When The Last of Us first landed on Max back in January, it became apparent very quickly that the episodic adaptation of one of the most beloved video games of all time was going to be a major awards season contender. Fast forward to now, and the prophecy proved to be the real deal, with the show boasting a total of 24 Primetime Emmy nominations. Needless to say, the ceiling for video game adaptations was just smashed several times over.
Of course, it’s important to address the elephant in the room when digging into the success of such an adaptation; when your source material is effectively concerned with telling a tightly-woven, emotionally engaging story more than anything else, then yes, of course you’re probably going to knock it out of the park with an adaptation, especially if you actually care about making something good.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, The Last of Us co-showrunner Craig Mazin broke down the struggles that most video game adaptations tend to face, noting how some games simply aren’t meant to be adapted, and the ones that are anyway tend to be approached insincerely.
“I think we’re all pretty aware that adapting video games is at best difficult and at worst hopeless. There’s some games you just can’t. They’re just not meant to be adapted, but this one was. It was hard work to do, but I did it with Neil, and the two of us did it out of love. I think a lot of other adaptations from the video game genre have started with a company buying the rights to something based on metrics and then calling people and saying, ‘We want you to exploit this IP,’ which is a horrible sentence. That is not how this worked. “
Think about it; the Resident Evil series is packed to the brim with fantastic games, so how come nearly each and every attempt to adapt them have gone so awry? Well, Resident Evil‘s strengths come from its gameplay rather than its admittedly choppy stories, and no one wants to watch a television show about Leon gathering resources and crafting tools and weapons. This is also putting aside the likely assumption that those adaptations weren’t necessarily labors of love.
Either way, when you have a game that treats itself as a movie more than a game, like The Last of Us, then you’re already ten steps ahead of the competition. If we started saying “interactive media adaptations” instead of “game adaptations,” I’d wager the whole conversation would feel a bit more sincere.
The Last of Us is available to stream on Max.