|
I'd place this season in the hall of very good, but I wonder how much of that is me bringing my own knowledge of the story to it. I'm excited to see the reactions from the non-gamers over the week.
For what it's worth, I won't be surprised if the ambiguity of the game's ending isn't nearly as divisive for show watchers. Both because the show had far less time for Joel and Ellie's relationship to develop (which, in retrospect, is pretty surprising) but also I've realized that simply watching real people play these roles instead of computer images voiced by humans makes it far easier to absolutely want them to win.
When playing the game, obviously you want to "win", so the hospital rampage feels right in the moment. It's only after, during the final hike to Jackson, that you start self-interrogating whether it felt good to want that, considering the circumstances and ramifications.
The show doesn't really allow for that. You just want Pedro Pascal to be happy.
Food for thought, but not like the source material.
Edit: At the danger of making this post way too long and skimmable, I strongly related to this take from Polygon's aftershow roundtable:
My interpretation of the game was always more nuanced than just “this is about love.” Like, yes, it is about love, but there are all sorts of shades within that — how love can be incredibly selfish, how love can be about what a person gives you rather than who they are — that I think the game is better at portraying. You spend so much time with Joel in the game, because you are him, and there is a selfishness to being the protagonist of a video game. The only goals that matter are yours; the only person who needs this loot is you; your immediate world is ultimately the world you care most about.
I think that’s why the original game is so highly regarded. If you buy into it, like I did, it’s so easy to justify anything Joel does until it’s way too late, and then you’re left to think about what that all means after the fact. Do you really care about all those nameless people around the world getting a cure that might not even work, or do you care about Ellie, who you’ve been through everything with? Is it bad that you care more about Ellie? You did play as her, after all. But then you think about all the notes you’ve found, and how all of those people were also individuals who loved someone, and about Henry and Sam and Bill and Tess, and on and on, and it’s a whole Thing.
I’m not anti-adaptation by any means, but I think this is one of those cases where it was adapted too closely, and the storytelling method didn’t translate well between mediums. The fact is that this ending, as it’s told, works better as a game, and without adjusting the ending to fit the show’s own changes to the game’s storytelling, it feels much emptier. It doesn’t have the same impact on an outsider, viewing this man doing these horrible things rather than embodying him and feeling his selfishness in the specific way the game can enable. We just didn’t get the full weight of that in the way this story was told, and in the time allotted to it.
~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz
|
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
Pass The Popcorn
