Alex Garland, the writer behind 28 Days Later, has revealed during a chat Naughty Dog‘s Neil Druckmann in a video posted on Sony’s YouTube channel that he feels The Last of Us’ writing was better than his movie.
Garland revealed during the chat that The Last of Us was one of the influences behind the story for the upcoming 28 Years Later, which is the third film in the franchise. The writer also said that the original script for the movie involved weaponising the Rage Virus against China, although Danny Boyle wasn’t keen on the idea. Druckmann later chimed in that he was inspired by 28 Days Later when working on The Last of Us.
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I was thinking, why doesn’t he like it? And I thought, oh, because it’s just not that good. That’s the reason, I see the problem. And so, then I thought I should be much stranger with this, much odder, so I came up with a completely different story which, in trust, has a Last of Us connection. And this is one of the odd things, is the degree to which we ever exist independently of narratives that precede us, and The Last of Us had such an impact on me [that] I’m not surprised.
“I find it such a compliment that you say you’re inspired at all from The Last of Us, and somehow that carried through, because I was so inspired by your work,” said Druckmann, prompting the following response from Garland:
Let me say this. The Last of Us is better than 28 Days. The Last of Us is better than 28 Days. Or at least the writing is – I’m not going to talk about the directing, that would be a silly thing, so not that.
I know what 28 Days is, I know what I did, I know what that process was. The thing about The Last of Us was I was like, ‘oh, this is so much more sophisticated and moving’. It was moving. I’m not dissing 28 Days, I’m very proud of it, it’s a nice part of my life, but seriously, The Last of Us is another level so yeah, of course I was influenced by it. I was like, ‘shit’.
[Source – Creator To Creator via VGC]