The two shows today speak of our future as dystopian fantasies. In one, there’s a video game behind the series, while the second can proudly claim it’s directed by the one who gifted us with Train to Busan.
The Last Of Us (HBO Go) - Adapting popular video games into a film or TV series treatment is by now a long held custom that producers resort to, believing that the ones who popularized the game will readily watch the transition. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen so many of these attempts end in abject failure - Uncharted, anyone? The latest to take this route is the decade old Play Station game The Last of Us. But what differentiated TLOU was the attention to narrative and how the storytelling was part of the game’s charisma. To have one of the creators of the game as one of the co-writers of this series on HBO Go was a great idea, as you know he’d move Heaven and Hell to ensure that the game’s equity and strong points would be kept intact in the series.
Pedro Pascal takes on the role of Joel, grizzled survivor of a devastated USA, while Bella Ramsey is Ellie, the precious cargo that Joel has to safely transport across the USA, as she holds the key to the potential survival of the human race. It’s the usual civilization as we know it breakdown; and from the first episode alone, we’re charmed by how different the approach to this series will be. The emphasis is on execution and telling a story that hasn’t been told before by the game, and that works extremely well. Opening scenes give texture to Joel, what happened to his daughter, and how he ends up the character we know from the game. This all brings something new to the table, and am just hoping this emphasis on characters and how they interact will be sustained.
Jung_e (Netflix) - Director Yeon Sang-ho should be a household name for Filipino audiences who are into Korean films and content. Equally adept across several genres, he is best known for a little film entitled Train to Busan. With that film he expertly juggled an established genre, the horror zombie film, with emotional connection and resonance. This resulted, at the time, in groundbreaking success for a film coming from South Korea. And with this Netflix release, Yeon takes on the science-fiction genre, with an expansive film that uses a dystopian future as its premise, and how in order to survive Earth’s devastation, outposts in space were established and colonies of humans were sent to thrive in more hospitable environments.
As can be expected with human nature, three outposts banded together and declared war on the other colonies and Earth. At the outset of the war, it was mercenary female warrior Yun Jung-yi (Kim Hyun-joo) who was seen as a veritable savior, but on one mission, she fell into a coma, and the failure of that mission has led to a protracted 40-year war. Daughter Yun Seo-hyun (Kang Soo-yeon, who passed away in 2022, and this is her last film) is now tasked with creating an AI android to lead a new war initiative, and takes the DNA of her mother to ‘fuel’ the android. Kronoid is the research group tasked to create this Jung_e, and when plans are afoot to abandon the project, daughter Yun takes the matter into her own hands. It’s the human connection which once again, raises the level of this film, and kudos to Director Yeon for this imperfect, but effective, gem of a film.