Speaker 1: Warning, This podcast coun take spoilers for the Last of
Speaker 1: Us Part one video game, as well as a discussion
Speaker 1: of the finale of the Last of Us show. Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is Jason Concepcion and I'm Rosie Night and
Speaker 1: welcome to x ray Vision, the Crooked media podcast where
Speaker 1: we dive deep to your favorite shows, movies, and pop culture.
Speaker 2: On this episode, in the previously on, we're talking about
Speaker 2: that actually very shocking exit of Marvel Studio's EP Victoria Alonso.
Speaker 2: In the airlock, we are finishing our Last of Us
Speaker 2: Part one video game finale explainer, which is going to
Speaker 2: be very interesting in the wake of the finale of
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're very excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 2: And in nerd out Page pitches us on the Netflix
Speaker 2: series CeNSE eight. Oh, there's a big fandom for that one.
Speaker 1: Of course. If you want to jump around, check the
Speaker 1: show notes for timestamps coming up. Previously on, news dropped
Speaker 1: just as we were going to record that executive producer
Speaker 1: Victoria Alonso is exiting Marvel Studios. This from the Hollywood
Speaker 1: Reporter story quote Victoria Alonso, the longtime high profile Marvel
Speaker 1: Studios executive whose time of the company dates back to
Speaker 1: the first iron Man has left the studio. Multiple sources
Speaker 1: to The Hollywood Reporter. The reasons for the exit are unclear,
Speaker 1: but she parted ways with Marvel on Friday, sources say.
Speaker 1: The article continues. Alonso joined the studio in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six as chief of Visual Effects and post Production
Speaker 1: and helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a co producer.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight Ironman twenty one, she was
Speaker 1: promoted to President Physical and Post Production, Visual Effects and
Speaker 1: Animation Production. The article continues further quote her departure comes
Speaker 1: in the shadow of ant Man and The Last Quontumania's
Speaker 1: poor showing of the box office and among critics and fans.
Speaker 1: Your thoughts, Rosie Night, I was surprised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not like, it's not like Figgy leaving,
Speaker 2: but it's basically the second most shocking exit that there
Speaker 2: could be. Victoria's been around. If you watch the YouTube
Speaker 2: world premieres of the Marvel movies, which I always do,
Speaker 2: you she will always be there. She's been a big
Speaker 2: champion of directors like Ryan Coogler, Chloe Jao. She's been
Speaker 2: really pushing for diversity. She is a gay woman she
Speaker 2: spoke out about the Don't Say Gay bill. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I find this very interesting because she has done a
Speaker 2: huge amount. She's definitely one of the hands that has
Speaker 2: shaped the MCU as we know it, like as the
Speaker 2: article mentioned, she's been at Marvel Studio since pre you know,
Speaker 2: the Iron Man. But after the initial shock, it also
Speaker 2: was something that made sense to me when I thought
Speaker 2: about the recent issues that Marvel has had with VFX,
Speaker 2: with the critiques of the way the VFX looks, but
Speaker 2: more importantly, in my opinion, the issues they've had with
Speaker 2: the treatment of VFX workers across the globe, and especially
Speaker 2: like the stuff that we talked about before the burgeoning
Speaker 2: Visual Effects union that Vulture reported on earlier this year.
Speaker 2: So to me, my gut says, it's probably in the
Speaker 2: realm of all of that, though we don't know, as
Speaker 2: they mentioned the X, it kind of hasn't been confirmed
Speaker 2: why she left. But yeah, it was surprising and then
Speaker 2: less surprising when I really started to think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is all obviously conjecture, but you know, on
Speaker 1: our text chain, I thought the same thing. The critique
Speaker 1: about the quality of the images in Marvel Cinematic Universe
Speaker 1: movies dates back years like literally you can find articles sixteen,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, why do Marvel movies
Speaker 1: look like shit? Why do Marvel movies look ugly? Why
Speaker 1: is the color palette bad? Why does it look muddy?
Speaker 1: And then has only continued in recent years with you know,
Speaker 1: critiques about the CGIs CG that does make sense? It's
Speaker 1: mess blah blah blah, it's blanned. Many many criticisms of
Speaker 1: ant Man in the Wasp fall along this similar vein,
Speaker 1: And then you look at Victoria Alonzo's title and it's
Speaker 1: very clear those things fall directly under her purview. And
Speaker 1: when you couple that with the strongly negative stories about
Speaker 1: the way that the kind of working conditions that the
Speaker 1: VFX workers have to deal with, and I think you know,
Speaker 1: any media company of any kind of scale, and certainly
Speaker 1: one of Disney size, is very concerned about negative stories.
Speaker 1: And at some point it's probably is enough. And on furthermore,
Speaker 1: you know, there's also the angle that like, hey, if
Speaker 1: you continue to like treat the VFX workers like this,
Speaker 1: you're gonna make them form a union. And if they
Speaker 1: form a union, we're gonna end up spending a lot
Speaker 1: more money on these fucking movies. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is potentially an angle as well. You know, I
Speaker 1: just think, you know, you know, when people are saying,
Speaker 1: you're a you're a movie studio, you make you make movies.
Speaker 1: It's a visual medium, and yeah, visual medium. And when
Speaker 1: people for seven years have been saying, why do these
Speaker 1: movies look like shit? And that's your job, I would
Speaker 1: imagine at some point, like those stories accrue and people
Speaker 1: start asking questions. Add on to that, you know, the
Speaker 1: much talked about kind of bottom falling out of various
Speaker 1: streaming companies. Uh, you know, financial statements, Disney stock tanking,
Speaker 1: lots of people getting laid off left and right. Politically speaking, here,
Speaker 1: you know, there's tons of below the line regular workers
Speaker 1: who are going to be you know, losing their paychecks.
Speaker 1: Here is a high profile executive. It probably plays pretty
Speaker 1: well too, like if you want to be cynical about it,
Speaker 1: but I agree with you. I think this probably if
Speaker 1: I had to guess, and we don't know, but if
Speaker 1: I had to guess, it's it has to do with
Speaker 1: the constant criticism and perhaps and perhaps acknowledged criticism of
Speaker 1: the VFX and the fact that you know, the treatment
Speaker 1: of the VFX trades people is essentially backing them into
Speaker 1: a corner to the point that they're going to form
Speaker 1: a union, which again is going to is going to
Speaker 1: cost Disney and other studios a lot of money. If
Speaker 1: that Indie doesn't.
Speaker 2: Great for the workers, less great for the corporations, as
Speaker 2: is always the way with the union.
Speaker 1: No, Mickey, No, don't Mickey. Are you okay? Mickey's going
Speaker 1: to be at the Disneyland with his pockets turned.
Speaker 2: Down pennies and dust pennies.
Speaker 1: Anybody's any changed Mickey's my sandwich.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think I think you summed it all up.
Speaker 2: I also think like something that you keyed into that
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily know. As we say, most of these
Speaker 2: reports are very unspeculative because that's not the nature of journalism,
Speaker 2: but we are here to talk about it in the
Speaker 2: context of the wider world as we know it. I
Speaker 2: also think like we are in a dicey financial time,
Speaker 2: and I think that all of these studios are trying
Speaker 2: to save money, and I think that these movies cost
Speaker 2: an unbelievable amount of money, and yet they're still not
Speaker 2: paying people well enough to make them, and this is
Speaker 2: just a yeah, it's a confluence of drama. Maybe we'll
Speaker 2: be wrong, Maybe I'll turn out that the Victoria chose
Speaker 2: to leave of her own varition, But well, we'll surely
Speaker 2: find out more.
Speaker 1: So, pay is one issue, and an important one. But
Speaker 1: to me, you know, the weight of all those stories
Speaker 1: made clear to me that it's it's kind of less
Speaker 1: about paying, more about time and the amount of things
Speaker 1: they're asked to do in a certain period of time.
Speaker 1: And I think when you really look at that, that
Speaker 1: calls into question if indeed this firing is because of
Speaker 1: this issue, that would cause you to think about planning.
