ICED OUT

How to identify the American Robin

The winter storm from Jan. 30 to Feb. 3 may have frozen the streets, but it couldn’t freeze campus beauty. Sun glittered through the snow sprinkled trees, thin layers of icy glass coated the reflection pools and puffs of wind gently tickled the Magnolia leaves. The school might have been iced out, but the winter spirit prevailed.

AKHIL SHASHI | MERCURY STAFF

‘Dead Space’ could fill the cinema void of cosmic horror

The recent Dead Space remake has brought waves of nostalgia for many and asks the question: why isn’t there a “Dead Space” movie in the works?

Fans welcomed the video game remake that’s helping revamp the genre of deep space horror. The claustrophobic and inescapable nightmare of being trapped on a ship with an alien on board has been thrilling since its conception — it is the peak of horror. Trapped on a shuttle in the nothingness of space, nowhere is safe, and “Dead Space” (2008) masters that feeling of hopelessness and claustrophobia. Since then, many games have attempted to replicate the series; however, it has been five years since a major “Deep Space” horror film hit theaters. A live action rendition of “Dead Space” would make for the perfect deep horror content by immersing fans in the series’ classic adrenaline rush nightmare. To this day, “Deep Space” is one of the highest rated games in the survival horror genre and still considered by many as one of the best video games ever. After critical acclaim, “Deep Space” received comic book adaptations and a successful animated movie to expand the universe on a multimedia platform. This means there is a perfect place for a live action adaptation and more than enough interest from gamers and horror fans alike. Right now, on Twitch alone, 6 million hours of “Deep Space” content has been watched since launch on Jan. 27, peaking with 262 thousand views at one. In the remake’s first three days, it has surpassed juggernauts like Fortnite, Overwatch 2 and DOTA 2 in views alone.

The antagonists of “Dead Space” are enough to instill fear, borrowing from what made the Xenomorph of “Aliens” popular and providing an undead aspect that “Resident Evil” wishes it could reproduce. Seeing your first Necromorph

SEE SPACE, PAGE 10

GRAPHICS BY: RAINIER PEDERSON | MERCURY STAFF

HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ enchants fans new and old alike

The long-awaited TV adaptation of popular video game franchise “The Last of Us” establishes a retelling as beautiful and meaningful as the original

JACK SIERPUTOWSKI Mercury Staff

Gamers tend to have negative opinions when it comes to TV adaptations of their favorite video games, believing that their beloved characters cannot be recreated faithfully. But these fears are entirely squashed by the masterpiece that HBO has put together for “The Last of Us.” With five episodes out so far, “The Last of Us” strikes a perfect balance between replicating and reinventing the original material. It also recreates the incredible graphics of the game — breathtaking visuals of nature reclaiming cities joust with grotesque, infected humans. Most importantly, this adaptation delivers on the human element that made the game so powerful.

Like the video game, HBO’s “The Last of Us” can create realistic and dimensional characters with little screen time to work with. We see that Joel, Tess and Ellie have all suffered tremendously in this apocalyptic world, and the emotional effects are clear. Ellie is vulgar and aggressively pragmatic, Tess is jaded and remorseless and Joel is cold and stuck in his years of grief.

Despite their tough exteriors, there is a beautiful layer of vulnerability in each of the actors’ portrayals of these survivors. Hints of caring natures and dreams of a brighter future come through for each of the three, especially when it comes to the surrogate parent-child dynamic that forms between Joel and Ellie. They bring the humanity out in each other, and their reluctant journey to find a sense of kinship is as awkward and painful as it is beautiful.

While characters like Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Tess (Anna Torv) seem hardened and cold, their humanity comes through in the vulnerability they attempt to hide. SEE