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Early scenes of “The Last of Us” series were almost different; understand

The series based on the acclaimed game “The Last of Us” premiered this Sunday (15) to strong critical acclaim and extremely positive reviews on the internet.

The challenge of adapting a highly awarded story in the games it was huge for the showrunner Craig Mazin (responsible for “Chernobyl”, also from HBO) and Neil Druckmann (creator of the game and also producer of the series).

In addition to being able to maintain the level and meet expectations, they had to adapt to a completely different medium.

The opening of the first episode, for example, was almost different, having been changed a few weeks before the end of production. The revelation was made by Mazin on the official HBO podcast, in which the producers will comment on each chapter of the work.

Find out below what the beginning of the series of The Last of Us would be like. Warning, the following text contains spoilers.

“No bacteria, no virus, so…”

The first episode begins with an auditorium program interviewing two epidemiologists in 1968. One of them highlights the danger of a possible pandemic caused by fungi, which would end society as we know it — which happens in the history of the game and the series.

“The fungus seems harmless. Other species disagree. Some fungi do not seek to kill, but to control”, says the specialist, explaining how fungal infection in ants works and the domination of the nervous system.

In the official HBO podcast, also released on Sunday (15), Craig Mazin explained that it took him to convince Neil Druckmann to do the opening the way we saw it in the series.

He says that the final version was only chosen three or four weeks before the end of production.

“The first time I presented [a ideia] to him [Druckmann]he was not very excited”, he revealed, explaining that the first proposal was a video that showed how the infection by Cordyceps on ants in real life.

“There is a video on YouTube where you can see this beautiful demonstration of how the Cordyceps works and takes control of the ant. A little horrifying, but it tells you everything you need to know. So we decided to make our own video like this one”, Mazin pointed out.

However, in his view, it was not so captivating, almost “intellectual”. “You’re being kind, it was boring,” Druckmann joked.

“We did the whole show. We were, I don’t know, three or four weeks away from closing and I was like ‘man, I’m not happy with this opening’. So I sent [a outra versão] him again and this time he liked it”, celebrates Craig Mazin.

In the opinion of the producers, this version left the beginning with a “tension in the air”. In addition, it was a way, as they said in the podcast, to recognize the gravity of the Covid-19 pandemic, something that the world “has just gone through”, but to show viewers that “there are much worse things”.

See a video that shows how the infection by Cordyceps in ants:

Combination of the first two episodes

The producers also confirmed that they put together the first two chapters after advice from HBO executives.

Originally, the first one would end after the scene, 20 years after the outbreak, in which Joel throws the body of an infected boy into a bonfire in the Quarantine Zone, or else in the first scenes that show Ellie.

“They said: that won’t necessarily make me come back [a assistir]. The whole story is about Joel and Ellie. If we only get a tiny glimpse of her at the end of the first episode, we don’t put them together, we don’t understand their journey… and it ends with a child dying, and then another child dying and credits. People may just not come back,” she explained.

THE CNN watched all the episodes. Find out more about the series and what we found in this article.

Listen to The Last of Us podcast:

Source: CNN Brasil

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