Speaker 1: Can we not plan this better? Can we not organize
Speaker 1: this better so that people aren't working around the clock,
Speaker 1: and in working around the clock getting really pissed off,
Speaker 1: and in getting pissed off either refusing to work with
Speaker 1: us anymore or unionizing to the point that our bottom
Speaker 1: line gets fucking hammered. It seems to me that that
Speaker 1: would be a reasonable it's a reasonable assumption to make.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to be very interested to see if
Speaker 2: this kind of begins, like a domino effect of changing
Speaker 2: the way that these movies are made even slightly because
Speaker 2: I think a lot about the fact that they were
Speaker 2: doing reshoots fam Man and the Wasp three weeks before
Speaker 2: it came out in LA and we know that one
Speaker 2: of the biggest critiques, Like you say, it's about these
Speaker 2: eighteen hour days, it's about three months with no days off,
Speaker 2: But it's also about you know, the term that they
Speaker 2: use pixel fucking where Marvel will come back to you
Speaker 2: a week before the movie is meant to come out
Speaker 2: and say, hey, we need you to change this one
Speaker 2: tiny thing, or actually, we need you to redo the
Speaker 2: whole ending, and basically this is what it needs to
Speaker 2: look like, So can you do that? So I think
Speaker 2: there is a need for a more sustainable version of
Speaker 2: how they make these big blockbuster movies, not just superhero movies,
Speaker 2: like any kind of big spectacle CG movies. I also
Speaker 2: think they need to reconsider the way that they use
Speaker 2: and the amount that they use like CG in these movies.
Speaker 2: I think that's beginning to stop people from connecting in
Speaker 2: the way that they are presenting these stories. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll be interested to see, but I was not expecting
Speaker 2: this on my bingo coot of things that would happen
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three certainly not.
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Speaker 1: of the airlock and into the final chapters of the
Speaker 1: Last of Us video game to continue and end our
Speaker 1: Last of Us video game coverage, and this conversation is
Speaker 1: really going to be about the differences between the emotional
Speaker 1: impacts of the ending of the game versus the show.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that really we took
Speaker 1: away from from the conversation in our discord and kind
Speaker 1: of reading the kind of conversation on the internet and
Speaker 1: also watching the show and just taking stock of our
Speaker 1: own hearts, was that the show it's very hard to
Speaker 1: come away with anything else than being strongly pro jole
Speaker 1: at the end of the Last of Us. And that
Speaker 1: is a really starkly contrast with I think the game,
Speaker 1: which even even the most like you know, like pro
Speaker 1: Joel reading of the events at the end of the
Speaker 1: game paints him in a much grayer light than he
Speaker 1: is in the show where he and and I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that that really interests us is like,
Speaker 1: why is that the case? Why is that the case?
Speaker 1: So that's what this conversation is going to be about.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the last kind of big two
Speaker 1: movements at the college, where Joel and Ellie go initially
Speaker 1: to look for the fireflies before running into some of
Speaker 1: David's raiders and getting into the whole cannibalistic Hulla Blue
Speaker 1: over at Silver Lake, and then finally the final movement
Speaker 1: at Salt Lake. I think the first thing I would
Speaker 1: say is that this the video game. We gave Marlene
Speaker 1: a lot of shit, We gave the fireflies a lot
Speaker 1: of shit. And and I came away from my play
Speaker 1: of the game and my rewatch of the cinematics over
Speaker 1: the last week really feeling how long the fireflies had
Speaker 1: been at this trying to find a cure. We go
Speaker 1: to the college, you know, and you know, when we
Speaker 1: go to the college in the show, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of monkeys around. You see some kind of like scattered
Speaker 1: you know, boxes and some stuff pinned up on the
Speaker 1: what but you really don't know what it is. In
Speaker 1: the game, you're interacting with all this stuff, and one
Speaker 1: of the things you see is like an X ray
Speaker 1: of a person's brain showing the progression of the fungal growth.
Speaker 1: And then you get all those MP three recorders with
Speaker 1: scientist with a scientist, one scientist in particular, talking about
Speaker 1: the kind of arduous process budding that their heads up
Speaker 1: against this concrete wall of trying to find this cure.
Speaker 1: And I thought that really was important context for the
Speaker 1: emotional reveals that happened at the end of the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that one of the
Speaker 2: most interesting things on replaying it and on thinking about
Speaker 2: the different narrative form of the game and the TV show.
Speaker 2: One the TV show, you're in there for you know,
Speaker 2: nine hours, let's say, as an estimation, right in the game,
Speaker 2: you are there for forty fifty hours with these characters,
Speaker 2: with these people and you learn things in a completely
Speaker 2: different way. I think the Salt Lake City University section
Speaker 2: is a great example because in the show we really
Speaker 2: just go there so they can understand that the fireflies
Speaker 2: have moved on. You see the map, Oh, it looks
Speaker 2: like it's going to Salt Lake City, you know. But
Speaker 2: in the game, you're exploring, you're seeing that this was
Speaker 2: a place that people lived, that they worked, that they
Speaker 2: dedicated time to, that they had to leave, And you
Speaker 2: even get like a moment you pull the great clip
Speaker 2: from one of the MP three's where it's like one
Speaker 2: of the doctors is considering what to do with the
Speaker 2: monkeys they've been testing on and he chooses to let
Speaker 2: them go. He doesn't want to kill them because they've
Speaker 2: made this sacrifice. Even that gives more humanity to the
Speaker 2: fireflies and the doctors and this kind of empathy we
Speaker 2: never get to see from them in the show. Also,
Speaker 2: they're missing for a lot of the show, whereas in
Speaker 2: the game, the fireflies are a constant and whether it's
Speaker 2: you other people talking about them. And I just think
Speaker 2: that there's something really interesting about thinking about ways that
Speaker 2: we get information in stories, because I do think that
Speaker 2: finding you know the firefly pendance and learning the different
Speaker 2: firefly names, and also then finding out there's different stories
Speaker 2: of these characters through MP three recordings, whether it's Marlene
Speaker 2: or whether it's you know this doctor. It gives you
Speaker 2: a much more interactive and holistic sense of who they are.
Speaker 2: I think that we didn't have time and also is
Speaker 2: impossible to do in a game. In a TV show,
Speaker 2: no one wants to see Joel going around listening to
Speaker 2: multiple MP three is. It doesn't make it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: It's just a hokey way to see that one is
Speaker 3: doing doing exposition, like nobody wants that, right, But like
Speaker 3: in the game, it actually works so well and it
Speaker 3: feels it adds more texture and grit, And I think
Speaker 3: that is something that I really.
Speaker 2: Took away in terms of how we end up in
Speaker 2: the game feeling a lot more compromised about what Joel does,
Speaker 2: Whereas in the show, even people who were like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's kind of fucked up, you're still like, well, what
Speaker 2: would the fireflies do? And how do we know that
Speaker 2: it is? Here? We get so much more of an
Speaker 2: idea that this is an ongoing project, that they might
Speaker 2: actually have an idea about what they're doing well. I think.
Speaker 1: It comes down to I think the difference in emotional
Speaker 1: impact of the game verst Show comes down to for
Speaker 1: me one main thing, and that is in the game
Speaker 1: I was I never ever doubted that this would result
Speaker 1: in the cure, that Ellie undergoing this deadly surgery to
Speaker 1: remove pieces of her brain would absolutely result in the cure.
Speaker 1: And part of that is one the kind of, as
Speaker 1: we've said, video game logic of you know, the.
