UHD Review A Few Words About A few words about...™ - The Last of Us -- in 4k UHD (1 Viewer)

[dpippel]

Can rabies victims survive multiple gunshots to the center of their mass and only be killed by a direct headshot? Because we see that multiple times in this show.

I think that’s probably due to the nature of the fungal infection. It appears to take over the entire body, replacing human flesh with its own substance. Normal vulnerabilities don’t seem to apply, but it makes sense that since Cordyceps is using the host’s brain to control it, a headshot would take the Infected down.

 

[Robert Harris]

Must have been interesting discussions at the time that the earliest novels were written, devising the rules and regulations of each creature. No reflection. Hates food with garlic. Silver bullets, etc.

 

[jayembee]

Similar to the way the rabies virus spreads, by the bite of an infected animal or human, yet we don’t refer to rabies victims as “zombies” even though the illness can cause drastic changes in the victim’s behavior. It’s a transmissible disease with severe symptoms that eventually results in death, as does the Cordyceps fungus in TLOU.

The difference is that rabies-infected humans are still human. I don't just mean physiologically. They still have active brains, know who they are, etc., even as they're acting violently. If they bite someone else, it's because that's just another "weapon" in their aggression. The rabies virus isn't making them bite people in order to spread.

It doesn't seem to me that the cordyceps-infected people act anything remotely like humans, and their only "drive" seems to be biting other people in order to spread.

 

[dpippel]

The rabies virus isn't making them bite people in order to spread.

They bite other people BECAUSE they’re infected with the rabies virus, which is what’s causing their aggression, so it amounts to almost the same thing IMO.

 

[sbjork]

My position is that what are considered "zombies" today (infected by a virus) are completely different from what zombies were traditionally (corpses reanimated by voodoo). Given that the range of what is considered a zombie has expanded already, there's no reason why it can't be expanded again. That it's caused by a fungus in this instance instead of a virus doesn't make no nevermind.

Having heard the whole virus/zombie argument many, many times over the years, that's the part that strikes me as especially silly about the whole thing. The post-George A. Romero "zombies" are actually flesh-eating ghouls, and he even called them that in Night of the Living Dead. He never had zombies in mind. But things tend to take on a life (no pun intended) of their own, so they are what they are these days regardless of what he may have had in mind. In genre terms, it's the characteristics, tropes, and shared narratives that matter, and all of these are variants on what we consider zombie stories these days.

I just rewatched Gary A. Sherman's wonderful Dead and Buried recently, and the striking thing about that is that he was swimming against the tide in 1981 by having his zombies really be more like traditional voodoo zombies instead of ghouls. Although the funny thing with that is that even our conception of voodoo zombies is in purely in cinematic terms, since they're still astray from what they really were in traditional voodoo lore. Just like how what we consider to be a vampire is driven by what we've learned from the cinema and not by how the traditions really defined them.

Lucio Fulci sort of split the difference between Romero and voodoo with Zombie, but even in that case, they're still modern Romero ghouls in practical terms. As were the infected in the 28 Days films. It's also worth pointing out that regardless of what the source is, zombieism is transmitted through the blood via bites, so even Romero zombies are treated like they're infected. So the whole argument is pretty silly. The Last of Us does fall under the zombie umbrella in terms of archetypes regardless of lore, and it's a better version of The Walking Dead than The Walking Dead ever was.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Wow! Some of you guys will argue about anything.

 

[Robert Harris]

Wow! Some of you guys will argue about anything.

I find it to be an interesting discussion of character traits. We are attuned to recognize certain character types behaving / reacting in specific ways. And then something doesn’t quite fit into the pattern.

 

[Tino]

Let’s just call them INFECTIES and call it a day!

 

[billO']

FTR, I refer to them as "Fungie-Zombies."

And I won't be watching the second season of Last Of Us. After enduring a gazillion seasons of The Walking Dead, TLOU struck me as TWD 2.0 (not to mention the gazillion silly spin-offs that AMC is foisting upon us, too).

A much better zombie series is the Canadian production Black Summer that Netflix airs. Episodes are only a half hour and they avoid most of the interpersonal character BS stories that fill time.

 

[sbjork]

FTR, I refer to them as "Fungie-Zombies."

Well, that makes perfect sense since Infected and Zombies appear to both be fungible...

 

[Tino]

and they avoid most of the interpersonal character BS stories that fill time.

Lol. Some of us enjoy those “interpersonal character BS stories”. It’s what separates TLOU from the countless mindless “zombie” drivel out there..like the later seasons of TWD.