One Character Death In The Last Of Us Had To Be Changed Because Ripping People In Half Is Really Difficult
This post contains spoilers for "The Last of Us" episode 5.
There should be a visual effects version of the phrase "my eyes were bigger than my stomach." As a filmmaker adapting a story as ambitious and vast as "The Last of Us," I can imagine Craig Mazin had to make some tough choices when it came to what to include on screen and what to leave out, and there's always going to be an element or two that just doesn't work out on screen. In the case of "The Last of Us" episode five, Mazin told the show's official companion podcast that one vision he had for a major death didn't end up working out the way he initially planned — although I think it still looks cool as hell in the final version.
According to Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the creator of the games and the series co-creator, the behemoth infected that we saw at the end of episode five was originally supposed to be even more violent. He's plenty scary in the episode, rising from the wreckage of an explosion and ripping the head of Kansas City second-in-command Perry (Jeffrey Pierce, who played Tommy in the video game) clean off. The bloater is scary big and unstoppable by design, and in his mind's eye, Mazin apparently originally planned for him to rip Perry in half. "That was something where I was overly ambitious," he told host Troy Baker (also a voice actor from the game) in the latest episode of the podcast.
The decapitation route is apparently much more realistic
On the official "The Last of Us" podcast, Mazin explained:
"So, I had this thing where I wanted the bloater to pick Perry up and rip him in half, like at the waist, you know? And Neil was like, 'Well, okay, I mean, is that going to be realistic?' And I'm like, 'I think so.'"
It sounds like Druckmann was on the right track here, as when the special effects team working on the scene began to explore the idea of making this vision a reality, they came up against some basic biological limitations. "And then the more Wētā tried to do it, the more you realize, like, people don't rip along the waist," Mazin said. Wētā FX is the famed New Zealand special effects company that worked on the "Avatar" movies, "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and the latest "Planet of the Apes" films. If Wētā can't make it look real, I'd wager a guess that no one can.
"It's just really hard to do," Mazin conceded. "It got close. It came close. But ultimately, Neil prevailed and was correct in suggesting that something that felt more grounded anatomically would be more effective." I'll save you the trouble of landing yourself on a watchlist by Googling this one for you: when it comes to tearing a person apart, be it via animal attack or torture method, many historical examples indicate that ripping a piece of a human being off is way more realistic than snapping them in half like a glowstick. Gross, I know.
'It's great and it's terrifying'
Druckmann said that mock-ups of the more ambitiously gory version of Perry's death scene were created, even if they didn't make the final cut. "There's a really cool animation of it though," he said. "For that, it's super realistic." When it comes to hewing closely to the game, the decapitation is actually more accurate: in "The Last of Us," when you play as Joel and don't manage to beat the bloater, he actually grabs the character by the mouth and pulls him apart by his jaw. We even start to see Joel's eye bulge under the pressure of the monster's grip.
In the end, it sounds like Mazin and Druckmann made their peace with the way the death scene turned out, choosing the move that the monster is best known for. "Then, of course, we were like, 'Well, the bloater has this head rip that is iconic, and it's great, and it's terrifying.'" Mazin says. We may not get to see Perry's jaw yanked off in close-up like we would in the game, but HBO's version of the bloater is still an undeniable triumph of practical and visual effects.