Speaker 2: Acceptance of super science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the logic of the genre, right, Like, you play
Speaker 1: a video game and it absolutely makes sense to you
Speaker 1: that you are the hero that is that is going
Speaker 1: to save the world like that, That is just kind
Speaker 1: of what the genre is, right. And also, as you said,
Speaker 1: this kind of the humanity of the fireflies, and a
Speaker 1: word that keeps coming up, and a notion that keeps
Speaker 1: coming up in these last two chapters with everything with
Speaker 1: the Fireflies is sacrifice. Like that voice memo you mentioned,
Speaker 1: the doctor says of the monkeys, you know, uh, everybody
Speaker 1: wants to kill you, guys, I say, screw that, who
Speaker 1: made a bigger sacrifice than you? Right? And then shortly
Speaker 1: after that he gets bitten by a fucking tainted monkey
Speaker 1: made choice came for me the way, but it just
Speaker 1: gives you, like, think about, uh, the emotional toll that
Speaker 1: this person must have taken to get to a place
Speaker 1: where here's all these monkeys potentially infected with this deadly
Speaker 1: virus that has absolutely devastated the globe and caused untold
Speaker 1: heartbreak and pain and trauma, and you're sitting here injecting
Speaker 1: them with cordysips fucking twenty four hours a day. It's
Speaker 1: horrific to the point where a scientist is just like,
Speaker 1: I can't after that, I can't do anymore, Like.
Speaker 2: I'm not done to you, I can't kill you.
Speaker 1: And that really brought it home, like, like, you know,
Speaker 1: when we talked about the show, and we talked about
Speaker 1: the kind of like slap dash project the Fireflies is
Speaker 1: put together.
Speaker 2: Mad scientist in his lab with his lap this.
Speaker 1: Felt most definitely not that, you know. And then there's
Speaker 1: a second MP three recorder in which the doctor has
Speaker 1: apparently been left behind, probably because he got bitten by
Speaker 1: the monkey. It is as the fuck it's stay there now,
Speaker 1: and he's talking about you know, he's just kind of
Speaker 1: like talking as a kind of last will you know,
Speaker 1: into another voice recorder, and he is the frustration of
Speaker 1: it all has finally gotten to him as he's nearing
Speaker 1: the end of not just this project, but it's probably
Speaker 1: his life. And he says, a giant waste of time
Speaker 1: talking about this project to find a cure. If you're
Speaker 1: looking for the others, they all return to Saint Mary's
Speaker 1: Hospital and in Salt Lake City you'll find them there,
Speaker 1: still trying to save the world. He says, like very
Speaker 1: very bitterly. And then you get to Salt Lake City
Speaker 1: with that hanging over you. Of I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: the fireflies have really, really, really been trying to crack
Speaker 1: to do this, and what's the missingredient? It's Ellie.
Speaker 2: Well. Also, I think the other thing that's really great
Speaker 2: in that moment with those two MP three's is you
Speaker 2: have the man who understands the sacrifice, who thinks it's
Speaker 2: worth it.
Speaker 1: Then you have the.
Speaker 2: Person who's more along the lines of Joel. This in
Speaker 2: Joel's mind, that MP three in the game, it can
Speaker 2: justify everything that he's worried because they're like, it is
Speaker 2: a giant waste of time. These little moments add so
Speaker 2: much to that kind of internal battle.
Speaker 1: You're so right, it's not just a leap that he
Speaker 1: makes nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's that kind of those little narrative beasts.
Speaker 2: And I just want to say, like this, if you've
Speaker 2: listened to us talk about the show, you don't need us,
Speaker 2: since we love the show. Like I think they did
Speaker 2: such a brilliant job of adapting it, and I actually
Speaker 2: love the choices that they make. Even though I was
Speaker 2: shocked by how kind of less morally gray and like
Speaker 2: bleak the ending felt, I still really think they did
Speaker 2: a great job, and I think adapt I think the
Speaker 2: game is incredibly hard, But in terms of this specific decision,
Speaker 2: it's these little moments that teach you so much about
Speaker 2: Joel and the journey he's on, and kind of you
Speaker 2: can pick up and foreshadow the things. Even in that
Speaker 2: moment where the doctor talks about the monkey and says,
Speaker 2: like who's made a great sacrifice than you? That's all
Speaker 2: Ellie's gonna make the greatest sacrifice of all. There's so
Speaker 2: much great for shadowing, and it really puts you in
Speaker 2: the position where at the end you're kind of going
Speaker 2: back through everything and you're like, wait a minute, like
Speaker 2: what happened? Would why would he do this? Whereas, like
Speaker 2: you said, in the show, you know, especially people who
Speaker 2: hadn't played the game, they were just like, yeah, Joel
Speaker 2: was right, yeah, Like why wouldn't he do that? Whereas
Speaker 2: when in the game, it's like it's a shadow of
Speaker 2: the Colossus level turn, like you do not see it
Speaker 2: coming and you do not get a choice, and also
Speaker 2: unbe real. Joel is a brutal person in this game.
Speaker 2: We've talked about it a lot. He kills so many people,
Speaker 2: even though him and Elie build this relationship. I think
Speaker 2: this is another thing on the show versus the game.
Speaker 2: In the game, there is I feel like the world
Speaker 2: is a lot more full of distractions and other people.
Speaker 2: The show is so brilliantly focused on Joel and Alli's
Speaker 2: relationship that you don't question it. But again, in the game,
Speaker 2: I've killed five hundred people by the time I get
Speaker 2: to that, Like, what one more little girl? If it
Speaker 2: means you can save the world, do you know? And
Speaker 2: that's I think why those choices feel so much heavier.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 1: A lot of our you know, obviously, our our finale
Speaker 1: episode was heavy on the criticism of Marlene and I
Speaker 1: and I want to just I stand by everything that
Speaker 1: I said about Marlene, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: my disappointment of Marlene and the frustration and what she
Speaker 1: did is because what she's setting out to do with
Speaker 1: the Fireflies are trying to do is such a lofty
Speaker 1: and noble goal and it's so worth doing, you know,
Speaker 1: finding a cure for this vicious disease that has totally
Speaker 1: devastated the humanity, bringing democracy back to a country that
Speaker 1: has been shattered and is being ruled by you know,
Speaker 1: people desperate people with guns like that is that is
Speaker 1: a worthy and lofty goal, and she was going about
Speaker 1: it in such a competent fashion. And then you get
Speaker 1: to the game version of Marlene. And when the first
Speaker 1: thing I noticed is when Joel has is he wakes
Speaker 1: up in the room with Marlene after being captured by
Speaker 1: the fireflies, and they get captured in a slightly different ways.
Speaker 1: They almost drown after kind of trying to move through
Speaker 1: you know, like a tunnel. And immediately and this cut
Speaker 1: just a part of the performance, you know, Tory Baker's
Speaker 1: performance in merl Dandrews's performance. But there's immediately a kind
Speaker 1: of warmth between Joel and Marlene, like she is so
Speaker 1: relieved that he's there, she says, I pretty much. She
Speaker 1: talks about how first how hard it was to come
Speaker 1: across the country, how many people the lost, and she's
Speaker 1: really sad about it. She says, I pretty much lost everything.
Speaker 1: Then you show up and somehow we find you just
Speaker 1: in time to save her. Maybe it was meant to be.
Speaker 1: And then she goes on to say, as Joel realizes, like,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, he says, but but Cordyceps is
Speaker 1: in the brain. She's like yeah. And then he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, why are you letting this happen? And then
Speaker 1: she says something that I think really told me why
Speaker 1: she's doing this right, And there'll be further things that
Speaker 1: will back up. I think her choice why it's it's
Speaker 1: not the right choice, but I understand why she made it.
Speaker 1: And she and she said, you know, Joel says, why
Speaker 1: are you letting this happen? Letting this happen? Which I
Speaker 1: think is important, even Joel right by saying that he's
Speaker 1: not saying why are you doing this? No, he even
Speaker 1: Joel in this moment is recognizing that there are other
Speaker 1: forces at work, that there's this entire firefly organization that
Speaker 1: is agency in and of itself. Right, she's a leader,
Speaker 1: but not the leader. And there's you know, political considerations
Speaker 1: going on here. And then she pretty much confirms that.
