On The Last of Us, Costumes for the End of the World

The Final of Us, HBO’s hit sequence primarily based on the best-selling online game franchise, appears to have discovered a candy spot within the cultural zeitgeist: the sci-fi horror drama that facilities round a world pandemic feels each startlingly acquainted and otherworldly suddenly. 

One of many issues contributing to the success of the present is its appear and feel—its manufacturing design and environments, however the costumes, too, courtesy of designer Cynthia Summers. The present focuses on the connection between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they traverse a depressing post-pandemic panorama; the costumes span from the preliminary 2003 outbreak to the current day, which means the present’s “breakdown division,” accountable for getting old and distressing garments, was onerous at work. (Much less onerous: working with Pedro Pascal, whom Summers remembers hand-delivered quick meals for the crew throughout an organization transfer.)

Summers spoke about utilizing the online game as inspiration, how she made model new clothes appear to be it survived an apocalypse, and extra. 

The supply materials for The Final of Us is a online game. What’s it wish to costume for an adaptation of a online game versus a guide or a film? What makes that distinctive? 

Cynthia Summers: Adapting from a online game will be actually difficult. And I believe that the overall consensus is it is hazardous to do it as a result of avid gamers are so invested within the recreation. They change into characters within the recreation—they are surely dwelling the sport, in some sense of the phrase. So taking their favourite characters from an animated world and bringing them to actual life is difficult. 

It is like constructing a marriage gown for somebody, you recognize? It is so private. You actually need to honor visually what’s occurring within the recreation with the characters, with the units, with the dialogue, with the storyline. That being mentioned, whenever you take characters that, their function is survival—that really interprets very well right into a human story, a really human story.

Once I first was approached about it, I used to be like, “Effectively, okay, it is one other online game adaptation. It is denims and t-shirts. It is 2003, Austin, Texas.” So fashion-wise: suburban, working class individuals. So I do not know what’s in it for me. How a lot of the sport are we doing, precisely? Is there any room for growth? It is not interval, it is not futuristic, it is not fantasy.

However [it’s] the primary time I’ve seen up to date clothes, up to date costumes be so importantly part of a really human, stunning, horrible, and cinema-graphically shot present. 

Plenty of instances in dystopian or apocalyptic reveals, the costuming is type of fantastical—like __Blade Runner __or Mad Max. However with** The Final of Us**, I believe the costuming actually drives dwelling the realism of those characters—that this isn’t an alternate universe.** 

Completely. And that was a degree pushed dwelling by [showrunner] Craig [Mazin]: that he wished the characters to look actual and relatable and accessible. And that makes the scary a part of the present scarier. 

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