The next comprises spoilers for The Final of Us present and each video games.
Inevitably, somebody will learn every thing I write right here and chalk it as much as “being mad concerning the present doing one thing completely different from the video games,” however reader, I implore you to think about that simply because one thing is completely different, that doesn’t imply it’s inherently good or above critique. I’ve obtained beef with the model of Ellie in HBO’s The Final of Us present. The present has continuously been oscillating between large swings and trustworthy recreations, and a few of its departures from the sport have actually been for the higher. However sure scenes, dialogue, and even behind-the-scenes discussions surrounding the character of Ellie are leaning right into a narrative that I feel already does her journey by means of violent grief an enormous disservice and we haven’t even seen it by means of, but.
To get it out of the way in which, none of that is on Bella Ramsey, who portrays the younger woman within the adaptation. She’s doing a wonderful job with the fabric she’s been given, and it’s been a very refreshing expertise in even probably the most faithfully recreated scenes to see Ellie performed by a teen. Ashley Johnson’s efficiency within the recreation nonetheless captured the character’s youth, but it surely had the polish of an grownup taking part in a baby character. No, my beef is with showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, who’re leaning tougher towards a story advised by The Final of Us’ advertising and marketing, reasonably than the one which performs out within the video games themselves. I’m particularly referring to how the present frames Ellie’s relationship with violence, and the way it portrays her not as a baby who needed to learn to struggle to guard herself and those she cares about, however because the post-apocalyptic equal of a child who kills animals of their yard for enjoyable.
The showrunners say Ellie is “activated” by and likes violence within the present
Initially, I didn’t choose up what Mazin and Druckmann have been placing down after I first watched the sequence’ premiere episode. Within the closing scene of the episode, Ellie witnesses a brutal homicide of a FEDRA soldier by the hands of Joel, performed by Pedro Pascal. She watches in what I initially learn as shock, however as Mazin describes it within the Contained in the Episode video for the pilot (skip to concerning the 4:30 mark), this isn’t a surprised silence. It’s her being “activated.” She “likes” watching the violence unfold. She likes the concept of being defended to brutal ends, and the concept of this dude getting “punished” for the indiscretion of holding them at gunpoint.
Maybe, on the time, I learn her silence as shock due to my familiarity with the sport, the place she repeatedly expresses shock and discomfort early on on the lengths Joel should go to to maintain them alive. However the framing of Ellie as an individual who actively likes violence reasonably than one who turns to it out of necessity has turn out to be far more obvious all through the season’s run. Episode three, which is in any other case a lovely story about how violence is usually the top results of loving and defending somebody within the post-apocalypse, has a scene the place Ellie finds an contaminated pinned down by a bunch of rubble. Reasonably than coping with it effectively and getting again to enterprise, Ellie takes her time to hover over the poor bastard and look him over like he’s a dying animal. She slices open his head together with her switchblade and sees what’s beneath the pores and skin of an contaminated. When she lastly stabs him within the head and kills him, she pulls again with a happy expression that’s unnerving. Once more, Ramsey is placing within the work right here.
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Joel by no means sees this scene unfold, as a result of it’s vital that he views her as an harmless child and never a bizarre, violence-loving pervert, however, horrifyingly sufficient, the character who does see this aspect of her is David, the predatory, cannibalistic cult chief she meets within the sequence’ eighth episode. When he’s obtained her caged up in his cannibal kitchen, he says he can’t let her out as a result of she would take her switchblade and intestine him. Which, like, you’re a cannibal who kidnapped her, so spare us the judgment when she naturally desires to kill somebody who kidnapped her. However he goes on to say she has a “violent coronary heart.” Which, sadly, I assume is true on this model of the character. All of this is likely to be completely different after the occasions of episode eight, however we spend a lot time partaking with Joel’s violent actions within the season finale that it’s not clear the place Ellie stands now.
The explanation this doesn’t sit properly with me is as a result of it’s not solely basically at odds with Ellie’s story within the recreation, however as a result of it feels prefer it’s rooted in a simplistic and reductive view of her story within the supply materials, a view that was largely perpetuated by Naughty Canine in its personal advertising and marketing marketing campaign for The Final of Us Half II.
What’s Ellie’s relationship with violence within the video games?
Let’s rewind to the start of Ellie’s story within the recreation. When she and Joel first meet, she’s not had a ton of publicity to violence. At the least, not the sort of human brutality Joel would expose her to all through the primary recreation. When Joel kills the FEDRA forces there, Ellie is greatly surprised, having thought they’d simply maintain them up as they made their escape. Ultimately, Ellie comes to just accept the need of this violence as they make their cross-country journey, resulting in her first kill to be able to save Joel from a raider. She’s sick about it, and it leads to stress between her and Joel as a result of she picked up a gun regardless of his intentionally by no means giving her one. The 2 then bond over him instructing her tips on how to use a rifle after which giving her a pistol. It’s a degree of newfound belief, and it illustrates that Ellie takes on violence for necessity’s sake.
