"The Last of Us" is adapted from the game of the same name, and the plot setting coincides with the reality of the post-epidemic world, and has received a high reputation after broadcasting. (Infographic/Figure)
Imagine living in a world where some fungus genetically mutated, evolved, spread rapidly across the globe, infected every living person like a virus, and then took over their brain, controlled their actions, and turned them completely into monsters that attacked others – and most importantly, there were no drugs and no cures?
In the game The Last of Us, the protagonists Joel and Ellie live in such a post-apocalyptic world. To protect Ellie the Immuniciated, Joel leads her on an adventure. From strangers to "father and daughter", issues outside the game such as doomsday survival and relationships between people arouse people's thinking.
In June 2013, Naughty Dog Studios launched the game on PlayStation, which caused great repercussions and won the Best Story Story Award at the Golden Joystick Award in the game industry that year. On January 15, 2023, ten years after the game's release, the first season of the series "The Last of Survivors" adapted from it premiered in the United States. As of mid-March, it had an IMDb score of more than 9.0 and a Douban score of 9.1. The BBC even commented that it was adapted from the best games.
This kind of film and television series adapted from games is not uncommon. In 1993, Nintendo's game "Super Mario Bros." was put on the big screen, which was a new attempt to film and television games. Unfortunately, it has not been successful. In terms of word of mouth, the IMDb score is only 4.1; at the box office, the budget spent on the film exceeds $42 million, but the global box office revenue is only $38.9 million. Starring Bob Hoskins even thought starring in the show was the worst thing he ever did. In the following thirty years, games such as "Tomb Raider" and "Assassin's Creed" in the action-adventure category, "Silent Hill" and "Existential Crisis" in the survival adventure category, and "Street Fighter" in the fighting category have been adapted into film and television, but most of them have average reputation.
This time the adaptation of "The Last of Us" is obviously a new twist. Compared with other film and television dramas adapted from games, what did "The Last of Us" do right?
"I just chose a game with the best story"
In 2013, the year the game "The Last of Us" was released, the gaming industry was basically dominated by open-world role-playing games, such as "Grand Theft Auto" and "The Elder Scrolls". In this type of game, players can choose only the tasks they are interested in. In some games with branching plots, the player's behavioral choices also affect the direction of the story.
Neil Druckman, the creator of The Last of Us, was also asked for so, but he refused. He believes that the protagonist Joel, as a person with a violent side and a gentle side, will not make certain choices. In his opinion, if the player is free to make decisions, it will destroy the character and behavioral logic of Joel's character. Choosing a firm linear narrative may seem risky given the context in which the game was created at the time, but the awards and reviews the game received after launch proved effective.
In the game, Joel is a single father from Texas who lost his daughter in the early days of the pandemic, and two decades later he works as a smuggler in quarantine in Boston. He and his partner Tess, in order to complete the trust of Marlene, the leader of the "Firefly" organization, began the journey to escort the immunized Ellie. On the way, Tess is infected and chooses to stay alone to resist the pursuers in order to protect Joel and Ellie. Joel also gradually treated Ellie as a daughter in his relationship with Ellie.
The picture of the apocalyptic world, the development and change of the protagonist's relationship, how humans survive in the post-apocalyptic society and other thoughts are integrated in the same text, making it have a special thickness that most games cannot achieve, which in turn coincides with the story and deeper human issues required for film and television adaptations. Craig Mazin, one of The Last of Us writers, also said, "I just chose a game with the best story. ”
In 1993, before the movie Super Mario Bros. was released, people may not have really realized the huge difference between game text and film and television text. In the game Super Mario Bros., Mario the plumber saves the princess more as a background setting, and the whole game is more focused on gameplay, in this case, even if the plumber is jumping from beginning to end, it can still attract a large number of players.
Film and television dramas are different, and the most attractive thing for the audience is always the plot. In the film adaptation, the background setting of the original game became the main plot: the Mario brothers, the Italian plumbers, confronted the evil leader Kuba in another world in order to save Princess Daisy. In the process of converting the auxiliary text to the main text, the screenwriter inevitably needs to write the story almost "from scratch" outside the main plot and make it fuller. The connection between the two texts became weak, and there were almost only some similar game scenes and partial settings, which inevitably pushed the adaptation in the direction of Waterloo.
After that, some game adaptations went to the opposite extreme: too much emphasis was placed on fidelity to the game text, and even some game perspectives were restored as much as possible. For example, "Doom", in order to highlight the characteristics of first-person shooters, this movie even spent five minutes simulating the first perspective of the protagonist. The actions of the entire picture, such as moving in the corridor and shooting down enemies with guns, are presented through this perspective, and the audience can only see the hands and weapons of the protagonist at the bottom of the picture. For gamers, the perspective of immersive experience is very limited and difficult to accept for moviegoers.
In fact, the game focuses on the player's sense of experience, pays attention to interactivity, and the creation of game text is more to create an immersive atmosphere for the player, the player is the character itself. Film and television texts emphasize emotional resonance, and resonance itself means that the audience and the character are at a distance, relying on the text, this distance can be gradually bridged, but it is difficult to completely overlap.
