The long awaited movie Uncharted is a time-honored action adventure computer game series by game studio Naughty Dog, and now it’s a motion picture starring Tom Holland, with a correspondingly exciting trailer. My family and I saw the trailer as one of the coming attractions when we saw Spider-Man: No Way Home. I thought it looked like it might be fun.
Uncharted stars Tom Holland (Peter Parker in the MCU) as Jonathan Drake, a fortune hunter who claims to be descended from Sir Francis Drake.
Actor/producer Mark Wahlberg (Cade Yeager in the Transformers franchise) co-stars as Drake’s mentor Victor Sullivan.
According to IMBD.com “Street-smart thief Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to recover a fortune lost by Ferdinand Magellan 500 years ago. What starts as a heist job for the duo becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who believes he and his family are the rightful heirs. If Nate and Sully can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure and perhaps even Nate’s long-lost brother … but only if they can learn to work together.
If you liked Relic Hunter, Indiana Jones, or James Bond, the odds are good you’ll like Uncharted. How often do you see a hero avoid a car crash in mid-air?
Uncharted, The Computer Game Series
Uncharted is not just a video game, but a series of games, with the movie serving as their prequel so viewers shouldn’t need to be familiar with the games to understand the movie. From the looks of the trailer, the movie should stand on its own two feet,
The series has been universally acclaimed and commercially successful, having shipped more than 41 million units, making it one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. The main series has been widely credited 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. The series has often been likened to Hollywood-produced action adventure films, so with this movie, Uncharted comes full circle.
Unexpected Casting
The casting of Tom Holland in the film has been something of a controversy. It isn’t that Tom Holland isn’t an amazingly talented human being and a marvelous actor. It’s that there are people who would have been much more obvious casting choices than Holland, who frankly doesn’t look very much like Nathan Drake in the games at all. Many fans believe that a much better choice would have been Nathan Fillion, who did a fan film of Uncharted in 2018, and looks astonishingly like Nathan Drake. Why Tom Holland was chosen instead of Fillion is a complete mystery to those outside the process looking in.
In 2016 Holland won the BAFTA Rising Star Award, an honor won in other years by John Boyega (Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Daniel Kaluuya (W’Baki in Black Panther), Letitia Wright (Princess Shuri in Black Panther, James McAvoy (Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) The BAFTA Rising Star Award celebrates young talent who are expected to have brilliant careers, the up-and-comingest of the up-and-coming.
Years of Development Hell
Uncharted is one of those movies that has spent an amazing amount of time in preproduction hell. Starting development in 2008, the film went through multiple different directors and writers over the years. The first fans heard of a release date was in 2014, when Sony announced that the movie would premiere in the summer of 2016. It has blown by previous release dates including the 5th of March 2021, 16th of July 2021 and 8th of October 2021.
It stars Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg Sophia Ali and Antonio Banderas, and releases, at long last, on February 11, 2022 in the UK and February 18, 2022, in the USA.
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Susan Macdonald is the author of the children’s book “R is for Renaissance Faire”, as well as 26 short stories, mostly fantasy in “Alternative Truths”, “Swords and Sorceress #30”, Swords &Sorceries Vols. 1, 2, & 5, “Cat Tails” “Under Western Stars”, and “Knee-High Drummond and the Durango Kid”. Her articles have appeared on SCIFI.radio’s web site, in The Inquisitr, and in The Millington Star. She enjoys Renaissance Faires (see book above), science fiction conventions, Highland Games, and Native American pow-wows.
