The Last of Us II came out two weeks ago and has been at the center of some gaming community controversy over some of the story choices and how it's "ruined the storytelling", but I'm here to tell you that The Last of Us was ALWAYS complete BS, and has never engaged meaningfully with any of the subtext it's going off of. Like a Christopher Nolan movie (I'm just going two for two here), it's more concerned with articulating some tender personal feelings than it is about actually engaging with the questions of its theme and coming to a meaningful conclusion.
Spoilers for The Last of Us I and II below. It's also written for people who know the story, so it's not really worth reading if you're not familiar. You have been warned.
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The choice presented at the end of The Last of Us is that Joel had to let Ellie die to potentially save the world, or fight back and make her live at the expense of others. But we shouldn’t be asking whether he is right to do what HE did, we should be questioning whether it was right to frame it as Joel's choice at all. We shouldn't take issue with HIS choices; we should take issue with the story's.
The narrative takes pains to show that Ellie is someone with survivor’s guilt who wants to make use of her life in a meaningful way. And when you look at what we see of her life, we understand that; and as someone who is NOT Ellie we feel protective of her and don’t want to see her hurt. But as PEOPLE who have played as her and seen her experiences, I think we can all understand what type of choice she’d have made if she’d had the chance. And as a person she had a right to make that choice. But the problem is the story never gives her a CHANCE to even THINK about making that choice! Her options are taken away from her. And so the story becomes more about manly validation of our fatherly feelings than it becomes about treating your daughter surrogate like a person. It is a false scenario we are given, where she gets cut out completely, and that isn’t OK, say, from a story standpoint.
This is arguably part of what makes the ending stick so powerfully. I remember when The Last of Us came out and all of us were arguing about it. We were stunned by the choices made and the implications that it gave. We’re frustrated by how immoral they are from a certain perspective. But aside from that instinctive reaction, I think we could make the argument that the story destroyed Ellie’s agency in that moment just to make an ending that made you feel sad or fatherly or whatever. If we had gotten to play as Ellie at the end - I think we would all agree - the ending would have had her choosing to sacrifice herself. But we didn't get that! We got Joel's story, not hers! And perhaps that's fair - he's bigger on the poster, he's kind of bigger in the narrative, it's not crazy to have him take priority. But the reality we're facing is that any story continuing past the ending of the The Last of Us exposes just how awful Joel's actions were. And this is what makes The Last of Us II good. Because it so clearly showed how out-of-nowhere and unjust this was from any - other - perspective.
There are MAJOR issues with The Last of Us II - like its predecessor, it takes cues from True Grit and other acclaimed movies. But it fails to make any meaningful examination of its subject matter. This is why I say they're like Christopher Nolan films (excluding the Dark Knight trilogy and Dunkirk). They're not really interested in the implications of the premise - they're interested in exploring the FEELINGS.
"What if we took The Matrix and made it ... fancier?"
Contrast Inception with The Matrix; both about realities that aren’t always real and about learning to distinguish which is which. But Matrix had a serious philosophical question directing the story, while Inception was more about how sad Leonardo DiCaprio is. That's why The Matrix redefined the social and philosophical landscape and Inception just led to us using the word "inception" incorrectly, although at least we're using it.
If you want a good version of The Last of Us, just watch True Grit, which explores every question of The Last of Us while not being a total bummer. Or Taxi Driver, which is about negativity making you stupid but is actually self-aware about how stupid it is. Or King of Comedy, which does the same but even funnier. Or Logan, which has the same depressing tone as TLoU but at least knows which side the hero should come out on. Or any other film, really. But when it comes down to it, The Last of Us was always about a morally wrong person making a morally wrong choice, and now the sequel is about him paying for it, so don't act surprised that he ended up unhappy. He earned that crap. And in the end, you gotta ask yourself which was really more worthwhile - hurting others to advance yourself, or letting people make their own choices.
--I was only able to scratch the surface in this article; but this feels like a good place to stop. I could make a whole other article about the feelings of parenting we're discussing, or the precise way The Last of Us II failed to nail its message right, but that's about all I'll do for now.
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