Until, he discovers Frank who has fallen into a backyard trap.
Strangely, Bill didn't pull the trigger, instead he took the man into the room to let him shower and change, and prepared a sumptuous meal for him to enjoy.
Later, they began to live together, occasionally exchanging guns for a handful of strawberry seeds, cheering in the sunset for a bite of sweet strawberries.
After 20 years, Frank fell terminally ill and decided to end his life gracefully and spend his last day together exquisitely.
The interdependence of life under the end times is really moving.
And collaborator brothers Sam and Henry.
The younger brother Henry is deaf and mute and suffers from leukemia. In order to get the special medicine, his brother Sam became a collaborator and was hunted down and killed by the whole city.
Of course, Henry's heart was tormented. He betrayed the leader he once followed, killed the other party, and fell into hell himself.
For the sake of his brother, he had to do it. Unexpectedly, his brother was bitten by an infected person, and after the illness, he frantically tore Ellie, and Sam personally killed his brother in a hurry.
Sam, who reacted afterwards, raised a gun and pointed it at his temple.
In the last days, love never dies. The joys and sorrows of ordinary people are even more poignant.
No wonder some viewers shouted: Give up all the big IPs to HBO.
In recent years, the dramas adapted by game IP have always been unsatisfactory, and they cannot escape the curse of "game reform must be destroyed".
But HBO proved that it was not IP.
I hope that in the future, there will be more such shocking IP masterpieces.