The equal scene within the present is a painfully drawn-out sequence the place Ellie shoots a raider within the leg and whereas he pleads for his life, Joel tells her to get to security whereas he handles it. Then the 2 bounce proper into speaking concerning the results killing can have in your soul. In an summary means, this feels prefer it’s organising Half II’s themes in a extra overt means, which has been a operating theme all through the season. We will see the present fairly intentionally main into the occasions of the sequel for season two with quite a few issues, together with references to characters like Dina and framing Joel’s actions in a sympathetic means. Half II sees Ellie happening a darkish, violent path, so maybe the pondering right here is that by asserting Ellie is a violent particular person, the issues she does later will appear extra in line with our understanding of her character. However the basis of Ellie’s relationship with violence is basically completely different, and I don’t assume it’s for the higher when, within the video games, the distinction between who Ellie was and who she turned is so elementary to her story.
A part of what makes The Final of Us Half II efficient is that it appears like a transformative story for Ellie. She’s gone from a baby who was horrified by Joel’s violence to a younger grownup who travels to Seattle within the grip of righteous fury. She goes on this campaign to discover a group who killed Joel and at the very least kill Abby, the one who dealt the killing blow. She goes beneath the pretense that that is what she desires to do, however as she goes on her revenge tour, every subsequent kill wears on her.
The dying of Nora, which is a loaded scene for lots of causes, is the place this begins to turn out to be clear. Ellie commits certainly one of her most heinous acts of violence within the recreation throughout an interrogation, and within the subsequent scene, she’s overwhelmed with guilt on the lengths she needed to go to. She must be comforted by Dina, afraid her companion will see a monster the place she as soon as noticed a future. Subsequent, in an try to extort details about Abby’s whereabouts from her associates Mel and Owen, she tries to make use of Joel’s signature interrogation strategy of asking one occasion for data and confirming with the second. If the knowledge matches up, she is aware of it’s correct. If not, properly, that’s as much as her discretion. However regardless of her makes an attempt, the confrontation goes off the rails and ends with Ellie killing each of them in a messy scrap. She then realizes Mel was pregnant, and is straight away overcome with nervousness at having killed an harmless occasion. Throuhgout her spiral into violence, Ellie is repeatedly confronted with the likelihood that she’s not reduce out for what she signed on for.
Ultimately, she leaves Seattle with out killing Abby. The truth that she killed everybody different than the particular person she views as most chargeable for Joel’s dying wears on her, however Dina is rising sick from her personal being pregnant, and everybody round her is telling her that is the most effective plan of action. They argue that Abby dropping these near her is an equal punishment for taking the lifetime of Joel. She reluctantly goes together with the plan, up till Abby exhibits up at their hideout and forces her to associate with the plan by the use of a beatdown and a menace.
After this, Ellie tries to reside a standard life within the post-apocalypse by residing on a farm with Dina and their son JJ. However she’s nonetheless coping with PTSD surrounding the dying of Joel, and finally leaves her household behind to pursue Abby as soon as extra. As soon as she tracks her all the way down to Santa Barbara, California, the 2 come to blows yet one more time. Ellie will get the higher hand and practically drowns her on the California seashore. However in a second of readability, she lets Abby go, realizing this was by no means going to carry her the peace she wished.
What does violence really imply in The Final of Us?
Whether or not pushed by survival or grief, The Final of Us has by no means framed violence as one thing characters take an overt pleasure in. Positive, when Ellie kills Jordan—who was a snarky piece of shit—in Half II, it’s satisfying to fuck him up. However it has an underlying that means past Ellie liking acts of carnage. The truth that she has gone by means of a good bit of the sequence uncomfortable or traumatized by violence makes her giving into it a second of noticeable change, and her repeated wrestle to persevere in her quest illustrates that regardless of her compulsion, this isn’t who she is.
In the meantime, the showrunners are over right here telling us that that is completely who Ellie is. It’s alluding to a model of this story that feels extra in keeping with Naughty Canine’s advertising and marketing of The Final of Us Half II than it does the story it really instructed. As an individual who discovered Ellie (and Joel and Abby, for that matter) profoundly sympathetic by the top of the sequel, it’s worrisome to me that HBO’s model of her is leaning right into a perverse imaginative and prescient of what violence means in The Final of Us.
