Uncharted (2022)

[Eric Loves Rey]

Discuss

[Menor the Destroyer]

It was okay. Not very well written but I enjoyed Holland and Wahlberg, a few fun action scenes. Eh. C+.

[Cap]

I have a very very active imagination.  My brain is noisy.  It sometimes ruins films for me, because I can figure out the ending based off the trailers or by the end of the first act.  I've spent a lot of time training myself to just shut off my brain when I watch things.  I don't want to figure out who the kill is.  I don't want to think about the logistic of time travel.  I just want to go, suspend my disbelief, and immerse myself in a world for an hour and forty minutes.  (YES, I said what I said!  Hour! Forty! Minutes!  Not 2 and 40 minutes!!)

 

It's been a really, really long time since something's forced me to rage quit this hard.  I hated everything on my screen.  We're talking I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie levels.

 

Tom Holland is hilariously miscast as Nathan Drake.  What part of that white paint can screams rugged adventurer? I don't believe he can even grow a beard. I spent a lot of time thinking "So this is what Peter does while everyone forgets he exists."

 

Antonio Banderas should file a lawsuit for crimes against his personhood in this completely wasted role.

 

Mark Wahlberg is worse than normal.  I don't know how, but he is.

 

Sophia Taylor Ali and Tati Gabrielle are super easy on the eyes, there is zero depth beyond that.

 

The movie, despite filming in these beautiful locations, looks so cheap with bad CGI.

 

Spoiler

And I don't care if someone had a good time playing that final boss battle in the video game, the third act with the ships was BULLSHIT.  Again, I am willing to suspend my disbelief so so so so much at times, but 400 year old priceless ship filled with heavy gold would fall apart if you even MOVED THEM let alone did all of that shit!!! I could have handled it if they had PUT ONE SHIP DOWN ON THE TANKER LIKE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO, but no we need the super cool cgi ships in the air garbage.  I'm like, THAT'S NOT HOW YOU HANDLE A BILLION DOLLAR ARTIFACT.  PARTICULARLY cause you just spent five minutes talking about how "no one hurts the ships" and if you had released the ship onto the tanker, you would've had less weight and more speed.

 

I could feel my brain cells dying by the second.

 

[Webslinger]

Uncharted has some likable qualities, but is felled by a paint-by-numbers plot and a lack of meaningful character development. The film’s numerous action sequences hum along under the direction of Ruben Fleischer (always a solid visual director, even when the scripts he works with are not up to snuff), and the actors in front of the camera – particularly male co-leads Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg – are suitably charismatic and wring some laughs out of the scenarios the narrative presents. However, the film ultimately feels all too much like the video game adaptation it is, as it prioritizes advancing its “chase the McGuffin” plot over giving the actors any room to breathe with their characters or their relationships any time to grow beyond their simple, surface level focus. As mindless, disposable entertainment, Uncharted has its moments; unfortunately, there isn’t enough care invested into its characters to make it more than a momentary diversion whose impact begins to fade as the credits roll.
 

C+

[Webslinger]

2 hours ago, Cap said:

Antonio Banderas should file a lawsuit for crimes against his personhood in this completely wasted role.

Agreed, though the silver lining is that at least the film itself is a significant step-up from his wasted villain role from 2021 in The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard - as damning with faint praise as such a statement might be.

 

Either way, I just couldn’t help but sit there and think “Pedro Almodovar needs to write this guy another awesome role, stat.”

Edited February 20, 2022 by Webslinger

[filmlover]

I never played the video games but found this to be a hopelessly pedestrian and forgettable amalgamation of far too many movies that never once manages to establish its own identity. It's easy to imagine how the inevitable Honest Trailers video for this is gonna play out. Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg give serviceable performances in roles that do nothing to stretch their talents beyond their very much established big screen personas. C

[ZeeSoh]

On 2/20/2022 at 8:40 AM, Cap said:

I have a very very active imagination.  My brain is noisy.  It sometimes ruins films for me, because I can figure out the ending based off the trailers or by the end of the first act.  I've spent a lot of time training myself to just shut off my brain when I watch things.  I don't want to figure out who the kill is.  I don't want to think about the logistic of time travel.  I just want to go, suspend my disbelief, and immerse myself in a world for an hour and forty minutes.  (YES, I said what I said!  Hour! Forty! Minutes!  Not 2 and 40 minutes!!)

 

It's been a really, really long time since something's forced me to rage quit this hard.  I hated everything on my screen.  We're talking I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie levels.

 

Tom Holland is hilariously miscast as Nathan Drake.  What part of that white paint can screams rugged adventurer? I don't believe he can even grow a beard. I spent a lot of time thinking "So this is what Peter does while everyone forgets he exists."

 

Antonio Banderas should file a lawsuit for crimes against his personhood in this completely wasted role.

 

Mark Wahlberg is worse than normal.  I don't know how, but he is.

