The Last of Us, Season 1 | Review, 5 things I liked and disliked about it

Prologue:

Set two decades after the implosion of our society, the drama will follow Joel, a tough survivor, who is hired to smuggle a 14-year-old girl named ‘Ellie’, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.

IMDB: 9.1
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

Trailer Review

Plot:

The show starts in the year 1968, where we see two scientists and epidemiologists discussing the future disasters that the world might face in terms of health hazards on a TV Show. We see Dr. Schoenheiss (Christopher Heyerdahl) points out that viruses will cause a huge pandemic in the world in the upcoming future, but Dr. Neuman (John Hannah) warns everyone that the next big threat for the world health hazard won’t be any virus, but fungi. Fungi develops, spreads, and mutates much faster than any living virus on Earth and hence it will be tough to prevent it.

From there the story progresses to the year 2003, in Indonesia where the origin of the apocalypse takes place. The fungus originated from grains and flour from a factory where a few people got infected and started attacking and biting host prospects. We see a scientist, Doctor Ratna Pertiwi (Christine Hakim), a professor of mycology at the University of Indonesia is asked by the police of Indonesia to investigate and give her conclusions about the infected-dead body, to which she suggests to bomb the whole city as there is no cure for it.
On the other side of the world in the United States of America is Joel (Pedro Pascal), who lives with his daughter- Sarah (Nico Parker), and his brother- Tommy (Gabriel Luna). One day suddenly we hear the news of certain fungi and certain kind of disease spreading throughout the USA and by the night, we see a disaster occurring throughout the country. As Joel, Sarah, and Tommy escape their house to save their lives, we see the events start from there.

20 years later, we see Joel and Tess (played by Anna Torv; a friend and lover of Joel) doing small jobs to earn money as they live in a FEDRA (Federal Disaster Response Agency) compound. Joel and Tess even take jobs from Fireflies, who are revolutionaries and want to stop FEDRA from controlling and using the people who live there.
The one big job Joel and Tess get from Fireflies’ leader, Marlene (Merle Dandridge) is to transport a girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to Eastern Colorado. Later we get to know that Ellie is immune from the Cordyceps Fungi, and even if she gets infected, she has the immunity to heal from the deadly fungi. From there on the journey begins for Joel and Ellie to get to a safe place where the scientist can use Ellie’s blood to make treatment to save the world.

Review:

What a series The Last of Us has been. Even if it was just one season, The Last of Us kept on breaking records with each and every episode which was released every week. Also, The Last of Us has surely become one of my favorite series, and one the best I have ever watched in the last few decades. This is a series I would recommend to every person who has been a fan of zombie-apocalypse shows like The Walking Dead, All of Us are Dead, and many such series. Even though I have been a big fan of The Walking Dead from the beginning, but The Last of Us certainly beats the intensity and thrill I expected from The Walking Dead.

Inspired from the game, The Last of Us was released on PlayStation originally, created by Neil Druckmann for Naughty Dogs. Similar to the series, the game became really popular and later won many awards.
The best thing Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, writers of The Last of Series did was that they acknowledge all the shortcomings and plot holes the game had and fixed them all for the series. People who played the game did complain about some plot holes and moments where they felt that the story was struggling to progress. But the writers made sure that the series doesn’t have any such problems and nails the entire series to perfection. Whether its cinematography, music, character, and story development or even any minor details, everything in the show is done perfectly and could not have been done any better.

5 things I liked about The Last of Us:

The Last of Us has been the best video game adaptation ever made in the history of cinema and television. Every detail in the series has been applauded, and here are 5 things that I liked the most about the first season.

1. The development of the story in the series compared to the game has been even better. Although I have never played the game myself, after reading and hearing the response from various other streamers and gaming channels, this has been the best-ever game adaptation ever. The writers of the series stuck to the basic storyline of the game and instead of making it more commercial, they made the game’s storyline even better, and that’s what became the reason for the success of the series.
2. The scenery buildup, cinematography, CGI, and VFX in the series were beautiful and adorable. There were many scenes where we get the opportunity to see the beauty in the apocalyptic world, where everything is torn apart but still the world grows itself to become beautiful again.
3. The makeup and CGI of infected people got terrifying whenever there was a closeup-shot of them. The cordyceps spores coming out of the infected’s mouth, the layering of fungus spread out throughout their body, the clicking sound they make, everything was done to perfection. And also the giant bloater we see and the terror he brought was the most terrifying moment we had in the series.
4. The character development between Joel and Ellie was one of the most beautiful relationships I have ever seen on screen. The way their bond started, where they hardly associated with each other to the level where they form a relationship of a father and daughter. Seeing the tension and love increase more and more in the last few episodes makes the viewers feel really attached to both characters.
5. The best thing the producers and writers did was that they stuck to original source material. Some creators like Witcher disregarded the original content material from novels and games which disappointed the fans. But for The Last of Us, producers made sure to make the series even more better than the original content of the game.

5 things I disliked about The Last of Us:

Not everything about the series was perfect. Compared to the game, viewers expected much more interactive and engaging. Here are a few things I did not like about the series.

1. The lack of action sequences compared to the game felt a bit boring. I expected a lot more action not just between the living but with the infected as well. We hardly got to see any sequence with the infected which made the concept of the zombie apocalypse show a bit vague. I hope the writers fix this in the next season.
2. The irregular time for every episode made the watching experience a bit disappointing for someone who loved the series. A few episodes had timings of more than an hour, and some episodes had a time limit of under 50 minutes. Although I do think that the writers and director did a good thing that they did not stretch out the series and their content, but I believe that the time limit should have been a bit consistent.
3. The dates and timeline were a bit too stretched out for the viewers to keep up with. The series mainly starts from 2003 and stretches to 2023. But it also had a few events happening before the year 2003, and later events occurring between the time span as well. So that became a bit of a hassle for me to keep up with the dates and time frames that were mentioned in the series.
4. The consistency of intensity in the last few episodes was a bit off. Although the writers do a great job in keeping up with their pace throughout the series, but somewhere in the last few episodes, it felt like the particular episodes are becoming boring and the directors is taking too much time to move on from a particular event.
5. The point that I hated the most about the series is that we hardly got to see any interaction with infected in the world of apocalypse. There were just a few moments where we got to see Joel and Ellie fighting and running for their lives from the infected, else they were just fighting against the people or they were just traveling. I hope in the next season, we such much more interaction of the survivors and the infected.

It’s Review Time rating of
The Last of Us, Season 1
9/10