An Uncharted Movie Never Should Have Happened

An Uncharted movie never should have seen the light of day. Based on the PlayStation video game series of the same title, director Ruben Fleischer’s Uncharted film stars Tom Holland as its lead character, Nathan Drake. Other live-action portrayals of the games’ figures include Mark Wahlberg as Nate’s partner-in-crime Victor “Sully” Sullivan and Sophia Ali as fellow fortune seeker Chloe Frazer. The Uncharted movie also introduced new villains with Antonio Banderas’ Santiago Moncada and Tati Gabrielle’s Jo Braddock. The film’s plot centers around Nate as a young treasure hunter, who converges with Sully and Chloe on a mission to recover Ferdinand Magellan’s lost fortune in Barcelona. As it currently holds a 40% critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 45 on Metacritic, an Uncharted movie was always a bad idea.

Sony Pictures announced it was producing an Uncharted movie in 2008. The first theatrical live-action adaptation of the PlayStation franchise represents an origin story for Nate’s treasure-hunting adventures in the games, yet it presents a narrative that differs from the games’ established canon. Despite its unimpressive reception, Uncharted scored the biggest theatrical debut of 2022 thus far, as its domestic profits surpassed $100 million in its opening weekend.

Although video game movies rarely succeed in translating their source material from console to film, Uncharted was especially doomed to fail due to its games’ established excellence that already roots itself in cinematically narrative-based gameplay. Uncharted‘s style was easily adaptable to film, yet a live-action movie with a different cast was never going to be anywhere near as remarkable as its original form on PlayStation. Uncharted already achieved cinematic excellence within the games themselves, which also have the added advantage of fun, interactive gameplay over the movies, making the Uncharted movie a drastic step back from the franchise’s original media form.

Uncharted’s Movie Adds Nothing To The Games

A live-action Uncharted movie simply doesn’t add anything to the franchise. Fleischer’s film captures the picturesque landscapes so prevalent in the games. However, Uncharted on PlayStation still boasts some of the best graphics and art design to date. Gorgeous enough on their own, Uncharted‘s video games never needed a live-action adaptation to reach a higher visual standard. As a result, the film’s replication of scenes from the Uncharted games, such as the plane crash sequence from 2011’s Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception in which Nate climbs falling cargo while fighting enemies, doesn’t come off nearly as impressive as the game’s original sequence. Cinematically, Uncharted 3 crafted this scene flawlessly and it’s much more thrilling to play the games’ thrilling action set pieces rather than to passively watch them. From a narrative standpoint, Uncharted‘s movie brings a different take on Nate and Sully’s origin. Uncharted 3 depicted the pair’s initial meeting while Nate was an orphaned teenager, though, in the film, he’s in his mid-20s when Sully approaches him to work together. Deviating from the games’ canon really isn’t necessary and even a different Uncharted story could never match the PlayStation series’ compelling narrative through its four main titles.

Uncharted’s Cast Was Already Perfect (& The Movie Can’t Compete)

While voice-acting in video games can be lackluster at times, the Uncharted series’ cast was exceptional from start to finish. Tom Holland gave a heartfelt performance as Nathan Drake in the film, but he doesn’t live up to Nolan North’s voicing of the franchise’s main character in the games. On the other hand, Mark Wahlberg’s casting largely missed the mark, as he bears almost no physical resemblance to Sully and failed to capture the video game character’s tender wit and sarcasm. Meanwhile, the additions of Antonio Banderas’ and Tati Gabrielle’s new characters don’t suffer from comparison to video game counterparts, which makes Moncada and Braddock easier to appreciate. Uncharted‘s main voice actors, including North as Nate, Richard McGonagle as Sully, Emily Rose as Elena Fisher, and Claudia Black as Chloe, were brilliant and brought each character to life in a way that not even Hollywood’s best live-action performers could replicate.

The Uncharted movie’s depiction of Nate at a younger than in the games presented the opportunity for Holland to invent his own version of the character, but it’s one that strays too far from what gamers are accustomed to. The film’s actors cannot compete with Uncharted‘s iconic voices, which was expected. However, this leaves an unremarkable impression on those who played the games. Reinvention doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but there’s no reason to want a different version of every main character from the games that isn’t nearly as polished in the film.

Uncharted Would’ve Been Better With Another Video Game, Not A Movie

The experience of playing an Uncharted video game likens to that of an interactive movie. At the same time, the series’ gameplay encompassing combat, platforming, and puzzle-solving still lies at the core of Uncharted‘s identity as a video game. Accordingly, watching Uncharted’s movie feels like a watered-down version of the games. Sony’s ambition to expand the scope of Uncharted should have remained within the realm of video games. Instead of a movie, the studio would have succeeded better with this by making another game, and, thus, replicating what makes the series so great. While it’s true that a movie constitutes a different medium by which to explore Uncharted‘s rich world of fortune-seeking thrills, that doesn’t make it better or preferable to a game. People loved these games for a reason and fans would certainly rejoice over additions to the franchise even after 2016’s concluding title, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.

In fact, Sony already successfully produced a spinoff in 2017 with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. The standalone extension of Uncharted 4 focused on the treasure-hunting partnership between Chloe and Nadine Ross — as the former was absent from the main series’ final entry and the latter was a newly introduced antagonist. Even without Nathan Drake, The Lost Legacy brought back all of the main games’ impressive elements and served as a fascinating exploration of secondary characters’ backstories and personalities. This is something that Sony and the games’ developer Naughty Dog should look to continue in the future instead of creating an Uncharted movie franchise, as Sony CEO Tom Rothman alluded to recently. Deviating from the games’ canon story in a movie holds little purpose for those who played the games and another PlayStation entry in the games’ canon timeline would have gone much further in satisfying Uncharted fans.

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