Speaker 1: She says, because this isn't about me or even her,
Speaker 1: there is no other choice here. And when you think
Speaker 1: about the desperation in that scientist's voice, melos how long
Speaker 1: they've been at this, how they were she says, like,
Speaker 1: we thought we were done, We thought we're never going
Speaker 1: to find it, like and then and then Ellie shows up.
Speaker 1: And you've got all these scientists that have been working
Speaker 1: for years to try and crack this code, and you've
Speaker 1: got all these soldiers that have been supporting them, some
Speaker 1: of them dying, getting infected, dying to raiders, et cetera,
Speaker 1: in the hopes that one day they'd be able to
Speaker 1: find the missing ingredient and and and be able to
Speaker 1: manufacture a cure, and then it falls into their laps.
Speaker 1: I don't think Marlene had the clout to say, hold on, wait,
Speaker 1: don't do this surgery, Let's do some other stuff first.
Speaker 1: I think the doctors. And there's gonna be other evidence
Speaker 1: that is going to bear out what I'm saying, But
Speaker 1: I think the doctors had been like, we have taste
Speaker 1: down every fucking dead end street, We've pulled on every thread,
Speaker 1: We've done everything. This is the only way. And I
Speaker 1: think Marlene had there was nothing she could do. I
Speaker 1: don't think she could have stood in the way of
Speaker 1: any of these people that wanted desperately to do this surgery.
Speaker 1: And that, to me is the difference between game Marlene
Speaker 1: and show Marlene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's such a great point. And the
Speaker 2: other big thing I think, which is again is just
Speaker 2: one of those ultimate conundrums of adapting a game to
Speaker 2: a show, is especially if you have someone like Neil
Speaker 2: Druckman who's such a brilliant storyteller who wants to expand
Speaker 2: and add these parts of the law in the Cannon.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that I found interesting
Speaker 2: about adaptation was the confirmation of a very popular fan
Speaker 2: theory and kind of this expansion on why Ellie was immune,
Speaker 2: which was that her mother got bitten and kind of
Speaker 2: like a blade origin story, right, and now she's a
Speaker 2: day walker, I mean, And what I think is so
Speaker 2: interesting about that is because we know that Marlene knows,
Speaker 2: and because in the room in the hospital where she
Speaker 2: tells Joel about the surgery. She is the one who
Speaker 2: expands on how Ellie is immune. In the game, it's
Speaker 2: a voice memo from a doctor who kind of says,
Speaker 2: like Marlene was right, the girl's infection is like nothing
Speaker 2: I've ever seen. IMP want to note the cause of
Speaker 2: her immunity is uncertain, as we've seen in all past cases,
Speaker 2: and he sort of goes on to talk about why
Speaker 2: it probably would have worked by making Marlene complicit in
Speaker 2: not only the knowledge that Ellie was likely always immune
Speaker 2: or had a potential to be immune, but then having
Speaker 2: her be the reason. Yeah, the person who shares the
Speaker 2: reason to Joel, Oh, she's immune, it's because of you know,
Speaker 2: she's probably been immune since birth. It gives Marlene a
Speaker 2: much more sinister edge. In the game, there is kind
Speaker 2: of this reveal that Marlene has been protecting Ellie because
Speaker 2: she knew Ellie's mother and it's all through love. And
Speaker 2: when she tells Joel, I do understand what's going on
Speaker 2: in the game, she says, I was Ellie's mum's best friend.
Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing, and you know I've looked after her since
Speaker 2: she was little. I always promised to look after That
Speaker 2: feels like a plea of somebody going through grief going
Speaker 2: through something the same. In the show, it feels like
Speaker 2: she's trying to sell Joel something because she wants to
Speaker 2: use Ellie for this purpose. And I think even though
Speaker 2: I love the acknowledgment of how Ellie's immune, and I
Speaker 2: think it's actually a really important addition, because I think
Speaker 2: for a lot of people that could have been almost
Speaker 2: like a plotthole if it wasn't wasn't explained in the show.
Speaker 2: I do think it gives Marlene a more sinister edge
Speaker 2: that makes it harder to empathize with her or feel
Speaker 2: like she's doing things in an altruistic way, or yeah,
Speaker 2: it gives her more. It feels like she has more power,
Speaker 2: more agency. It feels like she was the one who
Speaker 2: told the doctor, oh, this is what happened with Ellie.
Speaker 2: It feels like she is the one who wanted Joel
Speaker 2: to go there. It loses, like you said, that feeling
Speaker 2: you get in the game of this kind of momentum
Speaker 2: that overtaken Marlene and any plan she had. She doesn't
Speaker 2: want Ellie to die in the game, but there's no choice,
Speaker 2: and also, who would you know? It's the greater good here.
Speaker 2: Marlene just in the show is kind of just like, well, sorry,
Speaker 2: we're gonna put her in surgery and nothing you can
Speaker 2: do about it. And it's just it doesn't It hits
Speaker 2: in a more villainous way.
Speaker 1: I think to your point when when you stack what
Speaker 1: you're saying on and I think you're exactly right when
Speaker 1: you stack that on top of the kind of way
Speaker 1: the conversation that Marlene had with Ellie early in the
Speaker 1: shows that seemed to suggest that Marlene had been like
Speaker 1: pulling some strings in terms of like getting Ellie placed
Speaker 1: at FEDRA. She's been keeping her eye on her all
Speaker 1: these kind of things. It makes it seem like much
Speaker 1: more of a plot. And then you get to the
Speaker 1: end and the kind of alacrity with which she is,
Speaker 1: you know, like hustling Joel out the door to do
Speaker 1: this thing, feels it feels a lot more like she
Speaker 1: is driving these events, unless that that they are happening
Speaker 1: to her now, you know oftentimes in and that's not
Speaker 1: worse or better, it's just different and it makes Marlene
Speaker 1: a different character. But I think that's exactly the thing
Speaker 1: you're you're you're talking about. Like even the way she
Speaker 1: says you know, in the in the game, she says
Speaker 1: almost pleading with Joel. She says like she's not going
Speaker 1: to feel anything, like don't like and and the way
Speaker 1: it lands is like she's almost soothing herself about it,
Speaker 1: because as she said, there's no there's no choice. I
Speaker 1: don't have a choice in it. But then when she
Speaker 1: says the way she says to Joel like in the show,
Speaker 1: like don't worry, I didn't tell out. Yeah, yeah, she's out.
Speaker 1: She won't know what's happening. The fact that she then
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter says, well, what would what choice would she
Speaker 1: make Joel? It makes her a hypocrite. And again that's
Speaker 1: not worse or better or any it's just like a
Speaker 1: different way to tell the story. And I would argue,
Speaker 1: if you have Paeder Pascal as your lead role, you
Speaker 1: definitely want the audience to be like Joel, go get
Speaker 1: them like doing the right thing, like you want you
Speaker 1: just want to root for that guy. But that's why
Speaker 1: the game version is a lot more, is a lot greyer,
Speaker 1: because you can sense, you know, texturally, how hard everybody
Speaker 1: has been working to make this happen, to find a cure,
Speaker 1: and how this all these people who are experts in this,
Speaker 1: unlike the way we felt about the doctor, who again
Speaker 1: is like where did this fucking guy come from? You know,
Speaker 1: like we've seen all the infrastructure now through the voice meamos,
Speaker 1: through the different hardware. You're creeping around the you know,
Speaker 1: the college campus, and then you're you know, you're moving
Speaker 1: through the Salt Lake City laboratory and hospital, and you're
Speaker 1: seeing other stuff, and you get the feeling that these
Speaker 1: people kind of know what they're doing. Now well after Marleon,
Speaker 1: let's Joel go. Still a bad decision, obviously, but I
Speaker 1: think one that plays a little bit differently in the game.
