'The Last of Us' - Season 2 Thread (NO GAME SPOILERS!) | HBO | Neil Druckmann stepping away from creative involvement

[Volt]

It’s also funny seeing people that have been straight shytting on the game for 5 years pretend they are dissappointed in the show for not being as good as the game.

That says a lot about the show.

If we're being real, that game's story was dogshyt because of the narrative structure issues and crazy plot armor.

Hell, I was watching a compilation of how Abby's friends get killed so I could compare them to the show, and when the dude that Ellie slashes across the face gets killed, Dina falls off a glass ceiling because it got shot, onto the broken glass, gets choked out a bit, and hey, the baby is fine! What a trooper, he takes bumps better than Charlotte Flair already!

i had to hear about how unrealistic it was for Abby to have muscles now nikkas can’t stop complainging about her not having muscles in the show.

That's gonna be real funny down the road because a huge reason why Abby gets to do a lot of the things she does is that she's fukking bulking off barbecues 25 years in a zombie apocalypse in the middle of a war.

So she's about the same size and bulk as Ellie now, and Ellie is a trained Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. Good luck showing her manhandling the fukk out of her now.

I understand the meaning of it, Ellie who tried to save a scar kid earlier than gets her life decided by a scar kid who’s even younger who never met her, it’s to drive the point that nobody there is a victim, they’re all savages…but, it was just really weirdly placed within the episode



No hate to you, and Even though I agree, it’s weird to put “even” at the start of that sentence like it being a game makes it automatically inferior, game voice acting and mocap is so advanced now that these voice actors absolutely deserve to be recognised just as much as live action actors, everybody in the cast for the game were excellent


That weird LOU2 hate sub Reddit has 20 posts a day on how the show is so bad compared to the game…

The same game they have been crying about for 5 plus years

That shyt is crazy tho

It's somehow worse than circlejerk subs, both of them. I've never seen anything like it.

 

[TheGreatShowtime]

I'm listening to the podcast, and it's crazy how oblivious and self absorbed Craig Mazin is. I hope this delusional mf reads and hears the negative feedback from the finale & S2 as a whole and lets someone else take the lead on writing

 

[Woodrow]

Guess I’m in the minority, but I didn’t think this season was good at all, outside of episodes 2 and 6.

I think the showrunners were afraid of the blowback from the game. They made so many changes to soften the loudest critiques

Spoiler

(like revealing Abby’s motives at the start, completely removing Abby’s physical stature, and Ellie accidentally killing Mel)

, when they should have stuck to their guns.

Also, it didn’t bother anyone else that for all the ground they cover in Seattle, nothing is really happening? They basically surrounded three set pieces (the subway, Nora, and the aquarium) with exposition and time stamps. The Wolves have enough men to invade an island, but they never really encounter them at all? They have dogs, but Ellie — who was on some goof shyt all season — can just sneak through a hole in the floor and poof, Nora found?

I thought they were gonna have TOO much story for 7 episodes, but it turned out they didn’t have nearly enough because they prioritized giving Abby her own season. And unlike season 1, I would argue that most of their attempts to add new storylines didn’t work this time.

 

[Roid Jones]

Folks want you to abide by/follow the games rules when convenient and then when its some goofy out of character, want more cordys/action, or weird lame shyt they go, well what do you expect its not a videogame


nasty work.

Shyt is goofy, imagine telling viewers of the tv show to go and play the game to understand things that should be explained in the tv show

 

[Woodrow]

I'm listening to the podcast, and it's crazy how oblivious and self absorbed Craig Mazin is. I hope this delusional mf reads and hears the negative feedback from the finale & S2 as a whole and lets someone else take the lead on writing

From what people who would know have told me… he is a nightmare to deal with.

 

[Woodrow]

one more thing. while i think bella absolutely killed it as ellie, i do think that her physical limitations worked against her this season. she sold the shyt out of the nora scene as an actor. but physically i wasn't buying it, and i think that's why the scene had so many cut aways.

ironically, i think caitlyn dever has the same issue. i do not buy her as a GI Jane, i didn't buy her killing joel, and i def don't buy her little ass taking on tommy, jessie and ellie solo (even though I know what's really happening in that scene). i know killers come in all sizes, and i'm not saying abby had to be a linebacker. but the physicality in both roles is sorely lacking imo.

that's one thing i think the walking dead always did really well. the killers always felt believable, even when it was someone like carol who could also make you believe she was a sniveling coward.

 

[Sghost597]

From what who would know have told me… he is a nightmare to deal with.

He's a competent filmmaker when given exceptional material and actors. He's not someone that can make the sum be greater than it's parts.

Chernobyl was an illusion to that and made him better than what he was...

 

[Sghost597]

one more thing. while i think bella absolutely killed it as ellie, i do think that her physical limitations worked against her this season. she sold the shyt out of the nora scene as an actor. but physically i wasn't buying it, and i think that's why the scene had so many cut aways.

ironically, i think caitlyn dever has the same issue. i do not buy her as a GI Jane, i didn't buy her killing joel, and i def don't buy her little ass taking on tommy, jessie and ellie solo (even though I know what's really happening in that scene). i know killers come in all sizes, and i'm not saying abby had to be a linebacker. but the physicality in both roles is sorely lacking imo.

that's one thing i think the walking dead always did really well. the killers always felt believable, even when it was someone like carol who could also make you believe she was a sniveling coward.

When we finally get that fight... They might have to Godzilla the room to make them not look like a couple of midgets throwing pillow punches at each other.

