- This article contains spoilers for ‘The Last of Us’ —both the series and the video game— and its sequel. Continue reading at your own risk.
During the creative process, sources of inspiration can come from any referenteven if it is further away from our objective than it might seem at first glance.
The history of cinema and series is full of anecdotes that illustrate this, but today we are going to focus on the magnificent adaptation of ‘The Last of Us’ to the small screen and its connection to the film adaptation of a masterpiece of literary fantasy.
Flee you fools
Perhaps one of the most intense and action-packed moments of the entire first season of ‘The Last of Us’, already finished, is found in its devastating fifth episode. Before reaching its impressive closure, the chapter gives us a setpiece in the a horde of infected springs from the underground to finish turning Kansas City upside down.
In principle, as in the Naughty Dog work, it was supposed that the scene —as well as the previous duel with the sniper— should have been set during the day, but Craig Mazin, aware of the power of darkness, decided to do a 180 degree turn. This is how he told it in an interview with Empire -via CBR-.
“It was supposed to happen during the day, but at that point in production we had learned that the infected tend to look better when they’re more mysterious. So I thought, ‘Damn, this is going to look so much better at night.’ And! sentenced myself and a thousand other people to three weeks of night shooting!”
But how did the coshowrunner end up shaping the scene? Anyone who has listened to any of Mazin’s podcasts will know that he is an absolute geek. He loves to play D&D with his ‘Sriptnotes’ co-star John August, he was hugely addicted to the Elden Ring and has a special taste for epic fantasy. Knowing this, it is totally understandable that the appearance of the bebiese creatures from Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
On the official ‘The Last of Us’ podcast, Mazin thus reasoned the connection with the adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s manuscript to the cinema.
“There’s a moment in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’. The Company is in the mines of Moria, and what looks like thousands of goblins, I don’t think there were any orcs at that point yet, are slithering down those gigantic spider-like columns. I thought that it was beautiful when I saw it, and scary. So I was thinking about that a little bit, what it would be like if they just erupted out of the ground. And, particularly, some of the larger infected we had to deal with there, like the presentation of Mr. Bloater”.
One more sample that muses can have totally unexpected shapes.
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