A gap is starting to widen with viewers of The Last of Us between show-watches and game-players, and for the first time, I find myself really starting to take one side over the other. That would be the fact that I’m starting to feel like the show has diverged from the game enough where it’s starting to get quite irritating.
This is all centered on who else, Ellie, where last night seemed emblematic of some issues that have been building all season, and you can divide these problems into two main camps.
1) The Writing – You will notice a common thread here that neither of these problems are Bella Ramsey’s actual performance, where they execute what the show gives them to work with well. But Ramsey is sort of in an impossible situation for a few reasons, chief among them how the character of Ellie has been written to be further and further away from the games to the point where she doesn’t feel like Ellie at all.
A big part of this is tone through about 4.5 episodes here which just now may be starting to shift as of the final scene of this past episode. But to this point, Ellie has been written as weirdly unbothered most of the time about Joel’s death to the point where this mission has felt like a fun road trip with Dina outside of the occasionally running away from Clickers or WLF.
It’s true that Ellie makes jokes in the game, usually as a means of deflection, but things have gone weird places like the infamous “I’m going to be a dad!” line that sort of sums up the tone shift as that was a far less positive sequence in the game. Now, the “revenge switch” has been flipped and it’s jarring to see Ellie turn into Jason Voorhees instantly when this has not been built up very well.
2) The Five Years – I think there was a reason that Ramsey was accepted as being a good Ellie in season 1 of the show. Ramsey came off as the punky, aggressive, stubborn girl that Ellie was in that game, and any fuss made about her was that her appearance did not match Ellie’s face (largely by internet jerks), which did not actually matter, so long as the characters felt the same.
Now? Ramsey playing this older version of Ellie feels like a problem. Again, this is not Ramsey’s fault, but they are not only working with a script that doesn’t fit Ellie very well, but there is almost no change in Ramsey’s appearance from season to season when Ellie growing up, getting taller and more ready for combat was a big part of why she becomes so terrifying in the game.
It does not matter that Ramsey does not resemble Ellie in terms of her features, but in season 2 here which is supposed to be five years after the first season, Ramsey looks the same age, 14-16, even though yes, the actor is 21. I’ve seen interviews where Ramsey admits she was stressed about looking like Part 2 game Ellie, but concludes that well, she can’t just start looking older, she can’t get taller. Hence, the tough situation Ramsey is in.
Unlike season 1, something isn’t clicking now. But I will admit that perhaps both of these problems are mostly game-based and the more general audience doesn’t care that these are changes from the game because they’ve never played the games. That’s why I think it works for some, but game-players are getting more frustrated with these divergences and how this whole thing is playing out. Now, I’m starting to count myself among them as these gaps get wider.
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