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When attempting to determine the influences behind the legendary 2013 online game The Final of Us, which has not too long ago been efficiently tailored for the small display screen by HBO, one may be tempted to direct their consideration to different zombie media, just like the Evening of the Dwelling Useless and The Strolling Useless franchises. Nonetheless, in a 2013 interview with GamesBeat, the sport’s artistic administrators, Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann (the latter of whom additionally co-created the HBO sequence), revealed that the sport’s predominant influences got here from the literary world. Particularly, the creators cited Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 novel The Highway, which facilities on an unnamed father and son as they trek throughout a bleak post-apocalyptic panorama following an unspecified cataclysm, as one of many sport’s major inspirations.

However Final of Us followers who aren’t large novel readers needn’t fear, because the novel was tailored into a movie in 2009, starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee because the destitute and determined father-son pair. The panorama via which the daddy and son enterprise is so desolate, miserable, and monochromatically grey that it makes the world of The Final of Us seem like The Shire. Nonetheless, viewers (or players) who discovered the parent-child relationship on the middle of The Final of Us touching and delightful will likely be equally moved by the one featured in The Highway.

Fatherhood After the Apocalypse in ‘The Highway’

The Highway‘s affect on The Final of Us is most blatant of their comparable premises. Each tales middle on a person accompanying a toddler as they trek throughout a post-apocalyptic America. Though The Final of Us‘s central pair, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), are usually not biologically associated (in contrast to The Highway‘s protagonists), they however find yourself turning into a sort of surrogate father-daughter pair all through their journey. Moreover, each Joel and the Man are haunted by traumatic losses from the start of their respective cataclysms a number of years earlier — Joel misplaced his daughter (Nico Parker) and the Man misplaced his spouse (Charlize Theron). These tragedies depart each males with little else to reside for apart from their younger companions, imbuing each tales with a tenderness and heat that offsets the bleakness of their settings.

Nonetheless, whereas each tales middle on a father(-figure) and a toddler’s journey throughout america, the locations and targets of those two journeys are very totally different. In The Final of Us, Ellie’s distinctive immunity to the Cordyceps fungus makes her a possible supply for a treatment. Joel’s job is to take her to a hospital the place a militant group often called the Fireflies will function on Ellie to extract the treatment and presumably save what’s left of the human race.

In The Highway, alternatively, there is no such thing as a such hope of rebuilding society — too many individuals have both been killed or have turned irreversibly to predatory scavenging and cannibalism. As an alternative, the Man and the Boy are simply attempting to outlive for so long as attainable. In principle, the Man and Boy’s remaining vacation spot is a seaside someplace “south” (the movie and novel by no means specify what state the pair is in at any given level) which may have a higher abundance of meals and different sources. Nevertheless it turns into clear that even this may be little greater than a pipe dream. In different phrases, whereas Joel and Ellie’s journey is a way to an finish, the continuation of the Man and Boy’s journey is an finish in and of itself.

‘The Final of Us’ and ‘The Highway’ Are Bleak Coming-of-Age Tales

The Final of Us and The Highway are simply as a lot concerning the younger characters as their fathers. In reality, it might not be inaccurate to explain them each as coming-of-age tales at coronary heart. Ellie and the Boy are each too younger to have lived on the earth because it was earlier than the cataclysms, and have been raised to see the world via a jaded and hostile lens. However, as their journey progresses, they each discover themselves questioning the distrustful and individualistic mentality of their fathers, who deal with everybody they meet as a possible menace.

Certainly, each The Final of Us and The Highway characteristic scenes the place the youngsters see folks in want and plead with their fathers to assist them, solely to be disregarded and advised to fret solely about themselves. As well as, each tales embrace prolonged sequences the place their youngster protagonists are briefly compelled to fend for themselves, with out their fathers’ safety. Throughout their durations of undesirable self-reliance, Ellie and the Boy encounter strangers who promise to supply them with meals, medication, and safety ought to the youngsters select to be taken beneath their wing, which each adolescents in the end settle for.

With out spoiling both story, one of many youths is bountifully rewarded for selecting to belief the strangers, whereas the opposite one narrowly avoids getting killed and is left psychologically scarred, presumably for all times, on account of their belief. However, in each circumstances, Ellie and the Boy study an essential lesson — that deciding whether or not to belief a stranger is in the end a leap of religion they can not be 100% certain will repay for the higher.

‘The Highway’ Paved the Manner for ‘The Final of Us’

And ‘The Highway’ Is Obtainable to Stream for Free

General, The Highway is a must-see for Final of Us followers. It created many narrative parts that may assist make the sport and sequence so impactful, whereas additionally standing out as a strong story of affection and survival in post-apocalyptic America in its personal proper. Whereas it is undeniably bleak and exhausting to observe at instances, it additionally supplies a number of glimmers of hope that possibly all is just not misplaced for the few remaining good guys on the earth. Because the Man repeatedly tells the Boy all through the movie, “We’re carrying the hearth.”

The Highway is obtainable to stream on Tubi, Pluto TV, Peacock, and Plex.