Speaker 1: She says, don't waste this gift, Joel, and you could,
Speaker 1: as many people in the discord talked about, like, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the reason that she lets him go in
Speaker 1: the show is because she's grateful to him, and I
Speaker 1: think that's right, and I think that's a direct translation
Speaker 1: for the game, and I think it's you understand it
Speaker 1: more in the game, and it's also that you know,
Speaker 1: there's big things afoot, like let's get this guy out
Speaker 1: of here. And then so as Joel has made his break,
Speaker 1: he's killed a couple of fireflies and he's creeping around
Speaker 1: like being pursued by them. He then finds another voice memo,
Speaker 1: and I think this voice memo is really important for
Speaker 1: what because it absolutely locks in the kind of like
Speaker 1: supporting evidence of the competence of the Firefly doctors. And
Speaker 1: it lets you know like how thoughtful they are actually
Speaker 1: about this thing, even though they are rushing to do it.
Speaker 1: And the doctor voice memo goes quote, Marlene was right.
Speaker 1: The girl's infection is nothing like I've seen the cause
Speaker 1: of her immunity is uncertain. And I'm going to read
Speaker 1: all this jargon because I actually think it's important that
Speaker 1: they put this in here. As we've seen in all
Speaker 1: past cases, the antigenetic titers of the patient's cordyceps remain
Speaker 1: high in both serum and cerebrospinal fluid. Blood cultures taken
Speaker 1: from the patient rapidly grow cordyceps in fungal media, and
Speaker 1: the lab will stop here. This is one of our
Speaker 1: critiques right of the show, was like, why don't you
Speaker 1: start with blood tests? Why don't you do all these others?
Speaker 1: They've done it, they tried it, Yeah, they've been trying it. However,
Speaker 1: it continues White blood cells, including percentages and absolute counts,
Speaker 1: are completely normal. There is no elevation of pro inflammatory cytokines,
Speaker 1: and an MRI of the brain shows no evidence of
Speaker 1: fungal growth in the limbic regions, which would normally accompany
Speaker 1: the prodrome of aggression and effective patients. We must find
Speaker 1: a way to replicate this state under laboratory conditions. We're
Speaker 1: about to hit a milestone in human history equal to
Speaker 1: the discovery of penicillin. After years of wandering in circles,
Speaker 1: we're about to come home, make a difference, and bring
Speaker 1: the human race back into control of its destiny. All
Speaker 1: of our sacrifices in the hundreds of men and women
Speaker 1: who've bled for this cause or worse will not be
Speaker 1: in vain. Now, imagine that kind of emotion amongst the fireflies.
Speaker 1: Who's going to be able to tell them no, Like,
Speaker 1: I just don't think Marlene could have done it. I
Speaker 1: don't think she could have done it.
Speaker 2: I also think this like is a really great way
Speaker 2: to set up the weight of what Joel's choice means
Speaker 2: devestating because you hear this and you already there's hundreds
Speaker 2: of people who have sacrificed their lives for this, let alone,
Speaker 2: all the millions of people who've already died from corterceps.
Speaker 2: That for some reason just brings it home so much
Speaker 2: harder that when Joel takes Ellie out and kills the
Speaker 2: fireflies and kills the doctor, you feel that weight of oh,
Speaker 2: that could have saved millions of lives. Yeah, you, And
Speaker 2: I have to say, Look, I've always been a slight
Speaker 2: Joel apologist, just because I do think I think that
Speaker 2: there is something very interesting and analogous here about like
Speaker 2: real life testing on humans and that like an agency
Speaker 2: that Ellie wasn't given. So I always found this to
Speaker 2: be less of a villainous decision and more of this
Speaker 2: really interesting complex question about who gets to live who
Speaker 2: gets to die. But in the game, the weight is there.
Speaker 2: In the show, as we said, you know, I feel
Speaker 2: like you really come out of this like it probably
Speaker 2: wasn't gonna work. And even if it was, like they
Speaker 2: didn't sell you on how hard it was, you felt
Speaker 2: like you were in this kind of junk together surgery.
Speaker 2: There was no blood tests, there was no conversation, and
Speaker 2: I understand that they kind of they they distilled a
Speaker 2: little bit of that science into what Marlene says to Joel,
Speaker 2: but I don't necessarily think it hits that same way.
Speaker 2: And when you hear the way that the doctor feels
Speaker 2: about what they could do a milestone in human history
Speaker 2: equal to the dissol of pens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, and then to have Joel.
Speaker 2: Ignore that and just kill everyone that's very hardcore. That
Speaker 2: is like a brutal And again, this is that different.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily a narrative storyline. You have to pick
Speaker 2: up the recorder, you have to hear these These are
Speaker 2: things that build on top of the experience that you're having.
Speaker 2: Plus again, like we said, the nature of being in
Speaker 2: Joel's person and being the person who has to kill
Speaker 2: all these things, that's very different from just watching it
Speaker 2: on the screen. So that makes it feel a lot
Speaker 2: heavier too. But I do think it's a really interesting
Speaker 2: change because by this point you are so in, you know,
Speaker 2: you're so in on Joel and Ellie's journey, on the
Speaker 2: sacrifices they've made together so much the show that it
Speaker 2: felt so much easier to do in the game. You're like, well,
Speaker 2: I get it, but there's lots of butts in the show.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's more just like a j'all did
Speaker 2: what he had to do? No, but you know, but
Speaker 2: the game is always this huge well he could all that.
Speaker 2: There's a lot more questions, and I think it comes
Speaker 2: from these really brilliant little narrative devices like the memos.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's another part of this conversation too,
Speaker 1: and you hear the question a lot regarding both versions
Speaker 1: of the story game and show, Okay, your perspective on
Speaker 1: how you feel about Joel's choice is going to be
Speaker 1: different depending on whether you're a parent or not. Right,
Speaker 1: you hear them a lot like if you're a parent,
Speaker 1: it absolutely makes sense in both versions, and I agree
Speaker 1: with that. But I also think that there's a really
Speaker 1: interesting thing that you're kind of talking about, and I
Speaker 1: think it's it, And I'm fascinated in how this part
Speaker 1: of the conversation never or rarely comes up. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say never rarely comes up, and that is
Speaker 1: you are the parent of a child who is infected.
Speaker 1: You're watching them waste away and turn into this like
Speaker 1: aggressive killer zombie, you know, or you've watched that happen
Speaker 1: to someone you love, And what would you feel if
Speaker 1: you learned that there was a cure. But then someone
Speaker 1: came along and for that cure to happen, right, a
Speaker 1: surgery would need to be performed on someone, and that
Speaker 1: surgery would probably kill them. But everyone, like your child
Speaker 1: would be cured, your friend's children would be cured, future generations,
Speaker 1: for all time to come. There would be a cure. Right,
Speaker 1: And then you hear that not only is that person,
Speaker 1: that immune person lost to the people who are trying
Speaker 1: to find the cure now, but all the knowledge, the
Speaker 1: hard earned scientific and medical knowledge of how to do this,
Speaker 1: has been wiped out by like one guy. People would
Speaker 1: hate that guy one hundred percent. They would be like,
Speaker 1: that's a kill that guy. That guy's a criminal. He's
Speaker 1: causing my child to get sick and die, Like I
Speaker 1: hate that guy. Yeah, that's a part of this too
Speaker 1: that I think definitely, it is much more kind of
Speaker 1: like textual in the game version.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also think you bring up an interesting point
Speaker 2: even before you get to Joel killing everyone. Right, If
Speaker 2: you're asking this question, you're saying, if my child was Ellie,
Speaker 2: what would I do? I mean, I have nieces and
Speaker 2: nephews and I probably would definitely have done what Joel did.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, let's flip it on its head.
Speaker 2: And talk about what if, like you said, you had
Speaker 2: an infected child, but to cure that child, all you
Speaker 2: had to do was kill one person in a surgery
Speaker 2: to create a cure. Even on that base level, if
Speaker 2: we take it outside of a million people, that is
Speaker 2: basically a really interesting reflection of Joel's choice, and Joel
Speaker 2: chooses to kill many people to save Ellie. If Joel
Speaker 2: was infected and he had a choice to kill somebody
Speaker 2: or force somebody through a surgery to save Ellie, he
Speaker 2: would probably do it. So I think it's a really
Speaker 2: interesting kind of raises edge that they balance on him.
