‘The Last Of Us’ Is The Best Live-Action Video Game Adaptation Ever (At Least According To Its Rotten Tomatoes Score)

The Last of Us More like The First on… Rotten Tomatoes

OK, so that wasn’t great, but apparently the HBO adaptation of one of the most acclaimed video games of all-time is. The Last of Us currently has a sparkling 97 percent “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics calling it “a gripping and ambitious work that seems fated to become the premium cable network’s next Twitter-trending hit” (Vulture) and “not just a love letter to the original video game — it may just be an improvement upon it” (Inverse). Assuming that sky-high (or should I say, giraffe-high) 97 percent rating doesn’t plummet, The Last of Us will have the “highest ever score for a live-action video game adaptation” on Rotten Tomatoes.

That includes both TV shows, like The Witcher (81 percent) and Halo (70 percent), and movies, a list that’s topped by the Sam Richardson-starring Werewolves Within (86 percent). If you include animated TV shows, The Last of Us only slips to third, behind Arcane: League of Legends (100 percent) and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (100 percent).

In case you’re wondering: the lowest-rated video game show on Rotten Tomatoes 1993’s Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, which is honestly very rude to Jaleel White. And the worst video game movie Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark, starring Christian Slater and Tara Reid. If The Last of Us had been made in the mid-2000s, Joel and Ellie would have somehow been played by those two. We dodged a real bullet there.

The Last of Us premieres this Sunday on HBO.