Left: Tom Holland in Uncharted (Photo: Clay Enos/Sony), Right: Nathan Drake in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Screenshot: YouTube)
Sony’s Uncharted opens in theaters this weekend, marking the latest push by a major studio to leverage star power and big budgets to drag a video game adaptation out of the genre’s usual critical mire. With Tom Holland as a (somewhat improbable) take on the franchise’s hero, lantern-jawed adventurer Nathan Drake, and a plot that hodgepodges a number of elements from across the bestselling and globetrotting franchise, the film at least has the look of something capable of breaking the game-to-movie curse.
As Mike D’Angelo points out in his not-especially-positive review of the movie, though, there’s a certain Xerox of a Xerox quality to the Uncharted movie, adapting as it does a game series already operating firmly in the “big stuff blowing up while the hero yells ‘No no no!’” vein pioneered by the likes of famed archeologist/Nazi puncher Dr. Henry Jones Jr. Which isn’t to say that the games are devoid of creativity, in any way, or that their contributions to The Big List Of Great Cinematic Set Pieces don’t deserve a spot on the big screen.
Hence this list of five things we’d like to see in the Uncharted films going forward, provided Holland, co-star Mark Wahlberg, and Sony are actually able to get this thing off the ground. These include some of the games’ biggest set pieces, as well as some of the more human elements that this new film version seems to have potentially left behind.
“A Rock And A Hard Place,” Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
It’s one of the most memorable in media resopenings in all of gaming, as well as a textbook introduction to the “Oh, wait, it always gets worse” tendencies that dominate Nathan Drake’s adventuring life: Our hero waking up, disoriented, and strapped into a wrecked train car. First, he reaches down, and realizes that he’s bleeding heavily from a stomach wound. Then he realizes that the car he’s in is currently suspended vertically… and hanging halfway off a cliff somewhere high in the Himalayas. Panic, and desperate climbing, understandably ensue.It’s a hell of an opening (reminiscent of the “Oh, shit!” energy Adrien Brody projects in the first 60 seconds of ) that would work just as well in live action as it did in 2009’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The Uncharted games are masterpieces of pace, above all else, and the first five minutes of Among Thieves establishes that relentless energy right from the jump.
“Stay In The Light,” Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
Ain’t that always the way: You’re minding your own business, exploring a ruined mansion, and solving puzzles cribbed straight out of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. Then the floor gives way, some goons show up, and suddenly you’re running for your life from giant spiders through the catacombs of a burning building. At least you don’t need to collect any world-saving artifacts while doing so—for now, anyway. Great Uncharted fights are all about projecting at least the illusion of controlled chaos, and the chaos rarely hits peaks as high as Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception’s “Stay In The Light.” Ambushed by agents of an evil secret society, Nate and his old pal/mentor Sully (both looking, bare minimum, 15 years older than Holland and Wahlberg, respectively) have to navigate the inferno, the armed gunmen, and their never-ending banter, as they try to drag yet another “Well, at least we survived that” moment from the flaming jaws of defeat.
As far as adaptations go, Uncharted the movie is pretty loose; while the film imports at least a few of the games’ biggest moments into its standard action film formula, it only brings three named characters along for the ride in any meaningful way: Drake, Sully, and Sophia Ali as enigmatic fellow treasure hunter Chloe. The most notable absence from the series’ cast, then, is Nate’s primary love interest: Elena Fisher, a daring investigative journalist played in the Uncharted games by actor Emily Rose.We can understand it, sort of: Pairing Nate—especially a version of the character as young as Holland projects—off with his future wife might make things feel a little too settled, too fast. But Elena’s not just some random distressed damsel who can be easily written off: She’s an adventurer just as active and engaged as Nathan himself, and her occasionally strained partnership with him is one of the major emotional through-lines of the entire series. Robbing Uncharted of that cornerstone relationship can only leave any future proceedings feeling as hollow as a raided tomb.
“The Thieves Of Libertalia,” Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
Nobody plummets like Nathan Drake—something Uncharted the movie tries to emphasize with its adaptation of the famous bit from Uncharted 3. But true connoisseurs of Drake Vs. Gravity know that some of the best material comes in 2016’s —and especially in “The Thieves Of Libertalia,” one of the game’s biggest show-off moments.The setup is as arcane as all the rest of the series’ plots: Artifacts, rival gangs, complicated fraternal relationships. The important takeaways are much simpler: Collapsing towers, swinging ropes, screaming Drakes. One of the appeals of the series has always been the way it makes the clearly impossible look just barely survivable, and nothing embodies that better than watching explosions, gunfire, and malevolent architecture all take their shot at killing the same insistently yelling man. (Especially the malevolent architecture—that tower is a behemoth.)
