Uncharted (2022)
Video game adaptations have had a famously troubled relationship with cinema, and Uncharted arrives as one of the most anticipated, and most protracted, attempts to buck that trend. The game series, developed by Naughty Dog and first released by Sony in 2007, spent the better part of two decades building a reputation as the closest thing gaming had to a Spielbergian blockbuster: globe-trotting set pieces, wisecracking leads, and a pulpy, Raiders-adjacent sense of fun. A film version had been rattling around Hollywood since at least 2008, cycling through various directors and lead actors (David O. Russell and Mark Wahlberg were attached for a spell, which is its own curious footnote given what eventually materialised) before landing, finally, with Ruben Fleischer at the helm. By the time cameras rolled, the project had been in some form of development for over a decade, which is rarely a sign of smooth sailing behind the scenes.
Fleischer is a director whose career sits somewhere between reliable and uneven. He made a genuine impression with Zombieland (2009) and returned to that franchise a decade later for Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), both films that leaned hard into tone and cast chemistry. He also directed Venom (2018) for Sony, another comic-book-adjacent property that divided audiences, which makes his assignment here feel less like an accident and more like a studio decision to keep things in house. Uncharted was produced under Sony's PlayStation Productions banner alongside Columbia Pictures and Atlas Entertainment, with a reported budget in the region of 120 million dollars. The source material gave him plenty to work with: a self-contained, lightly serialised adventure with a well-defined pair of leads and a proven formula for spectacle. The screenplay, credited to Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, follows a young Nathan Drake, a quick-witted bartender with a talent for street-level thievery, as he is recruited by the roguish veteran treasure hunter Victor "Sully" Sullivan in pursuit of a fortune tied to the Magellan expedition, while also searching for traces of his missing elder brother.
The cast assembled around that premise is, on paper at least, a reasonable pitch. Tom Holland, fresh off the enormous success of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), brings his well-practised blend of boyish energy and physical agility to the role of Drake. Mark Wahlberg, no stranger to the action genre after films like Lone Survivor (2013), steps into the role of Sullivan, the older, more calculating half of the double act. Antonio Banderas provides the film's principal antagonist, a polished but unremarkable villain in the mould of a dozen similar roles, while Sophia Ali and Tati Gabrielle fill out the supporting ensemble with varying degrees of screen time. Whether those casting choices pay off in practice is another matter entirely.
If you’ve spent many hours scaling the treacherous cliffs and ancient ruins of the Uncharted video game series like I have, sitting down to watch Ruben Fleischer’s 2022 film adaptation feels less like a cinematic reunion and more like a profound betrayal.
When you have that level of attachment to a franchise, having played every entry extensively, you naturally expect the screen translation to at least capture the spirit, the charm, or the basic DNA of the source material. Instead, I found myself staring at a film so wildly divorced from the games that it registers as a massive, glaring missed opportunity.
The absolute crux of the issue, and what makes this picture so frustrating to sit through, is the appalling casting. Mark Wahlberg, an actor I generally quite like, is a thoroughly baffling choice for the lovable rogue Victor "Sully" Sullivan. He brings none of the weathered, charismatic charm of the original, and paired alongside Tom Holland as Nathan Drake, the dynamic completely falls flat. I’ll be honest, Holland routinely annoys me on screen, and here he has absolutely zero in common with the gruff, seasoned treasure hunter we know and love. It’s a casting decision so fundamentally misguided that it poisons the well for the entire runtime. Fair play to Antonio Banderas, who is perfectly fine as the villain, but one decent turn can’t rescue a ship that’s already taking on water.
I will concede that the picture isn't a visual disaster. The set pieces are undeniably exciting, and the CGI-heavy action sequences are fine, delivering the kind of loud, blockbuster spectacle you’d expect from a major studio tentpole. There are moments where the sheer kinetic energy of a cargo plane heist almost makes you forget the glaring narrative shortcomings. But flashy explosions and decent production design can only do so much heavy lifting when the emotional core and the central character chemistry are entirely hollow.
Uncharted is yet another depressing entry in the long, sad history of video game movies that fall so far short of their potential. Fleischer had the blueprint for a cracking, globe-trotting adventure, but instead delivered a generic, personality-free action romp that feels like a bit of a mess. It’s a frustrating watch for fans who know exactly what this franchise is capable of, and a thoroughly mediocre experience for everyone else.
Uncharted is unlikely to be the last word on video game adaptations, and the genre's track record has shown occasional signs of improvement (the reception to HBO's The Last of Us, another Naughty Dog property, makes for an instructive comparison). But as a standalone film it lands as something polished but unremarkable, a studio product that spent years in development and emerged without any clear sense of what it actually wanted to say, or who it most wanted to be. The treasure, it turns out, was not the friends we made along the way.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2026-07-25
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Uncharted (2022) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Channel 4 Plus
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Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Hulu · fuboTV · YouTube TV
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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