In several scenes of the new episode of The Last of Us, HBO Max available, the feeling of tragedy is latent. Whether in the flashback that shows how the infection spread to the world or in the journey of Joel, Ellie and Tess through what was the city of Boston. Twenty years separate both sequences.
But both one and the other explore the same approaches. There is no possible escape from the total collapse of civilization or the transformation of the world into a grotesque scene. The chapter directed by Neil Druckmann makes a point immediately: the apocalypse is irreversible, total and without escape.
So much so that one of the experts who at the beginning of the outbreak analyzed the circumstance understood it with absolute certainty. In a sequence that is directly reminiscent of the iconic Chernobyland how it captured the total desolation, a scientist from Jakarta (Indonesia) assesses the situation.
He does so on September 24, 2003, with the few data available to him at the time, which barely include a few testimonies and the body of an infected woman. But the message is frontal: the wave of patients is increasing by the minute and on such an enormous scale that its progress is unstoppable. “It is transmitted by bites,” a puzzled officer tells him. “Do we know anything else?” she asks. “No, just that the infection is unstoppable.”
The Last of Us It is the premiere of the year and you can only see it on HBO Max
In clever retrospect, the second episode of The Last of Us reviews the following that occurred shortly before the first explosion. The emergency has just broken out and, in the Asian country, the horror is barely a sketch of what is undoubtedly happening in the rest of the world. Standing in front of an infected corpse, the researcher explores possible alternatives. She then meets herself to report her conclusions to the military officer who watches her in alarm and impatient. “What can we do? How do we stop what is happening?” insists the latter.
A death sentence for the world
The question is repeated on more than one occasion during the hard first ten minutes of the chapter of The Last of Us. Not only among health personnel trying to contain the crowd of infected. Also among those who try to understand what is the origin of such a horror. The bodies reanimated by the action of the fungus attack with a hungry fury. Contagion multiplies rapidly.
With a precision that is unsettling for the truth, the script recounts the succession of chaotic events before the final fall. In one of the most horrifying moments of the narrative, the body of an infected woman shows the traces of the progress of what will be a total picture. A branch of infection that spawns a monster about to be born from the flesh of the deceased.
The Last of Us do not lavish on terrifying images. No, at least not at first. In fact, the argument focuses on the communication of what will later be a destructive wave. The story patiently advances to a specific point. Finally, the specialist, who witnessed how the fungal infection works, has an answer for the concerned soldier who awaits her verdict.
With trembling hands, she looks both terrified and defeated. “We need a vaccine,” says the uniformed man. She sighs, overcome by the weight of what she will say. “I have dedicated most of my life to the study of this kind of thing. In this case, there is no cure or medicine. It can’t stop,” she explains. “What can we do?” insists the terrified man. “A bomb,” says the scientist, her face contorted with anguish. “Destroy all that remains.”
time and fear The Last of Us
Twenty years later, the expert’s predictions resound in the lonely walk of Joel, Ellie and Tess through a Boston massacred by infection. It’s the first time that The Last of Us allows you to contemplate the magnitude of the deterioration and makes the decision to do so from a sober look.
The city is a tomb, covered with ramifications of the fungus, like a deadly flora that envelops everything. Ksenia Sereda’s cinematography builds total devastation in an image of a fragile world, stained with living secretions. The camera follows the characters while the windows, covered in traces of the contagion, fill all the spaces with a green and, undoubtedly, lethal glow. But it is dispensing with any sound other than footsteps in the empty streets that gives the sequences a dense atmosphere.
“Look, those are the enemies,” Joel mutters, pointing to the bodies lying on the cracked asphalt. From a distance, sunlight illuminates misshapen silhouettes. They all shake on the ground. An inexplicable crack fills the air. But the chapter of The Last of Us it does not yet show the creatures that the three walkers must defend themselves against. The director is more interested in inquiring about nature in absolute destruction, capturing a landscape of rubble and dried-up corpses. There is no mistaking the tragedy that befell in showing Boston devastated to the ground.
Unlike so many series based on apocalyptic circumstances, The Last of Us shows the urban without the human presence. However, there are new inhabitants. Monsters that created their own habitat, space and rules. For the HBO production, the infected are more than just reasons for horror. They are the result of a process that generated a new species, murderous and dangerous, but still recognizable as the men and women they were.
The Last of Us and the humanized horror
Perhaps for this reason, the appearance of the classics clickers (clickers) is more bleak than terrifying. The point of view of the story is to explain in images that, once upon a time, the deformed bodies that move among the garbage and pieces of rot belonged to humanity. A heartbreaking nuance that makes Ellie’s condition more meaningful.
The series explains it without words. The character bends over an infected who shows all the horrors of the third stage of the contagion. She watches him, and it’s clear, in the silent minutes that follow, that understands the power of his mysterious immunity. A physical characteristic that made her a bridge between being in agony at her feet and the possibility of hope.
The Last of Us narrates cruelty through metaphors. The gaze of the infected is that of a creature struggling to live. Ellie’s reaction to the horror to which she is invulnerable, too. Gradually, the story makes clear the definitive possibility that the teenager is the solution to an enigma until then impossible to solve. “How can we stop what is happening?” a terrified-faced soldier asked a scientist decades ago. “There isn’t, there isn’t just one,” she said.
A journey towards the possibility of winning
But the cycle is poignantly completed thanks to the clever writing of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. The answer is a teenager who survives the infection. However, the story does more than reveal a biological accident. One of the great attributes of the second episode of The Last of Us is describe the relevance of Ellie.
Your immunity is a way to go. At the same time, for the first time in two decades, is the probability of a new future. Tess fully understands the value of that idea. So much as to force her to tearfully reveal the secret that she kept throughout the tour.
Also to make it clear to Joel what the young woman represents. “She is all we have now”, explains the character in the middle of a room in which the clicks of the infected are clearly heard, lurking and approaching to kill. “Do what you must do.”
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When Joel runs away, alone in Ellie’s company, the journey to something akin to redemption begins. Gone is the fire and an iconic moment from the game, recreated with amazing attention to detail. As the man and the girl walk away, The Last of Us explains the importance of the mission of both. A thread of light in the midst of the inevitable that took twenty years to forge.