Sadly, Half II’s advertising and marketing marketing campaign misplaced the thread of grief and love-driven violence that’s on the core of the sport and swaths of the web assume The Final of Us is about how violence is unhealthy, and gamers ought to really feel unhealthy for doing it. How did this interpretation turn out to be so outstanding? Naughty Canine itself stated that is what the sport is about. In an interview with Launcher, sequence director Neil Druckmann described the dueling protagonist construction as having been at the very least partially impressed by his witnessing of an Israeli soldier’s lynching (there’s an argument to be made that centrist Israeli politics run by means of the sport’s veins), and a want he felt to harm these accountable. This was adopted by immense guilt and a want to discover that concept in Half II’s construction. The concept is that you’d play by means of Ellie’s segments killing Abby’s associates, then discover out on the finish that Abby killed Joel in her personal grief.
I don’t assume it’s incorrect to be judgemental of Joel, Ellie, or Abby’s actions. The sport itself is fairly overtly crucial of them all through. Ellie’s killing of Abby’s associates is all the time handled as one thing that comes with a price, as practically each kill she commits is framed as mentally taxing on her. Abby, in the meantime, spends her total half of the sport making an attempt to make up for the way in which she tortured and killed Joel as a result of she’s making an attempt to “lighten the load.” However nonetheless, now we have to behave out the play till it reaches its pure conclusion, which results in the identical dissonance we will really feel within the first recreation’s closing phase the place Joel kills a number of harmless folks to avoid wasting Ellie.
For characters like Joel and Ellie, violence is a language spoken in a world the place they’ve discovered and been taught that it’s the one means they’ll talk. It’s all of the issues that the characters really feel, that they navigate, that they categorical by means of violence (or, in key moments, the selection to not use violence) that actually issues. The need to guard. The need to avenge. The choice to forgive. However regardless of Half II delving into themes of grief and forgiveness by means of violence, the narrative that this sequence is about violence permeates by means of how we discuss it. That’s on Naughty Canine as a result of that was the message the studio put out. However I discover every thing the corporate stated concerning the recreation in advertising and marketing supplies and interviews, such because the assertion that the sport was “about hate” when it was first revealed, suspect after it turned clear the studio had been intentionally obfuscating what Half II really was. I perceive this was achieved in an effort to maintain the surprising occasion that units the sport in movement hidden forward of launch, however the second Joel died as a substitute of exhibiting up in scenes the trailers confirmed, I approached the sport with no additional preconceptions.
The sanding down of The Final of Us’ thematic make-up is Naughty Canine’s personal doing, however that framing was what folks needed to work with. A lot of the criticism surrounding Half II focuses on its relationship to violence, concluding that it’s meant to be a heavy-handed lesson in the price of giving in to some base urge to hurt each other. In post-release interviews, Druckmann has gone on document saying that the corporate’s messaging round Half II wasn’t reflective of what the sport was really about. However that’s the online game business. Firms spend lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} to place these video games in entrance of individuals, and 20+ hour experiences have to be diminished to bullet factors you possibly can placed on advertising and marketing copy. It finally didn’t have an effect on the status of the franchise, as Half II went on to promote 10 million copies and earn numerous Recreation of the Yr awards. Nevertheless, HBO’s tv adaptation feels cognizant of the sequence’ decade of discourse in lots of methods, and on this case, not for the higher.
In some methods, this has labored out within the present’s favor, as a result of tales like Invoice and Frank’s get to tackle new life as an indication that love is value residing for as a substitute of being a cautionary story about how caring about folks is unhealthy to your self-preservation. However this explicit change feels prefer it’s an odd flip towards a advertising and marketing marketing campaign that has finally soured lots of the dialogue round The Final of Us and the character at its heart. That advertising and marketing and the concepts it helped to cement grasp over the sequence to at the present time. It may be exhausting to see previous these notions while you’re really taking part in by means of a recreation that, whether it is considered as being about how violence is unhealthy and you need to really feel unhealthy for doing it, doesn’t maintain as much as scrutiny. It does maintain up, nevertheless, when considered primarily as a narrative of grief and, finally, acceptance. After watching Ellie undergo a lot inside turmoil as she fought her means by means of her demons whereas taking part in Half II, I don’t perceive why the present appears to need us to view violence as one thing that excites her reasonably than as one thing she’ll at some point reluctantly resort to as her personal ache manifests. Yeah, some folks will learn this and reduce it to some sort of adaptation purity nonsense. I simply hope the core of what The Final of Us is isn’t squandered beneath what a advertising and marketing group stated it was to suit all its nuances on the again of a field.
