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“I see The Last of Us as a big story, like a Shakespearean play,” says composer Gustavo Santaolalla. “I think The Last of Us is a fantastic story.”
Based on the 2013 video game of the same name, The Last of Us takes place after a global pandemic has destroyed civilization. Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened survivor, is tasked with escorting 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the country in one last attempt to save humanity from a deadly fungus.
The incredible story of survival and the relationship between Joel and Ellie first drew Santaolalla to composing for the game, which was the first video game he agreed to compose. “I’ve never been a player, I suck at playing games,” he admits, “but I have a son, who at the time was in his mid-teen years… and I always enjoyed watching him play.”
Composing for a video game was a special “point of departure” for Santaolalla’s career, as companies had been approaching him with work after he received his second Oscar. “Sure enough, Neil [Druckmann] comes into the picture,” he says. “So, when Neil told me the story, and also he made clear that part of the intention of the game was to connect with the gamer, [I thought] ‘This is it’… I wrote the music for a story, not for a video game.
When Druckmann approached him about composing for the series, Santaolalla was excited to revisit the story. “I never felt that this was a remake of the video game, and that’s also why we kept the themes,” he says. For the first season of The Last of Us, Santaolalla says that he didn’t need to “force himself” to create new themes. “I tried to stick to the score with melodies that somehow play around with or evoke themes that we already know,” he says. “I can see now, in a second season, that expanding because I feel that now we need to.”
Click the video above to watch the full interview.
