Some video game movies deserve the bad rap the subgenre gets, and Sony Pictures’ “Uncharted” adaptation is especially egregious considering its source material.
Based on the best-selling video game series developed by Naught Dog for Playstation, “Uncharted” stars Tom Holland as a significantly aged-down Nathan Drake, compared to his video game counterpart. Drake is a history buff and budding explorer, who gets pulled into an expedition to discover a lost treasure by Victor “Sully” Sullivan — played by Mark Wahlberg. The film follows Drake, Sully and Sophia Ali’s Chloe Frazier as they attempt to both work together and double-cross each other to uncover the long-lost treasure before it can fall into the wrong hands.
The product is yet another video game adaptation that fails to understand or intelligently translate its source material to the big screen. Bogged down by predictable story beats, bland writing and a lifeless story, the film earns its place on top of the pile of mediocre video game flicks. It's a ham-fisted attempt to mash the most memorable moments from a series of games into one film, reducing heart-pounding action sequences to lackluster set pieces and spending too much time elsewhere to pay any attention to plot details.
Holland’s performance is par for the course for the 25-year-old actor, who skates by on an ever-so-slight variation of the Spider-Man schtick that launched him into superstardom six years ago. Holland’s Drake is decidedly different from a video game counterpart roughly 10 years his senior, which was obviously Sony Pictures’ idea in casting him. Also evidenced is the admittedly-astonishing decision to cast Wahlberg as a Sully 30 years too young. Wahlberg was reportedly supposed to play the Drake character himself in an earlier conception of the film dating back to 2008, before Arad and Sony recast him and hired Holland as the lead.
In significantly aging down both main characters, the film clunkily attempts to combine multiple video game storylines into one sub-two-hour story, with a mixed bag of results. Holland is charming as ever is the lead role, but the film around him has been scrubbed of all life or originality. This may be the film Martin Scorsese really meant when he likened Marvel movies to theme park rides. “Uncharted” is a cheap roller coaster in a Sony backlot that somehow took over 10 years to build. Its thrills are unremarkable and its focus-tested gloss makes for a dull, underwhelming ride.
Maybe the only half-interesting supporting character — Antonio Banderas’ Santiago Moncada — is barely given enough screen time to make an impact, and is completely wasted and tossed aside in the third act. Banderas is clearly having fun with his role, and created a villain that felt tailor-made for this film. Much like its remaining plot elements though, the film shows no reverence for his character and throws him away like a piece of fool’s gold.
“Uncharted” is produced by longtime Spider-Man producer Avi Arad, who at least shares partial responsibility for some of the more questionable decisions in that franchise’s history. As with his work on the Amazing Spider-Man franchise, his latest project is never able to fully deliver on its promises. Instead of the thrilling action-adventure promised in trailers and inferred from its source material, the film turns high-octane moments into bland, pointless homages.
Director Ruben Fleischer doesn’t bring much to the table stylistically, it seems more his job just to make sure everyone was having a good time on set, but the unsatisfactory final result falls more on the shoulders of the five credited writers tasked with the screenplay. It’s both telling and baffling that a team of five screenwriters could do such a poor job at adapting one of the most story-rich video game franchises of all time, especially one so close to home for Sony. Holland and Wahlberg do their best to inject as much charisma and chemistry into the film as possible, but the soft-edged writing and derivative story are a constant weight that it’s unable to shed.
Uncharted’s plain unremarkability is its greatest detractor, especially considering its best-selling source material. There are a few serviceable elements at play, and questionable casting could have been masked with a compelling script and visceral action, yet Sony found a way to make their film less exciting than a 15-year-old video game. From the Naughty Dog goldmine, Sony mined a few gems and surrounded them with pebbles. 10 years and an estimated $120 million later, the best “Uncharted” adaptation is still a 15-minute fan film on Youtube.
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