Video game movies are truly pointless. Whether it's Max Payne, Silent Hill, Hitman, or Assassin's Creed, these expensive Hollywood spin-offs are always wildly inferior to the source material. Every time a new one is announced, people wonder if this could be the movie that finally breaks the spell of bad video game adaptations. Then it doesn't, because they never do. Even when the movie is decent, it still feels like a hollow copy of the thing it's based on. They borrow imagery and plot elements from the games, and throw in cute references for the fans. But they forget that a big part of the appeal of video games is that they're interactive. You're not just passively observing the action on a screen—you're there, engaging with the world on your own terms, guiding the characters, making your own stories.
I watch these movies and I wonder why I'm not just playing the game instead—and I've never felt that more strongly than when I saw the newly unveiled Uncharted trailer. Everything else aside, the trailer makes it look totally sterile and joyless, with none of the grit, wit, or charm of the Indiana Jones movies that inspired Uncharted in the first place. Tom Holland is a good actor, but he doesn't feel very Nathan Drake at all. Charisma vacuum Mark Wahlberg (who also stunk up the awful Max Payne movie) looks like he's just there to pay the bills. The production design is completely uninspiring and drab. The jokes are terrible. It's just so flat. The Uncharted games are bold, thrilling, rip-roaring adventures. That's why people love them. But this looks absolutely tepid in comparison.
It also seems to be recreating moments from the games—most notably the famous cargo plane sequence from Uncharted 3. In the game this was incredible. A technically impressive, masterfully constructed slice of tense platforming action. There wasn't much actual threat, because Uncharted games are so painstakingly choreographed that you rarely get a chance to screw up. But you felt the danger because you were in control of Drake. The film's take on it, however, just looks like Tom Holland on a soundstage with a big fan pointed at him. Take away the interactive aspect and half the power of this moment is stripped away. It raises the same question every video game movie does: it's not as good, so why bother?
Uncharted has always been heavily derivative of Hollywood adventure movies, whether it's The Goonies, Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone, or The Mummy. But you forgive it for it, because it's your chance to experience the excitement of these films in a more personal, interactive way. You can be Indiana Jones, not just sit there and watch him having all the fun from a distance. But when you take Uncharted and put it on the big screen, in the same medium as the many films it shamelessly cribs from, it only highlights how unimaginative it is. Uncharted is great because it's a game, but it doesn't have much to offer outside of that context.
But hey, trailers can be misleading. There are plenty of great films with bad trailers, so I don't want to dunk on the Uncharted movie too hard—especially before I've actually seen it. I'm just making an educated guess, based on decades of being disappointed by video game movies, that this won't be the one that breaks the cycle. All signs point to this being yet another example of a cinematic video game spin-off that fails to live up to the quality of what it's adapted from. If that's the case, well, there are several excellent Uncharted games out there to play.