A Bit Off Course
Crap! The adaptation of ‘Uncharted’ finally hits screens in Hong Kong. maybe the sequel will be better.
Uncharted
Director: Ruben Fleischer • Writers: Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, based on the Naughty Dog video game
Starring: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Antonio Banderas, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle, Rudy Pankow, Steven Waddington
USA • 1hr 56mins
Opens Hong Kong June 23 • IIA
Grade: B-
If you can believe it, Ruben Fleischer’s Uncharted is one of the year’s highest grossing movies, worldwide, so far. It’s no Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (approaching US$1 billion) or Top Gun: Maverick (US$890 million) or Water Gate Bridge (whose entire US$626 million box office haul comes mostly from one market), but it’s pulled in over US$400 million – and it’s still releasing. Based on the popular, and admittedly stupid-fun, Naughty Dog adventure game (there’s five of these in the mainline series, so expect a sequel), Uncharted players are clearly responding to the live action version of their favourite shady treasure hunter (Nolan North, who voices Nathan Drake in the games has a cameo). Too bad everything about PlayStation Productions’ (uh-huh, you read that right, everyone has a studio now, HBO’s The Last of Us is next) erm, uh, production is so bland, generic and aggressively mass appeal. It’s not bad, a wonder given its COVID shutdowns; it’s underwhelming and mostly forgettable. It’s better than many video game adapations; the current highwater mark being the series of Halo, and it kicks the lamentable Assassin’s Creed’s ass into next week, but it certainly doesn’t advance the case for more game source material.
All you will see is Spider-Man
Fleischer, best known for Zombieland and Venom, handles the action with the expected frantic aplomb, but the trouble starts at the script stage. Taking credit are Rafe Lee Judkins, who developed Game of Thrones-lite, The Wheel of Time (which was published six years before A Game of Thrones. The more you know!), so, yeah, okay, he has a handle on fantasy. But his co-writers are partners Art Marcum and Matt Holloway – whose highlights swing from Iron Man (nice), to Punisher: War Zone (good trash) to Men in Black: International and OH MY GOD TAKE AWAY THEIR WGA CARDS! Uncharted is a hodgepodge of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tomb Raider (game and film), even the recent The Lost City, with only a fraction of the logic deployed in any of those and considerably less charming leads. As Raiders knock-offs continue, they all make National Treasure look better each passing minute.
Manling Tom Holland (who’s recycling Peter Parker) stars as a much younger version of Drake, who we meet in medias res (WHY do we do this so much especially when no one seems chuffed to pick up at the correct point coming back?) as he’s dangling out of the plane we’ve seen in the trailer. He’s an orphan with brother issues (innovation!), working as a showy Manhattan bartender (who would lose his tip if he pulled that shit with me) and part time thief. One night, Victor Sullivan, Sully (Mark Wahlberg in his usual non-threatening high-pitched monotone), walks in with a proposition: Help him find Ferdinand Magellan’s lost ships and their treasure. There’s a key that’s actually a cross, an ancient map, a rich Spanish guy (Antonio Banderas, really Spanishing it up) who claims his ancestors funded Magellan’s trip, some henchpersons led by the unreasonbly angry Braddock (The 100’s Tati Gabrielle), and a rival treasure hunter, Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali, Grey’s Anatomy), who’s not nearly as sexed up as she can be in the game. Guess who finds the treasure?
He could also be looking at the giant cheque they handed him for this
Uncharted is one of those “good time” entertainments that make not a lick of sense (leaps of logic that work in gameplay don’t work in linear storytelling), even though you know exactly where it’s headed, the only surprise being the utter contempt with which it treats historical artefacts. And it’s not as though anyone were expecting narrative innovation or thematic richness: it’s a video game movie. But as John Wick, The Lunchbox (RIP Irrfan Khan), I, Tonya, Night of the Living Dead, hell No Time to Die, and dozens of other have proved, genres can be mixed up and still do what they do. Uncharted doesn’t try, despite solid source material and an intensely amusing character. Holland, try as he may, simply doesn’t have the physical presence or comic timing to make the most of Drake. He always feels like Spider-Man, who at last encounter was being a whiny pest (and Holland was being out-acted by Andrew Garfield). Sound petty? Sure, but when your (possible) franchise rests on charm and swagger, your lead had better have them. But what do I know? Over $400 million says he’s got plenty of both. — DEK