Last of Us is now a TV Series. The first episodes have gotten positive reviews and it seems like the people involved take the story and characters serious. Yet I can’t help and be a little bit annoyed at it. I have a hard time to understand why this award winning and great-on-its-own game has to be adapted into a series. Of course, I understand it generates a lot of money, since all those that played the game will watch the series and many more who aren’t into gaming will join them. My problem lies more with the adaptation of videogames to movies or series in general.
Backwards
Reading a book lets me create the images described in it in my head and I often found myself thinking “Boy, I wish I could see those battles, those worlds, or whatever for real.” Then, when the book gets adapted, I get my wish fulfilled, because the movie or series add an audio-visual dimension to the experience of the story. When I watch a movie, I often catch myself thinking “Oh, what an interesting world, I wish I could explore its secrets myself” or “I wish I could make my decisions and affect how the story goes”. Along come videogames, which take away the power from the cameras and let you walk more or less freely through their world and let you make more or less meaningful decisions. A videogame adapting a movie makes a lot of sense because it adds the dimensions of freedom and involvement to the story. Now, never have I played a videogame and thought to myself “Oh, that would be so cool, if I could just lay back and watch the story evolve without me interfering in it.”
What I’m trying to say is, that for me, adapting a videogame to a movie feels like a step back. We lose rather than gain something from it. For a long time, this was my theory why videogame-movies always failed. But lately, we had a couple of good adaptations coming out, so how do I explain this?
Cross-platform storytelling
I loved Arcane, a series about some characters of League of Legends. I also enjoyed Edgerunners, an anime playing in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. And there you have the key word. These series are not adaptions of stories being told by their respective games. Rather the game present us with a world in which many stories can be told. And these stories can be told across any media. In the case of League of Legends, it’s even the case that yes, you get lore to the characters, but you never get to see their stories played out, really. Because all you do is fight other characters, and the lore only exists to make them interesting and explain their powers. I think such a game is ideal to base mini-series or movies around. This still doesn’t explain why the Last of Us, which tells the exact same story as the videogame, is that great.
The medium affects the story
Different media let’s the storyteller explore different aspects in their stories. That means sometimes it doesn’t even make sense to adapt “forward”, meaning from book to movie or from movie to games. Even though the adaption adds something, it could be the wrong thing. A book for example, lets you dive deep into the thought process of a character or explore complex philosophical abstractions. This is rather difficult in a movie, but performances and musical support make it easier to feel raw emotions. One can of course adapt a story and shift its focus, which would make for an interesting comparison. Let’s look at Dune for example. I think much of Dune is about the description of complex connections spanning over geography, politics, sociology and psychology and thus makes it difficult to adapt into a movie. However, when I read the book, I did it because I knew Denis Villeneuve would do another adaption of it. I like his movies especially for the exciting and well thought out visuals, so when I stumbled upon the scenes of Paul’s visions while reading, I caught myself thinking “I can’t wait to see how they do that on film”. The visions are abstract and difficult to follow, not to mention to create an image in one’s own mind. I think it would have been very interesting to visually represent these visions in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, I got a little disappointed, since Villeneuve didn’t show them in any interesting manner. My point is, however, that if one would shift the focus of Dune’s highly complex philosophies onto a more audio-visual experience, the adaption can be justified.
The Last of Us is a game where story and gameplay are independent of each other. For the gameplay you shoot bad guys, evade clickers and search for resources, but in a linear world, thus leaving not much choices to the player. The story on the other hand is about the relationship of the two main characters. Said relationship develops in banter during your gameplay, but far more often in cutscenes. One could argue, that the story of Last of Us would have been better to tell in form of a series rather than as a videogame in the first place. That would certainly explain why it is such a success as a series. And while I believe this to be true, there is still one question remaining. Sure, the story would have been a better fit for a series, but it just so happened, that it was told as a video game. Why do we need an adaptation, if it’s the exact same story?
Reasons to adapt
I get adaptations even in the same medium when a lot of time has passed between the two versions, and the new one improves upon the limitations of its time, the last version had. Let’s take Dune for example, the old Dune movie from 1984 does not look great in today’s standards and Villeneuve’s version definitely improves its looks and effects.
What also works for me as a reason to adapt, is to recontextualize by taking current issues into account. Something Dune could have done, but was lacking, in my opinion. In the book there is a lot about ecological issues going on in the background. In our times one could have pulled those more into the spotlight and tweaked the story to be more about fighting for reviving a planet. Another way one could have adapted Dune is by exploring the white saviour trope that is artificially created in the Dune world more critically.
Circling back to the Last of Us, is there a way to recontextualize it after ten years? Well, the game came out before a worldwide pandemic and the series right after, so one could think a story about zombies could implement our experience into its plot. Except, the Last of Us is not really a story about zombies, it’s again about the relationship of two characters framed in a cruel world. I don’t think there is a way to recontextualize it at the moment. In fact, I don’t think there is a reason to adapt it any other than it creates a greater revenue as it gets more available to a broader audience. Maybe that’s actually a good thing for the story. I just think it takes away the acknowledgement that the videogame industry is capable to tell great stories on its own. Videogames are still not really accepted as an artform in the mainstream, and I feel like when you retell its classic stories in more mainstream media, the people never have to accept it.