Sony Pictures is moving forward again with an Uncharted movie adaptation, and fans might actually get something good out of it. But they aren’t happy.
The newest revelation about the Uncharted movie is that Mark Wahlberg is about to join the cast alongside Tom Holland. Holland will be playing the main character, Nathan Drake, and Wahlberg will be portraying Victor “Sully” Sullivan, according to Variety.
Holland and Wahlberg are strange picks to star in Uncharted because neither of them matches the mental images that gamers have in their heads of Drake and Sully.
They are also both much younger in appearance than their videogame counterparts. That’s because Sony is planning to make this movie an origin story for the duo.
An origin story for Drake and Sully already exists as a flashback segment in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception , but a movie could flesh it out more. A film would also allow the film to explore new adventures of Drake’s without treading ground already covered in the games.
Plus, PlayStation Productions is helping out to make sure the adaptation is done right.
The real question is whether fans of the game series will appreciate that approach for the Uncharted movie. If the early Twitter reactions are to be believed, the film has an uphill struggle ahead of it to win over their trust.
Another problem the Uncharted movie will have is drawing in viewers outside of gamers.
The Uncharted series is basically Indiana Jones in video game format . That works well on its own, but taking that and turning it into a movie could make it feel like a cheap knockoff.
While it has been over 10 years since the last Indiana Jones movie, and 30 since the last good one, that doesn’t mean the general audience is interested in what may appear as a generic clone.
I’m inclined to think that this could be a completely serviceable film, but a not spectacular one. The games are perfectly standard already, and it’s only the great character interactions that make them stand out.
If the movie can capture these interactions with Holland and Wahlberg, then there’s a chance it won’t end up being a complete dumpster fire, unlike most movies based on games .
However, the castings are completely off, which could ruin everything. Maybe it would have been better if this movie stayed in development hell?