The Last of Us vs Children of Men
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- čas přidán 4. 12. 2019
- Kat looks at the similarities and differences between Children of Men and The Last of Us, and what they both have to say about what it means to be human. Video contains spoilers for both.
All footage capped by me
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Transcript: bit.ly/pixeladay_postapocalyp... - Hry
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This is a solid video. I’m glad we got tagged in the same thread so I could be introduced to your channel, can’t wait to see what else you come up with
Thanks so much! Now that I've been (re) introduced to your channel I'll be giving the rest of your vids a watch!
Sometimes it hurts to see such underrated videos and channel, but keep going! With your talent, scripting and editing, it's almost impossible not to go big. Wish you the best!
Fighting to save Ellie didn't make Joel a monster. It's made abundantly clear that he's already a monster when we join him in the game's primary timeline. There are very tense moments where he alludes to having been on both sides of hunter ambushes and having done really terrible things between the times of Sarah's death and meeting Ellie. He's doing the same things for new reasons.
What a great analysis, way high brow for what I am used to on CZcams. It would make a great article for something like the The Journal of Popular Culture, particularly expanded to include post-apocalyptic narratives in gaming and literature like Fallout, The Road, A Boy and His Dog etc.
Lots of high brow stuff on CZcams if you look for it! 😊
Your videos are amazing! Exactly the in depth analyses I love to hear within the video game realm. Thank you.
Oooh this is a great first video! Everything was clearly and concisely explained, the visuals were simple but good for demonstrating your point, and the subject was interesting despite me having neither watched or played either piece of media in question! :D
Also that skit completely suprised me at the end too, partially cos for a couple seconds I was like 'is this a sponsorship? Already?' and then moments later was like 'oooooooh' and was rather amused. Great work, well done! Now time for me to watch the rest of your vids. ^w^
Thanks, that's super lovely to hear! 😁
Excellent work!
I remember when my friend was playing "The Last of Us" and he told me he didn't care for Ellie. Not because he didn't like her as a character, but because he thought he had figured out the story and knew that she was going to die in the end so he didn't want to connect with her. At that point I had already beaten the game so I knew how the game was going to end and I didn't tell him. We never got around to talk about it again, so I don't know if he ever finished it, but as a father myself I sympathise deeply with Joel. If I lost my daughter to a senseless murder and got a chance to connect to my paternal feelings again, I would not hesitate to become Joel and make sure my child was safe. Even if that meant taking away her agency. I would have lost once and I would not want to go through that experience once again.
I finished played TLOU 1&2,before watched children of men. When i was watching Children of Men,i can predict every plot and scenes,when the final boat scene came,that's soo relatable in my memory, than i realized it's TLOU 2 title screen. It seems i was subconsciously connecting both stories. Great video. Both is great story,the game and movie.
I absolutely loved this video.
Wow, what a phenomenal essay. Thank you.
Really enjoyed this analysis!
Thank you, glad you liked it! 😊
got here from Errant Signal's video. i must say, this is excellent and necessary. i hope players become more aware of how games tell stories and this is the kind of content that would make that possible
also your voice is soothing
Aw that's so nice to hear. Hope you stick around on the channel :)
It’s crazy that I’ve seen only one video on here that shows that car scene from the second game and the car action scene from the movie
I think Joel made the unethical choice. And I absolutely would have done the same thing.
Also, you are a treasure and why is this Apocalypse Savior Dads ad so unironically appealing to me.
Haha, let's not think too hard about that one
Great video :)
Thank you!
I think it's hard to know what is right or wrong in Joels decision. I personally don't know if I could've let someone I've come to love and be very attached to to just die in hopes of a greater good. I can fully understand both arguments, but it's no easy decision.
Love the skit at the end! Lmao great stuff
MrHammers thank you! 😊
I cannot believe I never put Children of Men and TLOU together. I feel ashamed. It's so obvious lol.
Add Logan to the list.
The ending was hillarious 😂😂
3:33 yeah they got that more from true grit
For me I'm under no illusion that Joel is unequivocally good, but as someone who for a variety of reasons greatly values the few connections he does have(estranged from my family and also having moved around a ton as a kid, as in by the time I was 13 I'd lived in as many houses if not more), I can very much relate to and understand why Joel did what he did.
