Having begun life in 2008, just a year after the first Uncharted game was released, this long-awaited and long-delayed adaptation of the highly acclaimed video game had a lot to live up to — not only because of the quality of the source material but also because of the amount of time that had passed. Having gone through six different directors, and just as many scripts in a 12-year span, the film was stuck in development hell. It was in development for so long that Mark Wahlberg went from being cast in the leading role of Nathan Drake to the role of the older mentor character of Victor Sullivan, or Sully, in its current incarnation.
In early 2020, Ruben Fleischer, the director of Zombieland and Venom, stepped into the director’s chair. The film was put into production before anyone else had the chance to drop out. By the time it hit theaters, the main four-game series and three spin-offs had all been developed and released, all of which garnered mass critical and fan acclaim.
Was the exceptionally long wait for the Uncharted film worth it? Absolutely not.
The film follows Nathan Drake (Tom Holland), a thief and incredibly intelligent history buff, working as a bartender in New York City. He’s quickly offered the chance to steal Ferdinand Magellan’s lost gold reserves by Victor Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), a friend of Drake’s long-lost brother. A globe-trotting race against time, the menacing Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) and his forces ensue.
As a fan of the game series and a fan of film, I was highly disappointed by Uncharted, even with extremely low expectations. The film has many issues, the biggest of which is the casting of its two leads: Holland and Wahlberg. It’s not that they’re bad in the film. They’re doing the best with the awful script they’re given, but they both feel extremely miscast.
Nathan Drake, as portrayed by Nolan North in the games, is supposed to be a gruff and cocky adventurer, much like Indiana Jones. Holland just doesn’t scratch that itch. He’s looks too young and clean-cut for this part, regardless of his actual age being accurate to the source. It comes off as Peter Parker doing a Nathan Drake impression, rather than an actual representation of the character. This isn’t entirely Holland’s fault, as he is capable of giving a great performance, but it doesn’t make his miscasting any less noticeable or distracting.
Wahlberg would’ve been a solid choice for the character a decade ago, but that time has long since passed. Shoehorning him into the fan-favorite role of Sully as a consolation prize for aging out of the lead character spot is a terrible choice, to say the least. The character is supposed to be an older (late 50s to early 60s) mentor to Drake, being mostly loyal to him as a close friend and father figure, with gray hair and a thick mustache. Needless to say, Wahlberg is none of those things throughout the film’s runtime.
Again, it isn’t their fault they were cast, but the script they signed onto should’ve clued them in that this wasn’t going to be anything special. To the casual watcher, this is nothing but a run-of-the-mill adventure film with underwhelming action scenes. To fans of the games, it’s an extremely frustrating watch, due to the script’s massive misunderstanding of what makes these characters and Uncharted as a whole special. The biggest strengths of the series are its characters, their relationships and placing the player in interactive and cinematic action setpieces. Without that, the games would just be generic rip-offs of Indiana Jones and other adventure films. The film, obviously, doesn’t have those characters, their relationships or the ability to make itself interactive.
The action setpieces, which the games are most known for, are either completely underwhelming or go way too far over the top. The airplane sequence featured heavily in trailers is paced and shot terribly. It’s not exciting or fun. It also doesn’t help that the effects look noticeably bad throughout. This issue of bad effects is especially prevalent in the climactic battle between two helicopter-carried battleships. It’s ridiculously over-the-top and doesn’t mesh with the rest of the film or even the game series it's supposed to be based upon.
This film is an Uncharted adaptation in name only, as the film has none of the qualities of the source material. It probably would’ve been advantageous if the film was called literally anything else and didn’t exploit the use of the Uncharted name. It doesn’t even use the game’s iconic theme outside of a single baffling use toward the end of the film.
Nathan Drake isn’t Nathan Drake. Sully isn’t Sully. The action isn’t fun. So what’s left? A completely generic, but watchable, film.
It’s also remarkably bloodless, even for a PG-13 rated film, which, regardless of rating, is a strange complaint to have about an action film. The games feature lots of shooting and killing, and while people die in the film, Nathan Drake never actively takes part in that. He throws punches and people die around him, but he never causes their deaths. Compare this to the game, where Drake totes guns and rocket launchers, leaving hundreds of dead bad guys in his wake. Maybe the writers thought it would be a bridge too far for the audience to accept their hero to killing people without ever questioning his actions, but this is also a film where flying pirate ships dual while dodging mountains, so who’s to say?
I just don’t know who this is for. The audience in my densely packed theater didn’t laugh at any of the jokes, had no reaction to any of the action scenes and then left in complete silence as soon as the credits rolled. Afterward, no one outside the theater was even discussing it, which is pretty unusual for a major release. It’s also not for fans, for all the reasons described above and its complete lack of successful fan service. So if a general audience didn’t like it and fans won’t like it, who’s left to please?
Do I regret seeing Uncharted? No. It’s perfectly watchable, but it commits a sin worse than any terrible film could ever dream of: It’s completely forgettable. I’ll forget everything about this film within a week, which probably isn’t what the studio wanted because the ending is clearly trying to position Uncharted as an ongoing movie franchise. So, if you’re looking for a film that you won’t remember as soon as the credits roll but will (probably) entertain you for its slightly-below two-hour runtime, this is your film. Otherwise, don’t bother.
Uncharted is everything I feared it would be since it was announced when I was in elementary school, a completely generic, forgettable and unexceptional film. There’s just nothing fun about it. It’s a by-the-numbers and boring example of Hollywood clinging to an idea for far too long. Video game movies and TV shows are having a renaissance right now, with Sonic the Hedgehog film and Arcane leading the train, but Uncharted is the caboose.
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