Somebody finally made an Uncharted movie… 10 years too late! While I can appreciate this film, as some kind of adventure film based on characters from a video game, as a gamer who has played the Uncharted games, I left the theater in disgust. Quite frankly, the filmmakers behind the movie didn’t come close to capturing the magic in the storytelling of the Uncharted games. When we go see a movie, we’re supposed to have at least a little suspension of disbelief, but for gamers, it’s hard when you watch a movie based on a fantastic story that you got to play. That’s why at That Nerd Show, we have the saying, “the best stories are the ones you play.” I’ll get right to it, if you played the games, you’ll probably hate the movie. If you’ve never played the games, you might find the movie fun, but it doesn’t live up to some of the best adventure movies ever made like for example, pretty any Indiana Jones movie. So, my review comes from two different places, a gamer who looks at the Uncharted game as some of the best games ever made, and just a simple movie fan who never played the games, but likes action/ adventure movies on the big screen. I’ll give you two grades and we’ll meet in the middle about how good this movie really is. I think that’s fair!
There are a lot of things to like about this movie, I’m not going to completely tear it apart. It is a gorgeous movie to watch on the big screen and the story has a lot of great references to the games. Somebody on the writing staff at least knew the basic lore of the Uncharted series and that’s seen in the relationship between Nathan Drake and his brother, Sam as well as Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan. There’s a lot of scenes that Gamers will recognize from the games. Everybody saw in the trailer, Nathan Drake crawling back into a plane by jumping onto cargo boxes. This is a nice nod to the game Uncharted 3. This movie feels like it’s a cross between oceans 11 and Indiana Jones, especially the Last crusade where we get an early adventure that will set the tone for Nathan Drake as we see with Indy getting his famous hat and using a whip at the beginning of the Last Crusade. Once the audience knows the treasure they’re looking for, the story is off to the races, and it has a great pace to it for an adventure story. The movie looks good, especially as they are crawling around in the catacombs of an ancient city that kind of makes you feel like you’re on a “DaVinci Code” quest. The movie doesn’t really linger or slow down to the point that you’re going to get bored. The movie does keep you on the edge of your seat as the characters keep figuring out the clues to find the treasure and that does make the movie enjoyable. Beyond a Spiderman film, Tom Holland definitely shows off his action skills and for the most part, he’s believable. Uncharted does feel like hey B-rated Indiana Jones movie, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, I will say that this movie was completely miscast especially with the two leads and we’ll get to more into that in a moment, but the one thing when it comes to casting, I feel they got right was the character, Chloe Frazier. Sophia Ali was great in the role. And Antonio Banderas was pretty good as the bad guy, but that’s the only compliment I give when it comes to casting. As a pure adventure film without knowing anything about the Uncharted games, I could easily give this movie a 6, I would probably never watch it again, but it’s fun.
Now, let’s get to the crux of why this is really a bad film. The stories in the Uncharted games are fantastic, just as good as any Indiana Jones movie or dare I say, maybe even better. From the overall plots to a strong narrative and well-developed characters, most movies don’t compare and perhaps it’s because it’s hard to make these stories into a two-hour movie. Maybe it would take a 6 to 8 episode series to tell it right. That’s what HBO is doing with The Last of Us series based on the award-winning game. But there’s no denying how great the stories are especially in the first three Uncharted games. The movie borrows elements from the first Uncharted game and the third Uncharted game, especially with the origin story of how Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan meet. The problem is, the games had a better narrative whereas the movie in comparison feels like they just threw that out the door and decided to make a Michael Bay film where substance doesn’t matter as long as there’s plenty of action! I think the worst part about the Uncharted movie is completely miscasting Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg as Nathan Drake in Victor Sullivan. First Tom Holland is too young to play that role. By the time we meet Nathan Drake, he’s in his mid 30’s, a seasoned treasure hunter and very much reminds you of the first time we meet Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. If they had made a movie with lots of flashback scenes so we could see the first time Drake and Sully actually meet, then I would buy these two actors in the roles. But it just doesn’t work and Mark Wahlberg, who at one time was attached to play Nathan Drake is now playing a character that’s supposed to be in his 60s with gray hair and a mustache and chomps on cigars like he’s Hannibal from the A-Team. Honestly, Mark Wahlberg would have been the better Nathan Drake in this movie. And I’m not saying anything about Tom Holland as an actor, he has done some great movies and I love him as Peter Parker, but you need an actor in their late 30s to play Nathan Drake. In fact, Chris Pratt probably would have been a better choice or Liam Hemsworth.