Speaker 1: Marley X ray Vision will be back and we're back.
Speaker 1: So as Joel is kind of creeping around, continuing to
Speaker 1: kill fireflies left and right, you overhear some of this firefly,
Speaker 1: the fireflies talking to each other and one of the masks,
Speaker 1: who is this guy? And another answer is he brought
Speaker 1: the kid all the way from Pittsburgh. Marlene insisted on
Speaker 1: questioning him herself. This little snippet of dialogue again, it
Speaker 1: opened another crack into like Marlene's actions, and that is,
Speaker 1: if you buy in two, Marlene is is does not
Speaker 1: have the clout to stand in the way of this
Speaker 1: the decision to perform the surgery on Ellie. Everybody's gung
Speaker 1: ho for it. There's even if she said no, don't
Speaker 1: do it, that people would just do it anyway. And
Speaker 1: and if she did that, like her life would probably
Speaker 1: be in danger. But the way I read this line
Speaker 1: is that I think she's kind of protecting Joel here,
Speaker 1: Like obviously she's protecting Joel and letting him go, but
Speaker 1: by not letting anybody else talk to him, that seemed
Speaker 1: like she's kind of like hanging her neck out for
Speaker 1: Joel a little bit, like she she kind of like, uh,
Speaker 1: she kind of like hung herself out there to try
Speaker 1: and get Joel out of there safely considering what do
Speaker 1: you do for her.
Speaker 2: It's definitely very interesting because one of our biggest critiques
Speaker 2: was like, why would they like Billy club them? Surely
Speaker 2: they would know they were coming right in the show.
Speaker 2: But it's really funny how in the game there's kind
Speaker 2: of this. It almost feels more like Mollye's like paranoia
Speaker 2: to protect Ellie and Joel and to kind of keep
Speaker 2: their mission a secret is why she doesn't kind of
Speaker 2: let everyone know. I also like think this is really
Speaker 2: good world building because as we know, they're constantly having
Speaker 2: to recruit fireflies because they always die. And I kind
Speaker 2: of like the idea, right, I just kind of like
Speaker 2: the idea that these are just some new guys, so like,
Speaker 2: why the fuck would they know because they're just hanging around,
Speaker 2: like and it's they're not going to be there for
Speaker 2: very long. But yeah, it's definitely very interesting replaying it
Speaker 2: how differently these little moments play when you have this
Speaker 2: much more decompressed amount of time to kind of explore
Speaker 2: and feel the world. I mean that whole that the
Speaker 2: finale of The Last US is it's the shortest episode
Speaker 2: of the season, so it really like.
Speaker 1: And in terms of dialogue, I mean it feels ripped.
Speaker 1: I haven't done a line by line. I'm sure somebody has,
Speaker 1: but it feels essentially ripped from the game. You know
Speaker 1: that the final twenty minutes is basically, you know, almost
Speaker 1: directly for the game. So Joel makes it into the
Speaker 1: surgical theater. First of all, there are fireflies posted outside
Speaker 1: the door. He manages to flank them and he kills him.
Speaker 1: And then when he gets in there, the surgeon says,
Speaker 1: I won't let you take her. At which point in
Speaker 1: the show, Joel just shoots him. Uh, and then he continues,
Speaker 1: this is our future. Think of all the lives we'll save,
Speaker 1: and then Joel shoots him. Now part of why this
Speaker 1: is shocking, and we've said this before, but for me,
Speaker 1: you know, video games are it's about agency, it's about interactivity,
Speaker 1: it's about immersion. You are the character. I am Joel
Speaker 1: when I'm playing this game, and after spending X amount
Speaker 1: of hours depending you know, your mileage may vary depending
Speaker 1: on how hard the game was for you. But after
Speaker 1: spending hours and hours after work, but you know, before
Speaker 1: going to work during a break, you know, stealing minutes
Speaker 1: and hours here and there and here and there, working,
Speaker 1: you know, arduously towards this goal of delivering Ellie to
Speaker 1: this place where we can save the world from this
Speaker 1: virus talks. Suddenly have that choice taken from you and
Speaker 1: you have to pull this guy. That's another part of
Speaker 1: the emotional impact of the game that is slightly different. Again,
Speaker 1: not better or worse, but just it. It's because you
Speaker 1: were taking part in this story and you and at
Speaker 1: least from my perspective, I'm thinking, like like any other
Speaker 1: video game, be it Halo or BioShock or whatever, like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to save the world. Now, we're going to
Speaker 1: do it, yep, And instead I go on a murder spree.
Speaker 1: And that is a It's a really shocking and powerful
Speaker 1: subversion that I think also is strangely one of the
Speaker 1: most It's one of the It depicts violence in a
Speaker 1: way that really asks you to think about what it costs,
Speaker 1: even though obviously this is a video game. These are
Speaker 1: not real people dying. But I've it's rare that I've
Speaker 1: played a game in which you kill people where I've
Speaker 1: felt the deaths as much as you feel them in
Speaker 1: this game, and you really feel it in that moment
Speaker 1: when Joel, you as Joel, shoots this doctor and you
Speaker 1: have no choice but to do it. They're not even
Speaker 1: to spare him or don't spare It's like kill the guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's such a great point, especially because
Speaker 2: it's the lesson that they took from the game and
Speaker 2: put into the show that I love the most. If
Speaker 2: the game made you feel the weight of the deaths,
Speaker 2: which it especially does by the time you get here,
Speaker 2: if you didn't before because you were shooting, I have
Speaker 2: to say when I first played it, I definitely was
Speaker 2: more just like I'm getting through it, I'm playing the game.
Speaker 2: When I started replaying it for the show and for
Speaker 2: the pod, it kind of blew my mind from the
Speaker 2: very beginning how many people you kill and not Federate agents,
Speaker 2: not infected, but at the beginning, for you, the first
Speaker 2: people you kill are just henchies, like random guys that
Speaker 2: you have to shoot in the head. And even in
Speaker 2: that moment and that brutality, I felt that way eight
Speaker 2: And what I love. If there's one thing, I mean,
Speaker 2: I love so much about the show, but the one
Speaker 2: thing I think is so brilliant and so responsible and
Speaker 2: so interesting is how they took that and translated it
Speaker 2: even in these changes that we're talking about, and the
Speaker 2: way that we feel like maybe the weight of Joel's
Speaker 2: choice feels a little less or a little less complex
Speaker 2: in the finale especially, but throughout you feel when he
Speaker 2: kills someone, and in the finale they show you the
Speaker 2: faces of the people that he kills.
Speaker 1: I thought that was a really smart decision to do that,
Speaker 1: to really pay homage to the game. So the way
Speaker 1: the game depicts violence and makes you complicit in the violence,
Speaker 1: like that that last scene where you shoot the doctor,
Speaker 1: that last moment in the surgical theater in the game. Again,
Speaker 1: like all of that is scripted. That could be a cutscene,
Speaker 1: but it's not. It makes you pull the trigger mm hmm,
Speaker 1: without any ability to choose not to put the trigger.
Speaker 1: You have to. You have to kill them. You have
Speaker 1: to aim it at him and shoot them, and you
Speaker 1: can't do anything else.
Speaker 2: And the only way you cannot do it is by
Speaker 2: not playing the game, not finishing the game.