Here's Joel, 20 years into an apocalypse after having lost Sarah and estranged from Tommy, and he finally makes a genuine, human connection to someone else in Ellie, and not just a genuine connection, but a father-daughter bond to in a sense replace what he lost in Sarah. After 20 years of having no hope in life, simply living day-to-day, how can you not want to do everything you possibly can to maintain that, especially in a world that's clearly a lost cause?
And yet at the same time, from a rational perspective, it's still hard to justify Joel killing those doctors and saving(or abducting) Ellie from the surgery. If there is a non-0% chance of finding a cure by performing said fatal surgery on Ellie, it's worth it even if it doesn't workout. But if you're Joel, how can someone possibly blame him for not wanting to take that chance? Especially since you can find voice recordings around the final area where the doctor/surgeon isn't even sure that he can create a vaccine/cure by going through with this.
Again, I'm not trying to say that Joel is necessarily good or bad, but then I don't think that's what TLOU wanted us to takeaway from it anyway. Humans are complex creatures, and there are very few truly black or white, good or bad decisions you make in life. Joel is simply another person experiencing that alongside the player.
Great analysis! In addition to the parallels you mentioned, I think The Last of Us and Children of Men are very similar visually, especially the car scene in COM and the bandit attack scene in TLOU.
About Joel’s decision, I strongly disagree with what he did. I see a lot of people trying to justify what he did, but at the end of the day, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Of course he loves Ellie and doesn’t want her to die, but what makes her life worth more than all the people whose lives would have been saved by the vaccine? In that situation, personal feelings need to be put aside. On the other hand, I can understand why Joel, with everything he went through, would want to protect Ellie no matter what. If he had not saved Ellie, he likely would never have recovered emotionally. So I don’t agree with his decision, but I understand it.
I also know that similarity but I can’t find any video on here comparing the bandit scene with children of men and the the game and movie visually in general. It really sucks
Theo his Joseph in this film but he has flip flops on his feet and he does run in action, he lose one of his flip flops, he cut his feet, it’s a action man in barefoot, exceptionnel actor.
Thank you for the video! It's always easy to label something as a rip off without any thorough examination. Great job clearing things up!
I agree, that the movie and the game are very different but have quite a different point of view on the movie.
Children of men isn't about Theo and his journey. His storyline is quite straightforward and lacks depth a bit, because it's just an instrument to suck us, viewers, into the movie, he's just our point of view in the story, our emotional connection to it. But he's not the subject of it. IMO main point of the movie is that birth is a miracle. And it's not a biblical or mythical story. It's a very modern story. It shows us that thing, we're used to and regard as something trivial and often don't value, is indeed a miracle. I don't mean a miracle in a religious way.
I especially like the scene, in which we're shown a group of professional soldiers - strong, confident, tough, armed to the teeth men in the middle of a fierce fight. Characters like these are usually heroes of movies and games. They win and nothing can defeat o frighten them. Their lives are nothing but ordinary, full of adventures and great deeds, and we - viewers or players - usually want to have some of their experience, as a contrast to our boring day to day lives. And then these people see the baby. They're petrified, afraid to move or even breathe, they can't take their eyes of him. They behold the miracle.
The conclusion of it is that any human being is a miracle. It leads to many other conclusions. If I'm a miracle, what should I do with my life? If I know, that any person around me is a miracle, how can I be mean to them? Despise them? Lie to them? How is it possible, that one man is taking life of other man?
I think, very very little amount of people, who played The Last of Us, are going to find themselves in a situation, in which they would have to chose between sacrificing their child's life or murdering a bunch of people. On the other hand, the choice to have or not to have a baby (or adopt one) is the one, almost every one of us are going to face. The choice to treat people around us like trash or to value them as miracles is made every day by every person. To support the war or to stand up against it. This way, Children of Men is telling a much more grounded to reality story, than The Last of Us.
I have played The Last of Us twice, and watched 35+ playthroughs of it. I know a LOT about the behind the scene stories of the game, easter eggs, secrets, collectible locations, etc. Hell, I damn near know every line of dialogue in the game.
