Things become even eerier when the camera is this close to the characters because it creates the illusion that the viewer is experiencing the events firsthand rather than being tucked away safely at home.Īfter the trio finds a clawed-up corpse, Joel demands that the group stay completely silent so as not to alert any of the building's monstrous inhabitants. Rather than making the viewer feel remote and isolated from the action, Druckmann borrows from the video game experience he helped create and places the viewer directly in the center of the action. The camera hangs close behind Ellie as the characters travel through the halls, making the viewer feel like they are third in line in this procession through an ersatz haunted house. It is a quick but chilling reminder that Joel, Ellie, and Tess are entering an unsafe place, and the sound of dust falling like beads in a rain stick adds to the sensation that they are outsiders in occupied territory. There is a fantastic high-contrast shot that occurs when the show's heroes enter the museum, a great moment of framing where darkness surrounds a small box of light on screen. Though the place seems relatively quiet at first, hideous velociraptor-like clicking and screeching indicate that the infected known as clickers are on the hunt for human prey. Rather than try their luck against the horde of runners (fast-moving, sighted infected who have not yet mutated enough to become clickers), the protagonists choose to take a more direct route through an old museum. The stage is set when a trip through a destroyed hotel provides a vantage over the trio's proposed route through the city, one that is covered with writhing, prone infected in staggering numbers. But the most memorable and jaw-dropping camerawork in the episode occurs when Joel, Tess ( Anna Torv), and Ellie attempt to evade the murderous and disturbing clicker creatures in the museum. This is a much more deliberate instruction to Joel, rather than a mid-journey change of plans and we'll be intrigued to see how it plays out in the Bill and Frank-centric third chapter."Infected" features numerous moments of skillful camerawork and shot composition: the wobbly shaky cam in the laboratory hallway during the cold open, which amplifies the stress-inducing uncertainty of the situation as Professor Ratna ( Christine Hakim) is brought by military police to inspect a cordyceps sample the beautiful high contrast framing of the first bonding moment between Joel ( Pedro Pascal) and Ellie ( Bella Ramsey), which creates a safe bright spot for them amid the surrounding darkness. Towards the end of episode 2, however, right before she's about to sacrifice herself to a bunch of clickers, Tess urges Joel to take Ellie to Bill and Frank – and even suggests that he convince the pair of them to escort the youngster to the Fireflies while he carries on looking for his missing brother Tommy. Later, when Joel catches up to Bill and asks about a vehicle, he and Ellie learn that the remains belong to Bill's former partner, Frank. The letter reveals that the deceased, when they were alive, was set to meet a smuggler who'd sneak him into the Boston QZ. Trekking out West is just not feasible on foot, and competent but cantankerous Bill is usually pretty reliable when it comes to supplies.Īfter losing Tess in the Capitol building, game Joel finds a note near a corpse in the flooded subway. In The Last of Us game, Joel travels to Lincoln, Massachussetts, where his survivalist "pal" Bill lives, because he and Ellie are in desperate need of a car. In a cute nod to the games' (over) reliance on water puzzles, Ellie simply walks through waist-high floods instead of Joel fetching a wooden palette to ferry her across deeper bodies of water. In the show, Ellie also mentions she can't swim before Tess's death, whereas in the games it comes after. The HBO series also conflates a series of moments from later in the PlayStation title, particularly the flooded interiors which don't really crop up until Joel and Ellie leave Bill in Lincoln. In the show, it all takes place during the day – with the episode beginning after Ellie wakes up. The show also cuts out FEDRA's presence entirely – most notably the section where you must avoid soldiers' searchlights to escape the outskirts of the QZ.Īmong the sprinkling of tweaks only The Last of Us vets would notice, it's worth pointing out that much of their trip through Boston is set at night in the game. In the game, the trio encounter a clicker for the first time slightly earlier on their journey, not just in the museum. There are a handful of minor changes to take note of, however. Tess, Joel, and Ellie's trek through Boston is broadly the same as the game, heading from the streets to the museum, and then to the Capitol Building.
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