No!
[SCREAMING]
[WINCING]
This is the plane sequence in 2020's Uncharted movie,
and this is that same sequence in the 2011 video game.
[SCREAMING]
Taken out of context, these two scenes
might look almost identical, but the movie's version
of this scene and indeed the whole story
is missing one very important feature of the franchise.
It's such a glaring omission that though it bears its name,
we can't call the 2022 release a true Uncharted movie.
Oh, well, well, well, if it isn't the late, great,
and formerly employed Nate.
Well, least you got the great part right.
Uncharted's life started in 2007 when Sony and Naughty
Dog released the first game.
Almost immediately, fans were calling for a movie adaptation,
and as early as 2008, those calls were being answered.
Originally Spider-Man producer Avi Arad
was meant to develop this theoretical Uncharted movie,
but this version would never see the light of day.
Neither would the version wherein Mark Wahlberg was
supposed to play Nathan Drake.
What?
No.
And Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci would
have starred alongside him as Nate's father and uncle
respectively.
But in 2020, four full years after the game franchise
had already been wonderfully wrapped up,
the Uncharted movie officially went into production.
Taking some liberties from the third and fourth games,
the movie focused on a younger Nathan Drake,
played by Tom Holland, on his first big adventure
with Mark Wahlberg.
Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway
were tasked with writing the script,
and Venom's Ruben Fleischer was brought on to direct.
Finally, in February of 2022, the Uncharted movie
was released.
After over a decade of waiting, fans packed into the theaters
for a worldwide box office total of $400 million.
Yet the overwhelming critical response was meh.
Instead of being swept up in the thrill of the adventure
as they were in the video games, most people
walked out of the theater feeling bored and apathetic.
The video game series is full of swashbuckling adventures,
ancient treasures, and beautifully
choreographed action set pieces that
seem tailor made for the big screen,
and the movie did deliver on all of this, at least
on the surface.
2022's Uncharted was certainly intent
on jamming visually cool action down our throats,
but it all felt sterile, textureless,
and wholly uninteresting.
This is because the movie ignored the most important part
of the game series it was adapting, its characters.
Narratively-driven games with deep characters
tend to do better as TV shows as we've seen recently with HBO'S
The Last of Us series.
So making Uncharted into a movie actually hobbled it right out
of the gate.
The game series story and characters
are what really set it apart from other similar titles.
Nathan Drake is more than just a generic hero
you could find on the cover of one of those magazines that
inspired Indiana Jones.
He's an orphan who grew up on adventure stories
and the promise of riches told to him by his older brother.
In the later games, he is a caring husband and father
who has apparently never touched a PlayStation
controller in his life.
Is there a problem?
No.
No, just could you--
how do you make it go?
And he's surrounded by equally rich characters
like his badass wife Elena Fisher,
a highly capable loose cannon Chloe Frazer,
and his father figure Sully, who is consistently
loyal to Nate but often alludes to his dark past
and morally gray actions as a younger man.
The dynamic between Nathan Drake and Sully
is a particularly imperative aspect of the Uncharted series.
The pair are very openly warm towards one another,
but they are constantly bantering and making
little jokes at the other's expense.
The way voice actors Nolan North and Richard McGonagle
read their lines tells players how much these characters
love one another.
You OK in there?
You hurt?
Just my pride.
In this surrogate father and son relationship,
it's clear that they see something of themselves
in the other.
The Uncharted movie does away with all of this.
That's a huge problem which can be easily demonstrated
by comparing two key scenes.
But before we get into it, be sure to subscribe
to Nerdstalgic if you're into videos like this one.
Now let's take a look at Nate and Sully's first meeting
in both the Uncharted movie and the flashback
from the third game.
In the movie after Nate steals a diamond bracelet
at the restaurant he works at, Sully
praises Nate for choosing the right mark
and immediately offers him a job.
Nate remarks on how strange it is
to try and pick up accomplices in random bars
because the screenplay apparently
has some level of self awareness,
and then Sully leaves but not before pickpocketing
the stolen necklace and leaving his business card in its place.
The scene is uninteresting on its face.
Not only is it visually very stiff and boring
with Sully jammed in a corner for most of it,
but Mark Wahlberg's performance is extremely flat.
Victor Sullivan.
You can call me Sully.
And try as he might, Tom Holland is
struggling to play off of him.
There's no quippy banter, there's
no real chemistry between the actors,
and the scene just plays out like the final rehearsal
at the end of a long day.
Now compare that to the way Nate and Sully
meet each other in the game.
After trying and failing to steal an object of his desire
in a museum, Nate watches Sully stealthily unlock the case
and walk away, but before the two can have a conversation,
Nate is dragged away by security for sneaking in.
He later follows Sully and pickpockets his wallet.
Believing he got away with it, Nate starts to run,
but Sully immediately catches him.
The two have a short antagonistic conversation
with a little back and forth--
You are a crafty little beggar, aren't you?
I know how to take care of myself.
And they go their separate ways, having both met their match.
The scene is full of dynamic movement,
and you get an immediate sense of a begrudging respect
from both Nate and Sully.
Their personalities are on full display,
making it one of many moments in the games
where you understand not only the inner worlds
of the individual characters but also
the intricacies of their bond.
So by the time we get to that aforementioned plane action
sequence in game, we've consumed tens
of hours of neatly constructed storytelling
to make us care about Nathan, Drake,
Sully, and other characters in the narrative.
We've learned who Nate is.
We know his goals, his dreams, and his personality
and that he has a father figure who has risked his life to save
him and vice versa.
We care if he lives or dies.
And that elevates the action from simply
being technically proficient to being emotionally engaging.
The Uncharted movie, however, uses the plane as a cold open,
a cheap way to hook an audience except here we know
nothing about Nathan Drake.
This younger version of the character
is categorically different from his endgame counterpart
since the movie decided to mix and match game events
to fit their own timeline.
Obviously, we return to the plane
later on in the movie's runtime after we've spent significantly
more time with Drake and Sully, but as we
saw with their opening scene together,
the movie versions of these characters are vapid
and two dimensional, which makes the whole sequence
vapid and two dimensional.
The two of them have no connection to each other
and don't get much time to bond between action sequences,
so there's no stakes when they're put into danger.
Sophia Ali's Chloe Frazer suffers from this problem
as well.
We get very little in the way of development for her character
before we're off to the races literally
with another action sequence where Nate has to chase her
through the streets.
This is why the only action sequence in the movie that
marginally works is the absolutely unhinged boat
scene at the end of the film.
Not only is it a bold escalation of what
can be found in the games, but it serves a double purpose
of character development with Sully
conceding that Nate's life is worth more than a big score.
But between the misguided writing,
uninspired directorial styling, underwhelming performances,
and hyper focus on action, we just
don't get to see enough Uncharted in this Uncharted
movie.
If you're looking for something that
has the same heart as the beloved game series,
consider checking out this 15-minute fan
film starring Nathan Fillion from 2018 instead.
At the very least, it was made by people
who understood the source material
and wanted to find a stylistic way to bring the video game
vibe to live action.
You know, I always find myself amazed
that you two are incapable of returning these things the way
you found them.
We got the insurance.
But no one involved in the making of 2022's Uncharted
seemed to care about the source material or even the works that
inspired it.
While the Uncharted video game took
the ideas of Indiana Jones, pulp magazine, and 1930s adventure
serials and put work into doing something new with them,
the Uncharted movie was content to simply exist.
Thanks so much for watching this video.
If you liked what you saw, please be sure to let us
know by hitting the thumbs up, subscribing to Nerdstalgic,
and letting us in the comments.
Did you like the Uncharted movie?
[MUSIC PLAYING]