Despite all of this, every time I reach the ending, I have a myriad of conflicting thoughts and feelings about the ending. I constantly flip-flop between MANY interpretations and feelings. It is crazy how good the game is.
PS: If you haven't seen it, here is a keynote where Neil Druckmann talks about the origins of the game and then gives his interpretation of the ending. czcams.com/video/RjwuPeqZt0s/video.html
**the ending happens**
**me** AGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!! hehe GeT OUT OF MY HEAAAAAADDDDDDD!!! :D
❤
❤️
Tlou is just inspired by children of men
Excellent video! Looking forward to more videos from you :)
Personally I found Joel being the bad guy at the end of my first playthrough of The Last of Us. I thought that he made the wrong decision and risked the only savior of humanity because he was selfish. I only looked through the lens of game's objective, which was to use Ellie as a mean to make a vaccine to cure the humanity from the infected virus. But after my second playthrough I realized that that the objective had changed from Joel's perspective. He had developed feelings towards Ellie and started to love and protect her like a father. Losing Sarah at the start of the game and being granted with an opportunity to be like a father to Ellie changed my view on Joel. I no longer thought he was the bad guy at the end of game because I understood why Joel did what he did. Sure Joel killed a lot of people, but once I recognized Joel's motives, he became like a grey character to me instead of being just a bad guy. Joel did what he had to do to make what he thought was the right thing to do.
Thanks for the kind words! I'm working on my next vid now, stay tuned!
I never really noticed the similarities between this game and Children of Men. I’ve always seen The Road more as an inspiration, which is a far better film than CoM. Good video all the same. I like how you brought up the concept of ‘empathy’, which is a word I often get tired of being thrown around from sanctimonious people.
There's a third alternative to see Joel out of the duo criminal/loving-dad-making-crimes. I really like the way you're explaining stuff, your take on the comparison between the film and the game is overall great and I really liked this video, but I still feel there's some anti-Joel bias on the side of The Last of Us, and that we have to replace his actions into context.
You can see him as a criminal or an overprotecting flawed dad, the game remains open to those interpretations. Yet, one should also take into account that he is completely disrespected, not shown any empathy after he has risked is life a thousand times to allow the cure to be made, sentenced to death the moment when he tries to negociate (look again the discussion between him and Marlene, after he awakes), and ultimately cornered by the Fireflies into an impossible dilemma: trust their ability to make the cure, which he has absolutely 0 reason of doing (and this is argumented in the game), or try to save his daughter. All that without being given a single delay of reflection, the Fireflies beat him down, and right after he awakes, tell him "let us kill our daughter in a shady process you have 0 way of verifying, or die".
One can easily underline that the following scene is terrible, but we shouldn't overlook how the Fireflies are acting in that sequence to put all the responsability on Joel's shoulders. In fact, I would argue that regardless of whether they are justified in deciding to engineer the vaccine at the cost of Ellie's life in the first place (which is by no means immediate, btw, the number of people that could be saved by the vaccine doesn't automatically justify it), Marlene and Jerry are the main culprits for what happens in Salt Lake City. There's absolutely no need of labeling Joel as a monster or an unhealthy father to understand his actions.
I would also say that a similar argument can be made on his actions against the cannibals, and that it's not true that he's doing all that light-hearted and in cold blood, the ending of Last of Us 1 and Last of Us 2 makes this abundantly clear.
Again, all that is not to say that the interpretations given in the vid are plain wrong, I just wanted to underline quickly that the ending of Last of Us 1 can be interpreted in a different way.
Great video. I used to get pissed when people called Joel a villain. I don't know, maybe I'm a bit sociopathic and lacking empathy but I really enjoyed killing those doctors at the end. To explain myself a bit, I was never convinced that those people knew what they were doing when it comes to finding a cure. If I remember correctly, there was never a certainty in the story that they can find out anything of importance. They just knew they had to kill Ellie to do their research. I felt all the time that they are grasping for straws and that this is totally not how making a cure works (maybe it's just for the sake of story that it was so unrealistic). As someone who has scientific education and who empathized (yeah, I can feel some) with Joel at that point, it was a bit cathartic to burn those surgeons with a flamethrower. Just sharing. Love your videos. :)
Glad to hear you’re enjoying the vids!