 

Sophia Taylor Ali and Tati Gabrielle are super easy on the eyes, there is zero depth beyond that.

 

The movie, despite filming in these beautiful locations, looks so cheap with bad CGI.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

And I don't care if someone had a good time playing that final boss battle in the video game, the third act with the ships was BULLSHIT.  Again, I am willing to suspend my disbelief so so so so much at times, but 400 year old priceless ship filled with heavy gold would fall apart if you even MOVED THEM let alone did all of that shit!!! I could have handled it if they had PUT ONE SHIP DOWN ON THE TANKER LIKE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO, but no we need the super cool cgi ships in the air garbage.  I'm like, THAT'S NOT HOW YOU HANDLE A BILLION DOLLAR ARTIFACT.  PARTICULARLY cause you just spent five minutes talking about how "no one hurts the ships" and if you had released the ship onto the tanker, you would've had less weight and more speed.

 

I could feel my brain cells dying by the second.

 

Uncharted 4 game spoilers below so look away if someone doesn't wanna get spoiled. 
 

The last act with the ships is not how it goes down in the actual game. Firstly there is only one ship in a similar looking cave. Secondly the ship is not airlifted or anything ridiculous like that (I too was thinking how stupid it is that a 400-500 year old wooden ship doesn’t completely fall apart while being lifted or being crashed so many times). In the game Drake and his buddies reach the ship and so does the villain and his henchmen. There is an incredible fight between the main villain (who is sooooooo much better in the game) and Drake onboard the ship which is burning at this point. In the end the ship is completely destroyed by the fire. Trust me the movie doesnt do the game any justice. 
 

Coming back to the movie, it was a decent adventure flick. Holland and Wahlberg are good and some of the action set pieces are good too. But the games are infinitely better in every single way i could think of. I didn’t really get that special feeling watching the movie as an Uncharted fan. Might as well have been any random adventure movie. 

[MrPink]

57 minutes ago, ZeeSoh said:

Uncharted 4 game spoilers below so look away if someone doesn't wanna get spoiled. 
 

The last act with the ships is not how it goes down in the actual game. Firstly there is only one ship in a similar looking cave. Secondly the ship is not airlifted or anything ridiculous like that (I too was thinking how stupid it is that a 400-500 year old wooden ship doesn’t completely fall apart while being lifted or being crashed so many times). In the game Drake and his buddies reach the ship and so does the villain and his henchmen. There is an incredible fight between the main villain (who is sooooooo much better in the game) and Drake onboard the ship which is burning at this point. In the end the ship is completely destroyed by the fire. Trust me the movie doesnt do the game any justice. 
 

Coming back to the movie, it was a decent adventure flick. Holland and Wahlberg are good and some of the action set pieces are good too. But the games are infinitely better in every single way i could think of. I didn’t really get that special feeling watching the movie as an Uncharted fan. Might as well have been any random adventure movie. 

 

To really elaborate on that final piece, the main villain is great because he has this unhinged inferiority complex and lets it all out at the end because Drake is a renown treasure hunter while Rafe has nothing to his name (other than a huge family fortune that he tried to brute force into making a name for himself). Of course, Banderas has some of this backstory only to get killed off before the 3rd act even happens, lol.

 

Which struck me as weird that they adapted so many part of Uncharted 4 already because it calls for Drake to be an experienced hunter, rather than just starting, but whatever.

[Cap]

1 hour ago, ZeeSoh said:

(who is sooooooo much better in the game)

Oh my god this does sound so much better. Thank you for telling me this. Because I feel better that I wasn’t the only person going there’s _no way in hell_

[ZeeSoh]

1 hour ago, MrPink said:

 

To really elaborate on that final piece, the main villain is great because he has this unhinged inferiority complex and lets it all out at the end because Drake is a renown treasure hunter while Rafe has nothing to his name (other than a huge family fortune that he tried to brute force into making a name for himself). Of course, Banderas has some of this backstory only to get killed off before the 3rd act even happens, lol.

 

Which struck me as weird that they adapted so many part of Uncharted 4 already because it calls for Drake to be an experienced hunter, rather than just starting, but whatever.

They set up Banderas as the big bad guy and then off him so soon to set up Tati as an even bigger baddie only to then have her barely be in a few scenes. What a waste. Another movie that cannot get a villain right. 
 

Rafe was a good villain. One can see he is already a psycho in the beginning of the game but he becomes more unhinged as the game goes on to finally losing it completely in the end. And that end fight is one of the best boss fights I have played. No flashy powers, no fancy weapons or big set piece. Just 2 people with a sword inside a confined burning ship. 

I guess they went with Uncharted 4 because they wanted to set up Sam and also because its the most recent game so would be more fresh in peoples mind?

I hope they do the Himalayan setting and the train set piece from the 2nd game but I don't think thats gonna happen with them seemingly in South America during the mid credits scene. They maybe doing the 1st one with El Dorado and maybe introducing Elena.