The Last Of Us TV show’s showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have revealed one very interesting change they made in the transition from video game to TV show. In a way, this change is somewhat minor, but it may affect how the series itself is taken by the broader public.
To reveal this change it’s necessary to explain something about the game’s narrative itself. The video game The Last Of Us is nearing its ten year anniversary. It was originally released on June 14, 2013. As an interesting trick, Naughty Dog set the prologue in 2013 as well. However, this is followed by a significant time skip, which makes it so that when you actually start playing through the game, you have been brought forward to the 2030s.
Notably, because of the scenario of The Last Of Us, even though it’s twenty years later, the cultural landmarks and touchstones of 2013 still surround this world. It gives the game a strange feeling, where it’s simultaneously familiar enough to be approachable, but with enough difference that its recognizably a fictional version of what 2013 must be like.
Now that The Last Of Us is being turned into a TV show for general consumption, 2013 is no longer a time marker. Some viewers may recognize the difference between 2013 and today, but what it would lead to is a situation where they recognize the world as somewhat dated, but also not so old that there’s novelty in it.
And so, for the HBO show, the prologue is now set in 2003, but the show itself moving forward after that is set in the same year we are on now, 2023.
Now, this show’s 2023 doesn’t have the remnants of a global pandemic in it. At least, not the same kind that we have. The show’s inhuman creatures are technically not zombies, but infected by a fictional Cordyceps fungus that has turned them cannibalistic.
Duplicating the finer details of the time skip and its discrepancies a different way, now the show is stuck in the culture of 2003. That means Friday Night Lights, iTunes, Britney kissing Madonna, the end of Friends and TRL, the start of Arrested Development and The OC, The Da Vinci Code and Crazy In love.
Druckmann actually has this interesting take on trying to avoid direct parallels to the story they are telling and the pandemic we’re in right now:
“We wanted to make something that’s more universal than that. Spanish flu was a big influence as far as how it affected people, how people died, how they became very segregated, how they became xenophobic, and their towns.”
The Last Of Us TV show is debuting on HBO on January 15, 2023.
Source: Inverse
