Uncharted

From Sony, comes their first PlayStation Productions title based on their own Naughty Dog's famous gaming franchise - Uncharted. One of the company's principle going forward with their new age of PlayStation's unassailable success is to inject and spread all their original intellectual properties into myriad other mediums, such as movies, TV series, anime, comics, toys, merchandises, you name it. This is done in order to increase the popularity of these intellectual properties by finding new audiences for them, which will in return wind back boosting the sales of these games whenever they are made for the PlayStation home consoles. It's a brilliant strategy, and since Sony is one of the very last standing traditional company that still cares about producing premium quality AAA video game experiences, we'd love to see them succeed in every way. But let's talk about the quality of the film itself, shall we?

Right out of the gate, you know this is a product concocted by the corporation executives. There has been many slander from gamers especially towards the casting choices. One crucial thing to keep in mind when a form of literature is being adapted for another medium, the keyword is adaptation. Adaptation is all about finding the best way to give a new life for said literature in a new medium for old and new audience. Of course, the best case scenario would be a hundred percent faithful adaptation of the source material to satisfy the old audience which also attracts new ones in the similar way. But in the case of Uncharted, a multimillion dollar blockbuster action flick, making profit is evidently clear the first and foremost intention. It is understandable and with such intention, casting popular actors who could pull in the crowd rather than actors who would fit the bill of the characters to the T is to be expected. Although arguably Jake Gyllenhaal and George Clooney, two actors who could rake in money in the box office as Nathan Drake and Sully are much better choices than Tom Holland and Mark Walberg, we digress. This paragraph is to set the precedent of what this film's groundwork is, because if we don't get this out of the way and accept the work for what it is actually made of and for, we'd be missing the point of the motion picture and ultimately hating everything it has to offer based on emotions.

When it comes to the writing, it's basic at best. The absolute lack of motivation and need for debate to convince the characters to do something is appalling. While sometimes everything is readily available for exposition dump, this is the one part that's probably the most faithful to the games, which isn't really a good tool for cinematic storytelling. The inclusion of the character Sam (Rudy Pankow) is a legitimate surprise, and by far is the most faithful-looking character to the one in the game. Jokes mostly exist for the sake of it, and the banter between Nathan and Sully in this are enjoyable at parts. But the repeated betrayal among characters get old fast as it exists only to provide unnecessary "twists" on the plotline rather than being any meaningful character based actions.

Just like the games, Uncharted moves at a brisk pace! Although the blatant use of green screen is abysmally obvious, the action sequences that are cherry-picked from all over the games' installments, work. Auction heist, Barcelona chase, underwater trap, flight cargo struggle and the climactic battle between two ancient ships are amazing for the most parts. The puzzles are nice too. Mark Wahlberg is just loosened up having fun and it's nice to see him that way as he is the most entertaining of the lot. The great Antonio Banderas' performance is fantastic as always. Some of the film transitions are well thought out and Ramin Djawadi's score is solid . The ending where Sully finally gets his moustache and his attachment to Mr. Whiskers set up a promise for a sequel we can all look forward to optimistically.

Quite honestly, after watching the movie, Uncharted is just a regular treasure-hunting action adventure that Sony slapped the name Uncharted to it to add some initial mileage. And that is okay. The attempt seems desperate to strike some gold at the box office, which applies to all of Sony's latest film endeavors like No Way Home and Venom. All they ever care about is how much money these movies make, not how high the quality is. Gone are the days of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. Their Spider-Verse animations are astounding in terms of quality and one can't wait to see how The Last of Us HBO TV series (written by two of the brightest writers Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann) are gonna fair. With all that said, given the incredible monetary success of these products, one could only wish Sony would focus more on the actual robust quality of their films as they do their first-party video games. Or it could only get worse since money means audience want the same thing. Only time will tell.