HBO’s The Last of Us is a masterclass in adaptation
By Mark Lynch
The series premiere of HBO Max’s The Last of Us proved that you can stay close to the source material and change a few things to create a masterpiece.
There’s always going to be one common concern when a book, comic, or video game is adapted into a movie or TV show: How close to the original source will it be? Fans of the source material are happy to see their favorite projects become more because they loved what came first. In some cases, a lot will be changed and it won’t matter. Sometimes, the opposite happens.
Avengers: Infinity War is a perfect example of the good while the 2015 Fantastic Four shows the bad. First, in Infinity Gauntlet (not Infinity War), Thanos killed/dusted the people of the universe before the battle began, which is not how the events of the movie went. There were also a lot of characters left out of the movie that fought in the comic. Nevertheless, Avengers: Infinity War is a nearly flawless movie. 2015’s Fantastic Four , on the other hand, is almost nothing like the source material for all the wrong reasons. It lacked the basic understanding of the characters and failed at capturing the Fantastic Four’s tone properly, which is one of the many reasons it wasn’t received well. Both of these films show that knowledge of the characters can make or break a project.
That brings us to HBO’s The Last of Us. In one episode, the creative team put on a masterclass on how to adapt a project.
***WARNING! SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US AHEAD***