'The Last of Us' and the Deceptively Long Sequel

 

Just like everybody else on the planet with an HBO Max account, I’m absolutely captivated by HBO’s The Last of Us, a stirring TV adaptation of Naughty Dog’s exceptional 2013 video game of the same name. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are scary good as series stars Joel and Ellie, while the mushroom-headed Clickers, Bloaters and other infected creatures populating the show’s post-apocalyptic ruins are just plain scary. They’re fungi, but they’re not fun guys.

Yikes. If you’re booing, I earned it. I’ll see myself out after the next few paragraphs.

Because I’m desperate to be an authority on where the series is going as friends and family gush about the series, I completed the first Last of Us game a few weeks ago. It took me about 12 hours, and although I’m not a huge fan of stealth games – the very reason why it has taken me so long to complete a single playthrough of the first game – I’m glad I took the time and thoroughly enjoyed the story. Of course, I couldn’t stop there, so I immediately downloaded The Last of Us Part 2. I’d heard how heart-wrenchingly heavy the 2020 sequel is, and it didn’t sound like something that would be an absolute blast from a narrative perspective, but I breezed through the first game fairly quickly and was confident I would do the same for the follow-up. I wouldn’t be depressed for too long, would I?

I WOULD.

I’d reached the apparent climax to the story at about 12 hours. Stealing an hour or two a night, this had taken me about two weeks. I cried, I winced, I screamed out loud a few times and I was excited to wrap things up. But the story didn’t end there. In fact, the game took me back in time, to replay the previous three days’ events from the perspective of the antagonist.

I was only halfway done.

Damn it all.

There might have been a time in my life when I would have been stoked to have so much game left to play. I recall many late nights with games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – worlds and universes I wanted to explore for hours on end. Yet, with a little less than 12 hours of gameplay remaining, I found myself frustrated. How dare Naughty Dog painstakingly craft an intricate long-form narrative dissecting the perils of revenge! Don’t they respect my time?! I’ve got stuff to do.

After completing my playthrough just an hour prior to this writing, I couldn’t help but shake that weird feeling that I liked the story – loved it, even – but I wished it happened in about half the time. Perhaps this was me coming to grips that I’ve aged out of the core demographic for video games in general, and they’re not necessarily designed for dudes in their late 30s whose solitary downtime is limited. Or perhaps a pandemic-ravaged dystopia isn’t exactly somewhere I love escaping to when I’m relaxing. Check the price of eggs lately. We’re basically living in it.

Regardless, I put down my controller fully satisfied with the story that was told and look forward to seeing what’s next, both in games and on HBO Max. To Naughty Dog, thank you. You’ve crafted an incredible and LENGTHY story that’s becoming an all-time great HBO series as I type. But to all game developers, I beg you: Make your games shorter. Exhausted Elder Millennials everywhere will thank you.

It’s not you. It’s us.

No, I Didn’t Buy the $30 Ant-Man Popcorn Helmet

While strolling into my local AMC Theatre bright and early on a Saturday morning (10:30 a.m.) to take in an IMAX screening of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, I turned my eyes to the concession stand for something even remotely appropriate for the relatively early hour. Sadly, they were all sold out of breakfast nachos and bacon, egg and cheese dogs (my favorite), so I went with a large popcorn and a Diet Coke. After all, butter goes on toast just fine and corn is the base for just about every cereal known to man, so I was able to justify the chronologically questionable dietary decision. And Diet Coke is the third cousin of coffee (once removed), so I think we can all give me a pass on that one.

But there was something else that gave me pause at the snack counter as the theater employee slowly blinked at the 39-year-old man in a Baby Groot T-shirt: no less than seven Ant-Man helmets staring out at the lobby from a dimly lit display.

Ant-Man helmets with light-up features.

Ant-Man helmets that open from the top to hold popcorn.

ANT-MAN HELMETS THAT LET YOU EAT SNACKS OUT OF PAUL RUDD’S HEAD.

The price? $29.99. The value? Infinite.

I’ve bought a lot of popcorn buckets in my time. Yes, that’s a sentence I typed in earnest. I have a Ghostbusters: Afterlife bucket shaped like the rusted Ecto-1 from the film. I have a tin Star Wars: The Force Awakens BB-8 bucket, which has taken up residence in our laundry room as a dryer lint repository. So, yeah, I’m kind of a bucket head. No big deal. But THIS? This was perhaps the finest licensed popcorn bucket I had ever seen. The image above simply doesn’t do it justice.

So it is with great pain that I inform you that I did not purchase AMC’s Ant-Man helmet popcorn bucket. Perhaps it was the $30 price tag that ultimately dissuaded me. Maybe it was the realization that I have to somehow make ROOM in my collection for things like this. At the time, though, my public response was far more practical as I slid away from the counter with my absolutely insane first meal of the day. “Aw, man,” I said with a sigh. “Maybe if you could actually wear it … “

Yep. That’s what clinched it for me, at least in the eyes of AMC Theatres. 

Anyway, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a really fun movie that I liked but did not love. Jonathan Majors is a phenomenal Kang who I look forward to seeing much more of in the future, and Rudd and the rest of the cast brought a charming “let’s just go with it” vibe to what is, at times, a very silly movie that hints at higher stakes later in Phase 5. If you liked Peyton Reed’s prior Ant-Man flicks, you’ll probably like this one, which steers very close to the tried-and-true Marvel formula – especially in the third act. There’s not a ton of meat on the bone from a narrative perspective, but it’s a fun time at the movies that gets weird with it. And that’s fine by me.

To reiterate, I liked Quantumania. Perhaps I would have loved it if I bought that Ant-Man popcorn bucket, but I guess I’ll never know in this reality. But somewhere out there in the infinite Multiverse exists a James Wortman proudly displaying that bucket on his shelf (but not on his head). If you meet that guy before I do, ask him what he thinks.