On Monday the January 16, 2023, the highly anticipated series The Last of Us starts on Sky/WOW *. The series adaptation of the acclaimed PlayStation game sends Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal as Ellie and Joel in an eerie end-of-times scenario as the two must traverse the post-apocalyptic United States and confront mushroom zombies and other survivors.
About ours spoiler-free first impression of the series The Last of Us In addition, we have collected the first reactions of other film critics who have already been allowed to watch the series.
This is how the first series critics react to the horror drama The Last of Us
The BBC doesn’t even bother to hide the biggest praise for The Last of Us:
It doesn’t even feel remotely controversial, this series the best video game adaptation ever to call. For fans of the game, it’s an adaptation of supreme skill and reverence, while still containing surprises. For people who have never picked up a controller, she captures the heart and soul of the game: full-blooded characters, skillful storytelling, mature themes of love and loss.
Gene Park of the Washington Post echoes this:
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HBO’s The Last of Us stays true to the game and hits you just as hard. Finally, an accurate game adaptation on TV the way people wanted to see it.
IGN also knows who these “people” are who will enjoy The Last of Us:
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Grounded by the two outstanding performances Directed by Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us puts on an enriching show for fans while also captivatingly managing to welcome newcomers.
Collider goes even further and sees the new series from Chernobyl series creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann overtake the game in places:
Druckmann and Mazin take this unforgettable story and make it richer and more effective. They let us live with these characters and in this world in a way we couldn’t in the game. The Last of Us is a monumental success.
The Verge, on the other hand, is impressed, but not completely enthusiastic:
The Last of Us is one more-than-solid adaptation, that expertly reassembles jigsaw puzzle pieces to create a new version of a beloved story while appealing to a larger audience. […] Not great, not terrible, but good. Besides praise, what is there to criticize about The Last of Us series?
Vanity Fair calls The Last of Us one “relentlessly dark but unflappably human series” but also has a few notes worth considering:
The Last of Us struggles with the tragic-heroic story […] to give a certain freshness. We have with The Walking Dead, Station Eleven, I Am Legend and The Hunger Games already so many examples of this [postapokalyptischen] Motive seen […]that it ends up merging into something sullenly familiar.
HBO
The Last of Us: Ellie & Joel
Slant also notes that the video game background for The Last of Us isn’t always an advantage:
The Last of Us sometimes relies too much on the gaming footage, which comes directly from the game. As if the stealth and combat elements were enough to make it TV-ready. […] If you take that away, you’re left with a lot of meat and no bones.
Variety also writes about the (still untapped) potential that the series should continue to exploit in the future:
The raw material is there, including the curiosity of what it’s like to survive a catastrophe. […] I hope in future seasons to see more of the world beyond the main characters’ relationship. If the world is worth saving, showing more of it would make a good case for this fight.The Last of Us Podcast: The best horror series of 2023 or doomed?
The long-awaited series adaptation of the video game series of the same name will soon start with The Last of Us: The HBO series could become the horror highlight of 2023 and provide the perfect replacement for The Walking Dead. Or does The Last of Us fail when trying to build on the masterful template?
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Moviepilot Editor-in-Chief Lisa Ludwig and Rae Grimm, Head of GamePro and Head of Publishing at Webedia Gaming, discuss spoiler-free why The Last of Us is so important to them, what they hope for from the series adaptation with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey – and what still worries you a bit.
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