It has been reported that a The Last of Us movie will be in production. The best news to come out of the announcement is that Naughty Dog’s own Neil Druckmann will pen the script.
The fact that the actual writer for The Last of Us game is also writing the movie should come as a relief to many gamers. This means the story and the characters of Joel and Ellie won’t be getting a total makeover. The man that was responsible for making The Last of Us story so good in the first place should mean the film should be just as good as well.
Normally in Hollywood, the original creators aren’t involved in making the film adaptation. There have been many bad video game movies that have been released by abysmal fil makers that have no clue of the original source material. If anyone has seen the Max Payne movie, you will know that it has no relation to the games whatsoever.
Even upcoming comic book movies are potentially being butchered by filmmakers that “think” they know better. Just take a look at the casting for the “Batman vs Superman” movie. Many fans are outraged that the actors they chose aren’t appropriate to the comic book characters. This is because Zack Snyder wrote his own script and has altered it to fit his own vision. You can say the same thing with Shane Black and how he butchered “The Mandarin” character in Iron Man 3.
Neil Druckmann himself has won many writing awards strictly for his work on The Last of Us video game. Hopefully he has the power to make the movie just as award winning as the video game. Many video game movies are bad mainly because the original creators have no say on how the movie should be made.
It will be interesting too see who they choose to play Ellie in the movie. A perfect fit would be Ellen Page. If you haven’t played the “Left Behind” DLC, I will mention a minor spoiler so don’t read the next paragraph in italics.
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Not only does Ellen Page look just like Ellie, but it was revealed in the DLC that Ellie is a lesbian. Ellen Page herself came out just earlier this year. It seems as if Naughty Dog truly was modelling Ellie on Ellen Page…
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They have not chosen a director for The Last of Us movie yet, but let’s hope they choose someone that knows what he or she is doing. A movie’s script can change dramatically depending on what the directors wants. Toy Story 3’s writer Micheal Arndt was on board to write Star Wars Episode VII. However when J.J. Abrams came in to direct, he decided to ditch Arndt’s script and is now writing his own screenplay. Whoever gets a chance to direct The Last of Us movie better not shaft off Neil Druckmann so he/she will create their “own” vision of The Last of Us.
One last thing about Hollywood is that movie studios always like to pander to the “casual audience”. The Last of Us is a violent, yet powerful game that touched upon a lot of mature themes. This movie better not “dumb down” the violence and/or tone just so it can appeal to the non-video game audience.
Anyway, this is just my two cents on the upcoming movie. With Neil Druckmann on board, I’m confident the movie will be good. If somehow the movie studio or director alters his script, then we may have a problem…
