The Last of Us (and its sequel story) were two of the most acclaimed PS4 games ever produced for the system and it was only the expansive world created for the post-apocalyptic story and the budget it would take to realise it on screen that seemed to delay it from being adapted before now. But on 15th January Sky Atlantic (in the UK) and HBO Max (the day before, in the US) will bring the story to the screen and if the full trailer is anything to go by, they’ve taken the best and smartest parts of that game and made it the next must-see story.
For those who haven’t played the gritty game, it tells the story of Joel and Ellie. Set twenty years after a viral outbreak, Joel is a weathered smuggler, the last survivor of his family and with no desire to be responsible for anything or anybody other than himself. But his latest ‘cargo’ is about to change his life. He is hired to smuggle Ellie, a young girl, out of the fractured city and to a group called the Fireflies, a medical institution still working on a cure for the virus. Reluctantly he agrees to the mission, but there’s a world of hurt and revelations between them and their destination – with dangers coming not just from the twisted life-forms created by the virus, but the scattered remnants and enclaves of other desperate groups.
The Mandalorian‘s Pedro Pascal and Game of Thrones‘ Bella Ramsey essay the title characters with a supporting cast that includes Gabriel Luna, Anna Torv, Nick Offerman and Graham Greene. The original voice/motion-capture actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson will also appear (and is that Johnson as newborn Ellie’s mother in the trailer at around the 1:30 mark?). One of Elle’s favourite tracks Aha‘s Take on Me, which featured in the game, also has a haunting version played over the trailer…
The post-apocalyptic landscape may be rather full in recent years, but this is an entry that’s going to get a lot of attention…