If you have the wrong cast, then the rest of the movie doesn’t work. The other bad part about this movie is instead of sticking to one of the stories from the Uncharted games, it’s like they put four or five different movies together with some elements from the video games. It’s kind of an interesting, but at the end of the day, it’s just about, finding lost gold and doesn’t really compare to the strong narrative of the Uncharted games. If the Uncharted movie had been made 10 years ago or even 5 years ago then they could have found the right cast and actually made the first video game, Drake’s Fortune. Of course, when we get to the credit scene, it’s very much setting up that story, unfortunately, it’s hard to get excited for it because you’re still dealing with Tom Holland who’s too young to play Nathan Drake. It may be fun, but this film is simply not a food Uncharted movie. If you’ve played the game, then it’s not hard to get a feel for the chemistry between Nolan North who voiced Nathan Drake and Richard McGonagle who voiced Victor Sullivan. Too bad we couldn’t really get them to portray these characters. As I said before the casting of Chloe Frazier was spot on. One of the things that really makes this movie kind of terrible is everything we’ve seen in the movie, we’ve seen before in other adventure movies, whether it’s Indiana Jones, National Treasure, The DaVinci Code or any other movie based on a Dan Brown novel, or even Sahara with Matthew McConaughey. Sometimes during the movie, it felt like I was watching a sequel to the other Matthew McConaughey movie, Fool’s Gold.
Maybe this film really isn’t supposed to be based on any Uncharted game, but just a prequel of sorts to show the origin of Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan, and how this story leads into the story of the first game. Sure, I can see that. But beyond all the references to the video games, overall look that has some similarity to the games, and at least one good casting choice, the film just simply doesn’t measure up. It’s not even a good adventure film made for the big screen compared to what we’ve seen before in the likes of the National Treasure films or Indiana Jones movies. The film’s biggest tragedy is not even the terrible casting or the convoluted plot, it’s the fact that this movie should have been made 10 years ago and we should be on our second sequel with a cast that perfectly reflects the characters from the game. How sad is it when a Nathan Fillion produced fan film with him as Nathan Drake and Stephen Lang as Victor Sullivan is a better version of an Uncharted game than the 100 million dollars produced Sony film. What could have been a good movie with great casting is a little bit too late at this point. I want to like the film, but I can’t get past the miscasting of Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, and honestly, I’m not looking forward to any more Uncharted movies, just the fifth Uncharted video game. For those who have never played the games, it can be a fun adventure movie that looks great on the big screen. There’s enough to like in film that you wouldn’t be throwing your money away if you saw a matinee. But if you’re a gamer who played all of the games and more than once, this is not the Uncharted film for you. In fact, the best thing Gamers can do is just start over and play the games again… They have the better story anyway.
In 10 years, we’ll still be playing these fantastic games because they have great replay value and this movie will be largely forgotten, but I will say this to any studio that’s trying to make a big-budget film off a video game, it starts with the right cast because if you get that wrong, it doesn’t matter what you do afterward. You’re just making a shitty movie! And the miscasting of Tom Holland is Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Victor Sullivan was the first in a long line of mistakes that Sony made with this film. However, let’s really be honest, they really screwed up 10 years ago when they couldn’t get an Uncharted film made with Nathan Fillion playing Nathan Drake. As a gamer, I give this movie a very generous 3 so I guess we’ll meet in the middle and make it a 4.5 while rounding up to a five. If you want a better story, just play the games, we’ve rated all of them at least an 8 and 9. If Disney can de-age Mark Hamill to look like a young Luke Skywalker in the Mandalorian and the Book of Boba Fett, I wonder if Sony can use the same technology to make Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg look the right age for their characters! Oh well, it’s time for me to start the first Uncharted game over again, I know I’ll have more fun with that, than watching this movie, again.