 

[Woodrow]

When we finally get that fight... They might have to Godzilla the room to make them not look like a couple of midgets throwing pillow punches at each other.

and that's why i called it out. i know so many people wanted caitlyn dever to play ellie based on how she looks (and the fact that she's a good actor). but i think she would have had the same problems with the physical demands of the role as bella ramsey.

 

[Mr. Riddim]

Bella Ramsey was great. The writers made Ellie unlikable in this adaptation.
They converted me.

#AbbySet

 

[Sensitive Christian Grey]

Ellie should have been a complete and fairly competent a$$hole like Alicent and Rhaenyra should have been in House of the Dragon S2

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

the second season felt like it was speed running from point to point by the end -

i like a lot of it but it didn't stick the landing for me and for a show that going to disappear for 14 months i really need a sharp ending that left you thinking

Spoiler: Season 3

it makes no sense to wait to film season 3 as it abby perspective on things; bella might be in 2 episodes at most .

i think they were scared to make Bella Ramsey the villain .. she doesn't kill any wolfs or scars not tied to joel death .. never kills an animal and is constantly being saved by Dina and jessie

Ellie the most dangerous person to ever be a protagonist .. her capacity for mayhem and she feels cool and powerful as a serial killer combat person in a game. while the hbo adapation has scaled back the violence a lot to the game their need to be a point where ellie snapped they should kill dina or have her save a scar child and have that kid die so she snaps and becomes more violent.

 

[Volt]

I think Bella is doing a better job than alot of ppl are giving her credit for, but I wasn't feeling the constant jumping between revenge mode and quippy spoiled brat. But that seems to be a writing issue.

The Bella bashing is annoying.

She pulls off Part 1 Ellie well enough, but despite the fact that she isn't a great actress (which admittedly is a pretty horrible scenario for someone who's supposed to take over as the protag), most of the problems with Season 2 are related to writing.

That "I'm going to be a dad!" scene was in the script.

Just played the game up till Joel's death to give myself some perspective.

It's beyond frustrating when show does something right when the video game got it wrong. Then, not even the next scene. They show goes horribly wrong. It comes down to writing and maybe Neil/ Mazin just not being high level storytellers.

This. I was rewatching the beginning of TLOU1 this week, and I was like "Y'know, the show's motivation of Joel wanting a car battery to go look for Tommy makes a bit more sense here..."

Gonna take a closer look at this down the road.

Also, it didn’t bother anyone else that for all the ground they cover in Seattle, nothing is really happening? They basically surrounded three set pieces (the subway, Nora, and the aquarium) with exposition and time stamps. The Wolves have enough men to invade an island, but they never really encounter them at all? They have dogs, but Ellie — who was on some goof shyt all season — can just sneak through a hole in the floor and poof, Nora found?

People were talking a couple pages ago about the lack of action, and it was clearly a problem.

The irony is that the TV station did it well enough. Ellie and Dina were outnumbered and had to try to outmaneuver the wolves. They picked up a kill in the process, but it was tense, and it worked. A more proactive version of that could've worked on some scenes.

They were just meandering for so much of that screen time, it's crazy. She doesn't need to be Solid Snake out there at all times, but at least have some resistance. That could have also showcased more of the conflict between the scars and wolves.

 

[Woodrow]

The Bella bashing is annoying.

She pulls off Part 1 Ellie well enough, but despite the fact that she isn't a great actress (which admittedly is a pretty horrible scenario for someone who's supposed to take over as the protag), most of the problems with Season 2 are related to writing.

That "I'm going to be a dad!" scene was in the script.

This. I was rewatching the beginning of TLOU1 this week, and I was like "Y'know, the show's motivation of Joel wanting a car battery to go look for Tommy makes a bit more sense here..."

Gonna take a closer look at this down the road.

People were talking a couple pages ago about the lack of action, and it was clearly a problem.

The irony is that the TV station did it well enough. Ellie and Dina were outnumbered and had to try to outmaneuver the wolves. They picked up a kill in the process, but it was tense, and it worked. A more proactive version of that could've worked on some scenes.

They were just meandering for so much of that screen time, it's crazy. She doesn't need to be Solid Snake out there at all times, but at least have some resistance. That could have also showcased more of the conflict between the scars and wolves.

they're clearly saving the scars and wolves conflict for season 3, which was a mistake imo. they stripped too much story out of the season to save it for abby's pov. imo, the main beats of this season should have been:

• joel's death
• arriving in seattle
• ellie and dina vs. wolves
• subway scenes
• ellie and jessie vs. wolves
• ellie first encounter with the scars, overlapped with abby vs. scars, giving us our first real look at the scale of what's happening in seattle
• ellie vs. nora

i would've ended with ellie getting swept up in the storm on the way to the aquarium or getting stuck in between the wolves/scars fight en route to the aquarium. show her completely in over her head and overwhelmed on all sides. and if you're gonna show ellie vs. nora, i would've teased that abby was in the hospital at the same time, hinted at the rat king, then cued up day one for abby.

agreed that ellie didn't need to be solid snake. but what's the point of showcasing her practicing mma with jessie if dina was gonna be the competent fighter and ellie was gonna be a goof? but i knew they were gonna fukk up that part of her character when ellie got bit by the stalker in the supermarket.

 

[Diondon]

I'm telling you if Abby n em had showed up out the blue
wacked Joel and dipped
then throughout the season its unraveled what their motivations were
it would have hit so much harder
than this spoonfeeding the audience shyt they did