Uncharted: Film Review And Game Comparison

‘Uncharted’ is a recently released action-adventure film directed by Ruben Fleisher, starring Tom Holland as Nathan Drake, Mark Wahlberg as Victor Sullivan, Sophia Ali as Chloe Frazer, and Tati Gabrielle as Jo Braddock. This film is based on the video game series of the same name from Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment, in which the plot follows Nathan Drake getting recruited by Victor Sullivan to attempt locating a treasure of the Magellan expedition.

Plot:

“Treasure hunter Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan recruits street-smart Nathan Drake to help him recover a 500-year-old lost fortune amassed by explorer Ferdinand Magellan. What starts out as a heist soon becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Santiago Moncada can get his hands on it. If Sully and Nate can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure – but only if they can learn to work together.”

Trailers:

The game version of ‘Uncharted’ is a series created by Amy Hennig, developed by Naughty Dog, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation consoles. The main series of the games follows Nathan Drake, who is a treasure hunter, travelling across the world to uncover various historical mysteries. The series of the games are as follows in order of release: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (2007), Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009), Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (2011), and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016).

The game series has been universally acclaimed and been commercially successful, becoming one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. The series has been widely recognised by critics and video game publications for raising the standards of single-player video games, praising it for high production values, quality in storytelling, character design and animation, voice acting, realistic graphics, technical innovation, musical score, gameplay mechanics, and delivering an enjoyable cinematic gaming experience to players.

Unlike the game, the film ‘Uncharted’ decided to pull various scenes from the games into one story, calling it a prequel, but referencing moments in all four games of ‘Uncharted’. The film’s screenplay was written by Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, and the story was created by Rafe Judkins. Starring Tom Holland as Nathan Drake, Mark Wahlberg as Victor Sullivan, Sophia Ali as Chloe Frazer, and Tati Gabrielle as Jo Braddock; there are huge names in this film, therefore, expectation were naturally raised for me personally.

Unfortunately, I have decided to give this the above rating (three out of five) due to my expectations not being met. Firstly, I felt that the story was rushed, there was not enough development on the plot, the treasure, the character’s goals, or the characters themselves. There is a possibility that they tried to add as much as they could into the two hours, attempting to make it exciting throughout, and there were exciting and good moments present, however, it was too much mashed together. There should have been more focus on the details of each scene, on the character development, and on the treasure they were after, because as a viewer, I felt that I was in the dark for a lot of the story. If it had not been for the game series ‘Uncharted’, I would have been completely lost.