"Silent Hill" makes an excellent demonstration of the game adaptation. In 2006, the horror movie "Silent Hill", adapted from the game of the same name, was released. The film does not make major adjustments to the game's world view and narrative structure, and the game provides an intriguing text for the adaptation of the film.
The main plot of the game is not complicated, the protagonist Harry takes his daughter to Silent Hill for a vacation, his daughter mysteriously disappears halfway, and he embarks on a journey to find his daughter. In the process, he also gradually unveils the fog hidden in the world of Silent Hill, and a sense of suspense and horror is always shrouded in him. What is remarkable is that this game also involves the discussion of the core of family affection, as well as the issues of justice and evil, in the strong atmosphere of religious mysticism. Therefore, when the whole story is adapted into a movie, it has a deep foundation that resonates with the audience.
Similarly, "The Last of Us" not only firmly grasps the main line of Joel and Ellie's journey from strangers to the establishment of father-daughter relationships in the basic story, but also explores how human beings survive in the apocalyptic society through the people and events they encounter along the way. Do you help others like Joel, or do you attack each other within human society like some predators, or just be an indifferent doomsday survivor? These reflections have virtually improved the chances of a successful adaptation of "The Last of Us".
In the apocalyptic world, the protagonist Joel is on the journey to escort the immune Ellie, and the two form a father-daughter relationship. (Infographic/Figure)
The larger the adaptation, the more it needs to be emotionally proven
In early 2020, when The Last of Us screenwriters Craig Mazin and Neil Druckman started working, the biggest problem they faced was how to adapt it. In the game, the scenes of violence and action make players feel more substitutionary when clearing the level, but when the medium changes, the writers need to think about how much of the action plot should be retained in the adaptation.
Neil Druckman wanted the game's violent plot to sting rather than exciting. In this regard, Craig Majin believes that in the game, when the player kills someone, the other party is understood more as an obstacle than a "person". In the play, they want the audience to be able to experience that it is a living person who dies, not just a pixel on the screen.
Under this kind of thinking, the screenwriters did not use a large amount of pen and ink to restore too many action scenes in the adapted episodes, but made targeted deletions. "Joel's skill at dodging bullets doesn't matter." Craig Mazin said that he believes that the reason why many previous game adaptations have gone wrong is to try to completely restore the action in the game.
The show's boldest adaptation comes in episode three. In the game, Bill and Frank's feelings are implicitly restrained and not explicit. Bill lives in an abandoned town where his companion Frank commits suicide due to an infection. Until then, Frank was fed up with Bill's indifference and solipsism and was ready to abandon him and flee to the Boston quarantine. In the room where Frank committed suicide, Bill found his body and the suicide note he had left behind, and for a moment, a complex of emotions of sadness and anger flooded up.
When discussing this scene, Neil Druckman initially thought to restore some of the action scenes in the game, such as Ellie helping him cut the rope after Joel was hoisted by the device. But Craig Marzin feels that what is interesting should be the story that happened between Bill and Frank, and this point should continue to be dug deeper.
In previous game adaptations, such as the "Tomb Raider" and "Resident Evil" series, they have retained quite a lot of action scenes in the movie. Obviously, compared with the effort spent on character development and narrative, the director and screenwriter seem to pay more attention to the excitement and good-looking of the scene. However, in the sequels of these two series, the large-scale action scenes can no longer meet the requirements of the audience, and the audience puts forward higher expectations for the shaping of characters and the development of the plot, so that by the end of the series, the film has been criticized to a certain extent.
Back in the Last of Us episode, the adapted Bill and Frank lived together as partners for nearly two decades. The important nodes of the twenty years they spent together are laid out in detail in the play, telling how they met and fell in love. Bill initially lives alone in an abandoned town, he sets many traps around to prevent infected people and other unfriendly people from entering, Frank falls into a trap on the way to the Boston quarantine area, is rescued by Bill, and the two fall in love.
In fact, the adaptation of the third episode captures the core concept of "love". Neil Druckman's adaptation is that the greater the deviation from the game, the more you need to prove yourself emotionally. Bill was originally an indifferent doomsday survivor whose love was only for specific people; Frank, on the other hand, is a romantic, warm-hearted, caring person, and "paying attention to the things around us is our way of expressing love." He said.
Under Frank's influence, Bill gradually changed somewhat. They grow strawberries, grow flowers, and renovate some of the town's shops, presenting another picture of survival in a post-apocalyptic society. After suffering from illness, Frank wants Bill to help him commit suicide, and Bill eventually chooses to martyr Frank because of love - such a "romantic" move cannot happen before meeting Frank.
In the apocalyptic society, despair spreads like fungi breeding on infected people, some people also kill and loot everywhere because of their own interests, and human society not only encounters external threats of survival, but also disintegrates itself internally. When the audience is drawn into the story of Bill and Frank, they naturally begin to think: when the end comes, how can they resist the fear of the unknown and death?
Bill and Frank's love, without a doubt, offers the audience a possibility. Whether it is Bill's limited, narrow love or Frank's love for the things around him in a broad sense, in the despair of the apocalyptic society, this precious emotion gives people warm comfort, and people seem to have reason to believe that when the end comes, love can also be a way and strength for humans to resist the fear of death.
Southern Weekend Reporter Weng Rongrong Southern Weekend Intern Liu Yuyuan