When « The Last of Us » and Co. conquer canvas and TV devices

It is about zombies, the hard struggle for survival after the apocalypse, but also about humanity, loss, grief, revenge and love: The American series « The Last of Us » with Hollywood star Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey is considered one of the most successful video game adaptations.

The second season just ended, another is being planned. The first season from 2023 was nominated 24 times for an Emmy. It is quite possible that the HBO series will play a role again at the next award.

Video game films have long since arrived in the mainstream. Most recently, the “Minecraft” film attracted millions of people to the cinemas. But not all adaptations are well received by fans and critics. When do you succeed – and how does it fail?

Why many adaptations failed

You have to look back for this. The first major video game films came onto the screen in the 1990s. Not necessarily with success. The film « Super Mario Bros. » For example, about the iconic figures Mario and Luigi from 1993 flopped at the box office.

In the 1990s, says Jochen Koubek, Professor of Digital Media with a focus on computer games at the University of Bayreuth, there were attempts according to the motto « The game is successful. Now we make a film and the game does not need a narrative ».

It was the same with games that wanted to adapt films without responding to their own media peculiarities and only had a sequence of cutscenes – i.e. cutscenes with non -interactive scenes.

« The game tried to be like a film and took out the gameplay. The film tried to be like a game and practically filmed the gameplay, » said the scientist. Gameplay means the way a player can interact with a video game.

Then it was found that the medium of film works differently than the medium game. In the meantime, the adaptations of and to games are « reasonably mature ». Matej Samide looks similar. He curates the special exhibition « Screen/Play » in the Berlin Computer Game Museum, which can still be seen until the end of the year. Exponations show how games and films influence each other.

« At least from my external perception, it was primarily so that it was expected from a game: okay, that’s a brand that we buy in cheap somewhere, then we also produce a film cheap, the fans will be going in and then it will be calculated, » says Samide. That is why many of these old films would have made a B-movie charm-with a very low budget and partly with mediocre actresses.

What makes « The Last of Us » so successful

It is different with « The Last of Us ». The successful two -part video game from the game smithy Naughty Dog revolves around a post -apocalyptic world after an outbreak of a fungal infection that affects people and turns into zombies. The few survivors live especially in totalitarian quarantine zones.

The focus is on the grumpy smuggler Joel (Pascal), the teenager Ellie (Ramsey) is supposed to take one of these zones. What is special: Ellie is immune to infection. The story in the first season develops into a road trip between survival fights, zombies and the emotional growing together of Joel and Ellie.

The series uses cinematic telling as its strength, for example with a view to the representation of the characters and their conflicts, says Koubek. She lets the game get out of what the game could do better: the design and experience of action sequences. The series largely waives the presentation of the gameplay. « It was the first time in my memory that it was consistently decided: we don’t want to be a filmed game. » The game itself is also one of the best examples of a great story in a game.

In general, from Koubek’s point of view, « that you know the strengths of your own medium and use it, then stick more loosely on the original or only take out the aspects that can be adapted well and leaves the others away because it does not work so well. »

You can tell that the film industry is now ready to put money on the table on the one hand to produce game adaptations in high quality, emphasizes Samide. On the other hand, there are now directors and actors behind series who would like the topic. So Neil Druckmann – developer of the video game of the same name – also participated in the film adaptation of « The Last of Us ».

Video game adaptation with Sydney Sweeney in planning

Nevertheless: Not every film adaptation has been successful these days, as the curator finds. The film adaptation of the game hit « Assassin’s Creed » with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as Hollywood contingent from 2016 received many bad reviews. « A film that did not understand his template at all. »

It remains to be seen whether many other announced films do better. The adventure game « Split Fiction » with Sydney Sweeney is to be brought to the screen, for example. At the end of the year, the second season of the end-time series « Fallout » should also appear after the game of the same name.