Speaker 1: It's you mentioned Shadows of the Classes. It is like that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that Shadows of the Classes. I think one of the
Speaker 1: brilliant things about that game is you're killing these big, huge,
Speaker 1: peaceful creatures. And because of the way the mechanics of
Speaker 1: that game, where you have to just press the button
Speaker 1: again and again and again and again and again and
Speaker 1: again and again, it's making you really have to kill
Speaker 1: this like you are doing it. It's you you're doing
Speaker 1: You could just like stop doing it, but you won't
Speaker 1: because if you have to kill this thing, why, I
Speaker 1: don't know. They're peaceful and they just start sitting there
Speaker 1: happily playing in a field, and you decide to climb
Speaker 1: up their head and kill them. It's it was like
Speaker 1: that kind of emotional impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it has that twist where it's like you
Speaker 2: think you're the hero and then you discover that you're
Speaker 2: the villain, you know, and then I feel like, as
Speaker 2: I've said, Joel is not less sssorily a villain. But
Speaker 2: in the game you do realize that in that moment
Speaker 2: where you shoot the doctor, you look at what you've
Speaker 2: done and you think, whoa, I have been complicit, I
Speaker 2: am Joel and I have just like gone through and
Speaker 2: gone down a hospital, which is why I think the
Speaker 2: way that they shot the finale and had that kind
Speaker 2: of Joel disassociating was very again I'll say the word responsible,
Speaker 2: because I think in the way that we live now,
Speaker 2: in the reality of gun violence is like, if you're
Speaker 2: going to have a character come out of that feeling
Speaker 2: vaguely heroic, you can't actually make the violence heroic or
Speaker 2: righteous because it's just too analogous to real life. So
Speaker 2: there's like a real interesting balance you have to strike there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean those to me Shadow Cossus, Last
Speaker 2: of Us, those are like those two biggest unexpected twists
Speaker 2: where you think you're going to save the world you
Speaker 2: think you're doing the right thing, but the reality is
Speaker 2: that was never the plan.
Speaker 1: When Marlene in fronts Joel in the parking garage, she
Speaker 1: could shoot him, like in the in the show, you're
Speaker 1: wondering why she doesn't. Here she takes her guns off him.
Speaker 1: She puts them up in the air, almost as if
Speaker 1: just you know, to make that plea to him, think
Speaker 1: about all the people that have died, who will die,
Speaker 1: you can, And she says, you can still do the
Speaker 1: right thing. Here she won't feel anything. And so when
Speaker 1: it cuts to the car and you don't know what
Speaker 1: happened and then you see that he just guns her down,
Speaker 1: it really, it really hits. And then of course that
Speaker 1: end conversation is basically the same as the show. And
Speaker 1: I think when you get to that point and Joel
Speaker 1: lies right to you know, right to Ellie's face, I think,
Speaker 1: first of all, you know, this is a somewhat of
Speaker 1: a function of the fact that like CG phases her
Speaker 1: a lot less expressive than human faces. Right Whereas when
Speaker 1: when Pedro does it, you feel the anguish how much
Speaker 1: he wants to protect her from any from any and
Speaker 1: all threats, and how important that is to him. How
Speaker 1: much he loves her, how much he means to her
Speaker 1: in terms of a lifeline that has like helped drag
Speaker 1: him out of decades of trauma and pain. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot to put on a person. And it's
Speaker 1: almost like his lie to her is a way of
Speaker 1: him kind of realizing that that's a lot to put
Speaker 1: on a person. So I'm going to take that responsibility
Speaker 1: off of He doesn't.
Speaker 2: Want to feel the guilt. I don't watch a.
Speaker 1: Huge Yeah, that's a huge part of it. I don't want,
Speaker 1: you know, like, don't worry about like. Whereas in the
Speaker 1: game it plays more as first of all, you know
Speaker 1: again cg faces. It feels more like he lies stoneface
Speaker 1: directly to her and I and it plays, at least
Speaker 1: to me, more like I did a thing that I'm
Speaker 1: kind I'm ashamed of that I did. That we were
Speaker 1: going to save the world. But because I love you
Speaker 1: so much, I've decided that the rest of the world
Speaker 1: can go fuck itself, and every child born from now
Speaker 1: until the end of time can go fuck itself if
Speaker 1: they get bitten by accordyceps. Just as long as I
Speaker 1: can have you in my life, Like I'm going to
Speaker 1: be that selfish and I'm going to lie to you
Speaker 1: about it because I'm kind of ashamed that I did that.
Speaker 1: But it's worth it and that's a very human response.
Speaker 1: But it's also a much grayer and different response. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think there's this great quote that Sauw pulled from
Speaker 2: a New Yorker article about like adapting The Last of Us,
Speaker 2: where they're talking about how drugman's own daughter was born
Speaker 2: during the original games development and the intensity of his
Speaker 2: emotions as a new father helped shape the Last of Us,
Speaker 2: which became He said, an exploration of that charge question,
Speaker 2: how far will the unconditional love of a parent feels
Speaker 2: for their child go? I just think that's all summed
Speaker 2: up in that final moment. It's like, that's the bleakest,
Speaker 2: the most far reaching question. It's not even but in
Speaker 2: the game especially, it's not even the killings that's been
Speaker 2: done then, it's the continued lie. It's the taking away
Speaker 2: the agency you already weren't given and not and being
Speaker 2: so obsessed with protecting your child that you actually end
Speaker 2: up putting them in greater danger. Because, like you said,
Speaker 2: we all know, like that's not the that's not the
Speaker 2: end of the fireflies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're still They're still around. They are gonna make
Speaker 1: themselves heard. Any final thoughts now on having finished the
Speaker 1: game yet again.
Speaker 2: I still just kind of blows my mind that they
Speaker 2: they went that way with that. I think knowing that
Speaker 2: Drugman's kid was born makes a lot of sense in
Speaker 2: kind of that drive, but to me, it just it
Speaker 2: still blows my mind. It's kind of this extrapolation of
Speaker 2: the Lone Morph and Cub story, but it has much
Speaker 2: less of a hero's journey. It kind of I find
Speaker 2: it really interesting how there's this almost a vengeance plotline
Speaker 2: in the nature of like Joel losing Sarah, but it's
Speaker 2: not specific. In usual vengeance storylines, you will have a
Speaker 2: certain person you need to take down, but Joel's grief
Speaker 2: and his revenge for losing Sarah kind of encompasses the
Speaker 2: whole world and ends with this horrific final betrayal where
Speaker 2: he makes that choice for Ellie and then takes away
Speaker 2: this kind of choice and hope for a cure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I came away feeling that, you know, the game
Speaker 1: again is a masterpiece, still a masterpiece of the genre
Speaker 1: and well worth picking up if you haven't played the
Speaker 1: remastered version. And I think that what makes it so
Speaker 1: great is Truckman and Company managed to find this thing.
Speaker 1: You know, our perceptions, our lives are about our own
Speaker 1: personal perspectives on things, right, and they managed to put
Speaker 1: us so put us so tightly in the one perspective
Speaker 1: in which Joel is kind of a hero, even though
Speaker 1: it's gray, right, he's kind of a hero. Outside of
Speaker 1: that one thin like slice, this little crack through which
Speaker 1: like light shines through. Outside of that, Joel is the
Speaker 1: guy who consigned the world to like you know, endless years,
Speaker 1: if not forever, of the barbarity and sickness and possibly extinction.
Speaker 1: Like he killed everyone. He killed the world, and it's
Speaker 1: tragic and it's heartbreaking for all the people who have
Speaker 1: been trying so hard to find a cure. And that
Speaker 1: is an incredible achievement to put you so tightly into
Speaker 1: the perspective of these two people who love each other
Speaker 1: so dearly that they're willing to just be like fuck
Speaker 1: the world, like we want to stay together.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also think it's like incredibly brave. That's one of
Speaker 2: the things that I think as a storyteller, right, like
Speaker 2: we're used to these stories where to shock someone for
Speaker 2: an ending to be bleak, like especially say like Horror,
Speaker 2: everybody dies, that's your bleak, Like, oh, it's gonna leave.
Speaker 2: But how often do you get put in a story where,
Speaker 2: especially in a game, you are the driving force of
Speaker 2: the game. You believe you have agency, you kill multiple people,
Speaker 2: you use a gaming format that is used every day.
Speaker 2: You shoot people, you aim, you do headshots, you stealth.
