This past weekend the adventure film, “Uncharted” was released in theaters across the country. The movie starring Tom Holland as Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Victor Sullivan was based on the Playstation video game series of the same name.
The film was directed by Ruben Fleischer who is best known for directing “Venom” and “Zombieland”. Backed by Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions, the movie takes its viewers through a journey that feels like a modern Indiana Jones.
For viewers of the film that do not have any prior knowledge of the video game series, the movie seems like just another treasure hunting movie, but it is so much more than that. The first game, “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune” came out on PlayStation 3 in 2007. It was followed by seven video games that showed the various adventures of Nathan Drake and Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan as they searched for lost treasure around the world.
In the film, treasure hunter Sully recruits savvy Nathan Drake into helping him recover a 500-year-old lost fortune of explorer Ferdinand Magellan. The two travel across the globe while deciphering clues before other treasure hunters can get their hands on the riches first.
The interesting thing about this film is it shows a completely new way of how Drake and Sully met and began their adventures together. In the film, Sully seeks out Nathan to help him find the treasure as he knew of him through his brother, Sam. As opposed to in the games, where Sully accidentally met Nathan when he was 15 in Colombia. While the casting choice of Holland and Wahlberg may have been questionable at first, both did an excellent job at portraying their characters and bringing the chemistry from the video games to the big screen, with their on-screen banter being reminiscent of the games.
The movie also shows various characters that are familiar to fans of the games, such as Chloe Frazer played by Sophia Taylor Ali, and Braddock played by Tati Gabrielle, both of which did fantastic jobs playing these resilient and independent women.
The movie starts out with a big action sequence that was shown in almost every trailer of the film, Holland jumping from ship crate to ship crate to get back onto a plane, only to be pushed out by a car. The scene has several first-person shots that make it feel like you are playing the video game, minus the part of being able to control the character yourself.
A lot of the action sequences in the film may be familiar to those who played the video games, as they are heavily influenced from the games. In a video with Youtube gamer Jacksepticeye, Holland discussed how the action sequences in the film were influenced primarily by “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.” “This game is the one we took most inspiration from. It is so cinematic and its story is so adventurous and exciting,” Holland said.
Overall, the movie did an exceptional job bringing the video games to life on the big screen, as well as setting up for a sequel by introducing a key plot point from the games. This movie was the perfect way to honor the video game series and introduce it to a whole new audience.
