Review: UNCHARTED Could and Should Have Been a Great Adventure Film, but It Wasn’t

When it was announced that Tom Holland would be playing Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg would be playing Sully in the film adaptation of Uncharted, a lot of fans of the game, including myself, were worried that the casting was all wrong. Neither of these actors fit the characters that they were cast to play. Regardless, I was hoping that the film would at least offer some fun entertainment with a good story.

This film had a very high bar to reach because the video game franchise is so damn good! The stories that are told in those games are awesome. I remember playing that first game and being completely blown away by how good it was and how the story and character development was better than a lot of films being made. The filmmakers had a perfect map to follow when making the film adaptation! Unfortunately, director Ruben Fleischer and the rest of the team completely dropped the ball!

So, not only was the casting all wrong, but the story and script were just absolutely atrocious. I honestly couldn’t believe how bad it was. Uncharted was an absolutely terribly made movie, and while I was hoping to at least be entertained, I just found myself getting more and more annoyed as I watched it because it just kept getting worse as it went on! All the way through the end of the film, where it crashed and burned in a blaze of glory.

This movie could and should have been great on every level, I’m actually shocked by how bad the filmmaking team screwed it up. I mean, how do you take such an amazingly cool adventure story and characters and turn it into something so boring and cliche. This was a cookie-cutter film and it’s like most of the dialogue is stuff we’ve heard a hundred times before in so many other mediocre action films that came before. Then they just try to cover up the terrible dialogue with big action set-pieces that ridiculously defy every law of physics.

Hmm, sounds like a film that was pieced together by a bunch of movie executives that lack the skills to tell a simple and proper story. I mean, seriously, how many times are they going to have characters double-cross each other over the course of the story?! Ugh.

You know, I always try to find the good in the films that I watch, but I had a really rough time with this one. I think the reason is because the creative team had a perfect blueprint to follow that was set up by the game franchise, and it’s like they looked at that, and did the complete opposite. Almost every story decision they made was a dumb one. It’s almost like they did it on purpose! Either that or they were completely clueless.

As for Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, I am a fan of both actors. I’ve enjoyed their other films, I think they are talented in what they do, but I did not like them in Uncharted. Holland is trying to be this tough, grown-up guy in the movie, but he just does not pull it off. The whole time, all I could see was this kid trying to be a tough guy and nothing about it felt natural. He’s just not Nathan Drake, and I don’t think he will ever grow into the role. As for Wahlberg, the guy just simply isn’t Sully, and I don’t know what they were trying to do with his version of the character.

The reason why I’m so bugged and upset about this movie is because there’s really no reason why it should have ended up being as bad as it is. They had every tool available to them to make this a great movie, they had a perfect blueprint to follow, and they ended up making this crap. I don’t get it.

The movie is making bank at the box office, though, so you can bet we’ll get a sequel!