Speaker 2: They took these things that we recognize and use for
Speaker 2: fun in other games, and by the end they're like,
Speaker 2: oh no, no, don't you understand, Like people who kill
Speaker 2: five six hundred people casually, they're not heroic. They basically
Speaker 2: turn around to you and say, you thought that that
Speaker 2: was what a hero did. No, that that's not how
Speaker 2: a hero behead And here is the proof because this
Speaker 2: is the choice he made. I think it's very I
Speaker 2: think it's extremely meta, and I think it is kind
Speaker 2: of this still. I think it gets better and ages
Speaker 2: better every year as we kind of deal with the
Speaker 2: realities of gun violence and the way that people use guns,
Speaker 2: especially in America. I just think it's a really brave choice,
Speaker 2: and I live to make a story that shocks people
Speaker 2: that much, but in a way that leaves like leaves
Speaker 2: you with a feeling. It doesn't shock you with an
Speaker 2: exploit of action of violence, even though Joe's very violent.
Speaker 2: It shocks and unsettles you because you're complicit in the violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just think it's very brave.
Speaker 1: The same here up next nerd Out.
Speaker 2: In today's nerd Out, where you tell us what you
Speaker 2: love them why, or a theory you're excited to share,
Speaker 2: which we've had a lot of page pictures us on
Speaker 2: the net flick show Send Sate, which was canceled way
Speaker 2: too soon.
Speaker 5: Hello, My recommendation for this week is a bit more mainstream.
Speaker 5: You may have heard of it, but if you haven't
Speaker 5: or haven't gotten around to watching it yet, I highly
Speaker 5: recommend Netflix's original series sense Eate. After listening to your
Speaker 5: discussion on the necessity of diversity and storytelling this week,
Speaker 5: it was definitely a show that came to mind, has
Speaker 5: got a lot of great representation, but is underappreciated. It's
Speaker 5: a story of eight people in their late twenties with
Speaker 5: the exact same birthday when they are suddenly born as suensates. Fundamentally,
Speaker 5: the birth activates a cerebral connection among eight people across
Speaker 5: the globe and to a cluster, so we get a
Speaker 5: diverse cast of eight main characters. It's got a lot
Speaker 5: of great sci fi storytelling and what's created by the
Speaker 5: Waikowski sisters from the matrix theme, so you know what
Speaker 5: delivers on the sci fi and yeh, the show with
Speaker 5: eight main characters is a lot, but every story is
Speaker 5: very rich. They have their own arcs and voices. We
Speaker 5: have four non white characters, four men for women, one
Speaker 5: being a trans woman played by a trans woman written
Speaker 5: by trans women, so that's great, and also other LGBT characters,
Speaker 5: and they are from seven different countries and the scenes
Speaker 5: are filmed on location, so it's incredibly beautiful. The main
Speaker 5: themes of the show are identity and connection. Has a
Speaker 5: lot of great action scenes and some humor, but the
Speaker 5: best part is seeing how the different sensates connect with
Speaker 5: each other and accept each other. Each one struggles with
Speaker 5: their identity, especially as they awkwardly navigate new abilities such
Speaker 5: as telepathic ish communication or visiting and being able to
Speaker 5: take on skills and languages of the other sensates in
Speaker 5: their cluster. The first season is especially fun as they
Speaker 5: discover themselves and their other selves, and they also discover
Speaker 5: more clusters of sense hs which they can still communicate
Speaker 5: with but don't possess their abilities. We ultimately get an
Speaker 5: evil corporation hunting the sensates as well. The show doesn't
Speaker 5: shy away from topics such as religion, sexuality, sexism, transphobia,
Speaker 5: and homophobia. I think they tackle these with a lot
Speaker 5: of care and sincerity too. But warning, it does have
Speaker 5: a lot of graphic sex and violence. If you don't
Speaker 5: want to see a used dildo in pride colors, this
Speaker 5: isn't for you. Unfortunately, it was canceled after season two.
Speaker 5: Look Netflix cancels another diverse show, so we won't be
Speaker 5: getting any more. But pians. We're so upset about the
Speaker 5: cancelation that they started a petition and we're able to
Speaker 5: get a two hour finale. Finale was a bit rush,
Speaker 5: but at least we got one. Overall, sense it is ambitious, compelling,
Speaker 5: and if nothing else, an incredible journey. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 5: Thanks page.
Speaker 2: If you have theories or passions you want to share,
Speaker 2: hit us up at x ray crooked dot com. Instructions
Speaker 2: as always are in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Well that is it for us, Rosie any plugs.
Speaker 2: You can find me talking about all this cool stuff. Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm starting newsletter that's just gonna be like recommendations
Speaker 2: because I get a lot of requests for recommendations and
Speaker 2: I don't have time as much as I wish I
Speaker 2: did to always respond. So that's called Rosie Recommends. It's
Speaker 2: at Substack. You can subscribe to it now, and letterbox
Speaker 2: and Instagram are my only social media and I'm Rosie
Speaker 2: marks at both.
Speaker 1: Catch the next episode of Extra Vision Friday, March twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: or episode four of The Mandalorian and where we're bringing
Speaker 1: you two episodes a week, two big episodes a week.
Speaker 1: Wherever you get your podcasts Wednesdays and Fridays, it's extra
Speaker 1: Vision two times a week in your gear holes.
Speaker 2: And if you like seeing us with your eye holes
Speaker 2: and watching the odd YouTube, you can subscribe to us there.
Speaker 2: There are full episodes of the show now. Delond does
Speaker 2: a brilliant job putting them together, and you can follow
Speaker 2: us at xrvpod on Twitter. We're always having fun celebrating
Speaker 2: the stuff we love. Plus check out the Discord. We
Speaker 2: love sha Discord because it's a ton of fun, a
Speaker 2: bunch of amazing fans that talking about all kinds of
Speaker 2: cool stuff and Jason and ipop him once in a while.
Speaker 1: Five star ratings, five star reviews. We need them, we
Speaker 1: gotta have them, you gotta give them to us. Here
Speaker 1: is one from Shower with Friends, The dopest podcast, Perfect Chemistry,
Speaker 1: Love the convos, best recaps of the game. Love love,
Speaker 1: love this show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, Thank you with Friends, thank your
Speaker 2: Show with Friends.
Speaker 1: Thank you absolutely. X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by Chris Lord and Sol Rubin.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy's Rhard
Speaker 1: Are editing and sound designers by Vacilla's Photopoulos. Dylon Villanueva
Speaker 1: and Matt de Group provide video production support. Alex Rella
Speaker 1: for handle social media. Thank you Brian Vasquez for the music.
Speaker 1: See you next time. Well, maybe in all that research.
Speaker 5: To turn into just keep starting, we'll find something.
Speaker 4: Hey, Mike, uh yeah, this is up for Marine and I'm
Speaker 4: just over here, you know, trying to find a care
Speaker 4: for the the codies and spiders. And I gotta tell you, Mike, uh,
Speaker 4: I really don't like what they're doing. Uh W with
Speaker 4: regards what we're doing, I'm not gonna try and sugarcoat
Speaker 4: of Mic, I'm doing it too, but with uh, with
Speaker 4: regards to the to the animal testing that we're doing
Speaker 4: over here, Mike, it's really terrible. And I'm gonna and
Speaker 4: I'm gonna tell you something on this voice record of
Speaker 4: Mic that uh, that nobody else knows in that. So
Speaker 4: I'm gonna let the monkeys go, Mike. I'm supposed to.
Speaker 4: I'm supposed to off the monkeys, Mic.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: They are riddled with cordy SEPs and different strains of
Speaker 4: the two Mike. They're fucking dangerous, uh, little beasts. But
Speaker 4: you know what I'm gonna do, Like, i'm'a let 'em out.
Speaker 4: I'm'a let 'em out of the cage. And you wanna
Speaker 4: come out of this old cage, buddy, you can. We
Speaker 4: open up the window. You can get out of here
Speaker 4: a little bit.
Speaker 1: R