While Sony’s new movie adaptation of the Uncharted video game franchise has proven to be an unexpected success at the box office, critics and audiences alike have been divided by the film. Fans of the games have been put off by its unfaithfulness to the source material, but more casual viewers taking the movie at face value have praised it as a fun, enjoyable big-budget action-adventure.
This movie certainly isn’t perfect, but similarly, it’s not a complete disaster. There are some aspects of the film that work, like Tom Holland’s performance, and others that don’t, like the mediocre storytelling.
2 Things That Worked
Tom Holland’s Performance
With the unexpected blockbuster success of Uncharted, Tom Holland has become one of the first MCU stars to prove that he can carry a big-budget movie without the safety net of the Marvel brand. Holland’s performance has been one of the few aspects of the Uncharted movie that critics have roundly praised.
The version of Nathan Drake that he plays in the Uncharted film doesn’t have a lot in common with the Nate that fans know and love from the games, but Holland is nonetheless a compelling lead.
Dazzling Action Sequences
From the big set-pieces plastered over the trailers to more grounded scenes like the bar brawl, the action sequences in Uncharted are more than exciting enough to make the movie watchable.
The action photography isn’t as frenetic or captivating as it could be, but no other movie culminates in a chase between helicopters carrying pirate ships.
Focus On Fun
Heavily influenced by movies like The Goonies and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Uncharted has a decidedly fun tone. The audience gets to go on a globetrotting adventure, falling out of planes and exploring old pirate ships.
The script has a few perfunctory dramatic beats along the way, but director Ruben Fleischer is primarily focused on making sure the audience has fun watching the movie.
1 Things That Didn’t Work
Mediocre Storytelling
The Uncharted games are renowned for their complex plotting, which makes the mediocre storytelling of the movie adaptation all the more egregious. Uncharted ticks off every cliché in the adventure genre playbook, plodding from location to location, using MacGuffins to find more MacGuffins.
The characters never seem like they’re in any real danger, their relationships never feel real, and the emotional throughlines like Drake’s missing brother and Sully’s trust issues are too generic and manufactured to really have an impact.
Overuse Of CGI
From ancient temples full of booby traps to a dotted line shooting across a world map, a ton of imagery and motifs in the Uncharted film are designed to evoke the Indiana Jones franchise.
But where Indy’s adventures had breathtaking old-school practical stunt work, Uncharted is riddled with weightless CG effects. The ideas behind set-pieces like the cargo plane sequence and the swinging pirate ships are a lot of fun, but the visuals are flat and unengaging.
Tom Holland & Mark Wahlberg’s Chemistry
While Holland has forged convincing father-son dynamics with Marvel co-stars like Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, his chemistry with Mark Wahlberg doesn’t quite click in Uncharted. Nate and Sully had a more tangible friendship as pixels in a video game than two actors in a movie.
Holland and Wahlberg give fine individual performances in Uncharted, but their on-screen chemistry doesn’t match the heartwarming dynamic that their characters share in the source material.
Predictable Twists
There are few twists and turns peppered throughout the Uncharted movie, but none of them ever pack a punch because they can be seen coming a mile away.
As soon as Nate leaves the coordinates out in plain sight, it’s obvious that he left behind fake coordinates as a decoy. As soon as Sully takes a bag of gold, it’s obvious that he’s going to have to give it up to save Nate. None of these twists have any impact because they’re all well-worn clichés.
Heavy-Handed Indiana Jones Homages
The Uncharted movie has been in development for over a decade. Evan Goldberg once explained to IGN why he and co-writer Seth Rogen turned down the opportunity to write the film adaptation of Uncharted: “It’s just going to be Indiana Jones. If we could figure out a way to make it not Indiana Jones, it’d be awesome.”
The final product lays on the Indy influence pretty thick. After leaving New York City behind, Uncharted becomes a full-blown Indiana Jones homage. While the Indy movies broke new ground for the action genre, Uncharted feels like a carbon-copy re-tread.
Generic Villain
Antonio Banderas’ talents are completely squandered in the role of villainous treasure hunter Santiago Moncada in Uncharted. Banderas has proven his capacity for both depth and nuance (in Philadelphia and the films of Pedro Almodóvar) and hammy genre roles (in Desperado and Spy Kids), but his Uncharted role is painfully generic.
Instead of getting to have the character-actor fun of playing a hammed-up adventure movie villain with a diabolical lair and a unique personality quirk, Banderas is relegated to the dull, one-note role of a spoilt rich kid complaining about interest points and inheritance tax.
Nathan Drake’s Characterization
Holland does a great job in the role of a traditional movie star in Uncharted, but the character he plays isn’t recognizable as the Nathan Drake from the games. Granted, this movie is supposed to be an origin story set before the games, but it takes a conventional approach to his characterization. Since Sony was going for the biggest audience possible, the movie shies away from exploring Drake’s less likable qualities.
In the movie, Nate is a standard Hollywood action-adventure lead tailored more toward Holland’s familiar Peter Parker persona as the awkward underdog. Holland gives a terrific performance, but the character he’s playing is too naive and clean-cut to feel like Nathan Drake.
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