When Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was released in 2007 on the PlayStation 3, one of the main compliments the Naughty Dog-developed game received was that it was like playing a movie. As the franchise has grown and technology has improved, this has only become more true, as the adventures of treasure hunters Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan felt like the closest thing gamers could get to recreating their Indiana Jones dreams. Yet what made Uncharted such a compelling and engrossing series wasn’t its story—which, while solid, was still a mishmash of adventure stories seen plenty of times before—but that the player could experience these events first-hand, escape death at every corner, fight enemies around the world, and search for long-hidden treasure. What made Uncharted so great was that it put the player in Nathan Drake’s shoes.
Since Uncharted the game series borrowed so heavily from previous adventure stories, this franchise made the most sense as the first movie by PlayStation Productions. But in the over decade-and-a-half in development, filmmakers like David O. Russell, Free Guy’s Shawn Levy, and 10 Cloverfield Lane’s Dan Trachtenberg have all joined and left the project, while Venom director Ruben Fleischer has finally brought this story to the screen with Uncharted. But with Uncharted out, it’s easy to see what might have been the major obstacle in adapting such a cinematic game to film. When a game like Uncharted is so heavily influenced by adventure film formulas we’ve seen before, turning that game into a movie can start to like a copy of a copy of a copy.
Tom Holland stars as Nathan Drake, a young thief who is recruited by treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) for an adventure that will send them looking for 5 billion dollars worth of gold that has been missing for centuries. Along the way, Nathan and Sully will face double-crosses—both literal and figurative—adventure, and mysteries that have laid dormant since the age of Magellan. Victor and Sully are also joined by Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali), another treasure hunter who doesn’t trust this pair, as they try to find this mysterious prize before Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) and his associate Jo Braddock (Tati Gabrielle).
Holland makes a decent Nathan Drake, playing the overwhelmed nature of the character in the most intense sequences quite well. Wahlberg and Banderas are both fine, but they do seem like odd choices in these roles, while Gabrielle is a standout, an intense villain who gives Uncharted its only real sense of true danger.
Fleischer starts this adventure with a cargo plane action scene ripped directly from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, then continues with a flashback of the younger Nathan and his brother Sam (Rudy Pankow), also almost shot-for-shot the same as the game. For many of these sequences that Fleischer tries to recreate, the overabundance of CGI not only takes away the stakes that were inherent in these games, but makes the viewer feel like they’re simply watching a video game being played.
Strangely, it’s the more gamey aspects of Uncharted that work well here, such as when Nathan, Sully, and Chloe try to solve several puzzles throughout Barcelona. Again, this segment is like watching a video game being played, but the focus on various clues, traps, and mysteries makes it one of the more intriguing parts of the film. The same could be said of Uncharted’s final action set piece, which is in the spirit of Uncharted, but at least tries something new, even if the lack of stakes and excitement are absent thanks to the over-reliance on special effects.
But still, Uncharted tries to recreate what worked in the game and can’t just copy-and-paste these elements in the way Fleischer attempts. The humor is extremely bland, the dynamic between Nathan and Sully never quite reaches the father-and-son relationship it wants to have, and the action can’t reconstruct the exhilaration and dread that these scenes once held. Narratively, some of these ideas can transcend format, but taking them and simply putting them as they once were in a decades-old video game doesn’t do Uncharted any favors.
Uncharted also struggles to not be extremely predictable along every step. The Uncharted games owe a large debt to Raiders of the Lost Ark, while the film tries to follow in the footsteps of Pirates of the Caribbean. Even though the film shouts out Indiana Jones and Jack Sparrow doesn’t negate the complete appropriation of what made those films work for this story. It’s also hard to stay completely invested in a mystery when the audience is usually several steps ahead of the supposed treasure-hunting experts.
Like another recent video game adaptation, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, Uncharted attempts to recreate iconic moments from a beloved game, while also trying to inject some decent new ideas into the story. The result is a mixed bag, as it shows fans things they’ve already seen, such brought to live-action, while for newcomers, these scenes are watered-down versions that don’t have the spirit that once made them great. In trying to please everyone, this type of borrowing from the games pleases no one.
But especially compared to other video game adaptations, Uncharted is better than most, which, still, isn’t exactly saying much. As the video game series grew, Uncharted became a fascinating world of interesting characters and exciting adventures full of opportunities and possibilities. Over the years, Naughty Dog shifted this series from a Raiders takeoff into its own gripping world, and while the Uncharted film is still too heavily reliant not only on what has worked in other action films, but more importantly, in these games themselves, there is the possibility this could be the start of a wonderful action franchise. There are elements that could be fleshed out in the future, but as a movie series, Uncharted isn’t quite there yet. Uncharted as a film proves that it’s more fun to play a movie than to watch a video game.
Rating: C
Uncharted comes to theaters on February 18.