'The Last of Us Part II' Does Not Solve its Violence Problem (Spoilers)

SPOILERS inevitably are coming. I recommend you not read AT ALL if you do not want to be spoiled.

Violence is increasingly a problem that video games have to deal with. As graphics become more realistic, gamer writers feel their stories must also adhere closer to a realism. The most classic video game idea is a competition between you, the player, and the computer. Whoever survives wins. Now that was no real problem as long the bodies competing were small abstract pixel forms blipping out of existence. Even as technology could produce 3D graphics and recognizably human bodies, it was no real issue. Those weren't people, they were cartoon blobs in a humanoid shape. However, now that video game humans look very convincing, their bodies can be destroyed in disturbingly realistic ways. This issue has reached the point that game devs have reported real psychological trauma while working hard to design all this carnage.

Naughty Dog, the developers of the new video game, The Last of Us Part II, are of course, aware of this contradiction. They have been on the cutting edge of "cinematic" gaming since the PlayStation 3, and have done as much as any studio to craft realistic violence. Even as early as Uncharted 2, our hero, Nathan Drake, was confronted by the final bad guy. This hulking brute of ruthless Russian muscle, Lazarevic could mock Drake (and implicitly the player) by asking "How many men have you killed? How many just today?". This is a good point that the hero was no better than the villain. Naughty Dog kept moving in this direction, making games full of the contraction between hero and monster. Uncharted 4 is very much a game taking Nathan Drake to task for everything he's done. The Last of Us 1 ends on an infamous and brilliant finale where everything you've done through the story may have in fact doomed humanity.

So when The Last of Us Part II is an especially gruesome experience, that's not a massive surprise for this franchise or this developer. They are too self-aware to miss the violence problem. They do not want to be the 2012 reboot of Tomb Raider (which was an Uncharted game in all but name anyway). That game saw the character Lara Croft, transformed from just a gamer pin-up girl to an believable young woman. Then she went from a grounded start as an everywoman to basically the motherfucking Terminator by the end. She murders thousands of people, and the game never notices. It's hilarious. The Last of Us Part II wants to use that contradiction between your apparent heroic goals and the actual results as the apex of its story.

The result though is... let's just say not for me. I don't think The Last of Us II has the solution to the violence problem.

Top 10 May 2020 First Watches

My movie theme for May was Sports Movies. Like last month when I did musicals, I wanted to focus on an aspect of social life that the plague mostly has taken away from us. In an alternate reality, with perhaps a functioning government, I would have seen the New York Yankees play the Mariners this month. Instead, nobody saw the Yankees or the Mariners. We are all poorer for it. But, I think this will be my last wistful theme. I'm getting a bit depressed mourning normal life one entertainment at a time.

Anyway, as genres go, Sports Films have never exactly been a favorite of mine. The stress and excitement of a real sporting event is much more dramatic than a fictionalized version. No screenwriter can replicate the sheer joy I had when the Broncos defense held Tom Brady twice at the goal line in the 2016 AFC Championship. I've never felt worse in my life than back in 2004 when the Yankees blew a 3-0 lead in a playoff series against the Red Sox. I was twelve years old and until then, did not actually know what sadness was. A movie needs a structure, it needs arcs, it needs meaning. Real sports are random statistical noise upon which we add the arcs and meaning. That's what creates the excitement. You can't manufacture that.

So ultimately if you're going to make a great sports movie, it cannot actually be about the sport. I know in the real world there is a selection of people who demand athletes only play ball and then shut up. You can usually find those guys calling in to ESPN radio to complain about Odell Beckham Jr. and they all sound like your racist uncle. But it is really the stories behind the ball-playing that make for good drama. The balls don't matter, the cultural weight we give to the balls matter. Winning and losing is interesting, but not exactly proof of any justice or your worthiness as a person. Robert Kraft owns the Patriots and is a billionaire. He wins every day, and he's a piece of fucking shit.

Interesting humanity does not come from winning or losing. Heroes lose, monsters win and that doesn't make for good fiction. I don't care about the home runs or the triple doubles as an abstract feat of strength. I care about the story behind the home runs and triple doubles. So never shut up and play ball.