The Last of Us Episode 1 Review

In March of 2020, HBO announced that there would be a live action adaptation of the beloved award-winning game, The Last of Us. In the history of all video game adaptations, most if not all fall flat in comparison to the original source material, so when the trailer was released for the general public, the reception was quite mixed. There seemed to be an undertone of expectations for failure, as with the belief that no one can truly make a good and faithful adaptation of a video game.

Rotten Tomatoes, roughly a month before the show’s release, gave it a certified fresh rating of 99 percent. This gave some fans a bit of hope that the show would be good, yet a little skeptical of Rotten Tomatoes legitimacy.

“Personally, I think Rotten Tomatoes is not a very trustworthy source, especially with the critics,” Junior Collin Crain said. “I don’t trust the critics because they have often messed up the films and had given them high scores when they were not that good. I trust the audience score more because it’s the common people. However, with The Last of Us, I believe they got it right because, so far, it’s a very good adaptation of the game.”

The game was first released in May 7, 2013, and had found favorable success for its graphics, gameplay, and overall story, even earning it 11 awards throughout 2014, including the Award for Best Game on the PS3 and the BAFTA Games Award for Story. As of now, the game has been repolished and remastered twice, now being available with better graphics advancements for the PS5.

With its notable popularity, The Last of Us has a large fan group, one that’s very passionate about its story and characters. With that in mind, the show does have a lot of expectations to carry if it wants to live up to the hype of the original source material.

The show released this year with episode one on January 15, titled “When You’re Lost In The Darkness”. Audience reviews were released, giving the fans even more hope, with the score being a staggering 96 percent.

In the first episode, the beats of the game are expanded upon, but didn’t deviate itself from the source material. There are even moments where some lines of script from the video game are inserted into the show’s script, surely to get brownie points from fans. The show even got actress Merle Dandridge, the original voice actress for the character of Marlene, to reprise her role.

So far, things look good for the show in terms of settling for fans and new time viewers. It goes to show that video games, long thought to be unadaptable, can be adapted for the big screen.