Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland in ‘Uncharted’
Sony
Sony has offered up this new trailer for Uncharted, an adaptation of Naughty Dog’s popular Playstation video game series. I’m assuming this will play in front of Denzel Washington’s very good Journal For Jordan when it opens tomorrow, as when I took the kids to Spider-Man: No Way Home in Dolby on Tuesday we got the old Uncharted trailer.
The onscreen text arguing that the film is an adventure 500 years in the making is not a reference to the film’s development cycle. This adaptation has been in the works for so long that Mark Wahlberg has gone from being cast as the dashing young adventurer to his crusty older mentor/foil. Honestly, it’s been in development for so long that Mark Wahlberg has gone from a genuine butts-in-seats movie star to, well, there’s really no such thing for big-budget movies anymore unless you’re Leonardo DiCaprio and, uh, Leonardo DiCapro.
All the chatter about whether Spider-Man: No Way Home means Tom Holland (good actor and seemingly decent human being) is a “star” forgets about Chaos Walking, a halfway decent YA fantasy flick that starred Holland and Daisy Ridley and earned $26.4 million worldwide earlier this year. Yes, Covid remains an issue, but it’s not like the Doug Liman-directed dystopian fantasy was going to be the next Hunger Games in conventional circumstances.
As for Uncharted, it’s an example of a property being turned into a movie because it’s popular in another medium. Heck, it took so long that the game is now over 14 years old, which means the film may qualify for “the IP was once popular” status as opposed to being a present-tense brand like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990 or Mortal Kombat in 1995.
Yes, Sony is on a roll of late (Peter Rabbit 2, Venom 2, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Spider-Man: No Way Home), but there’s always a chance for a “nobody cares” adaptation or reboot akin to The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Charlie’s Angels and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.
Just because audiences like Tom Holland as Spider-Man doesn’t mean they’ll show up for him in anything non-Spidey related, just as frankly that Spider-Man 3 version 2 and Venom 2 are popular doesn’t mean Jared Leto’s Morbius is a surefire hit next month. Every project is different with a unique set of variables. And modern stardom means at best you’re an added value element when playing a marquee character (see – Tom Hardy in Venom).
Wahlberg may be an added value element (bless everyone who pushed the terrific Instant Family to $120 million worldwide in 2018), but he’s not the draw he was in the early 2010’s. Nobody is, save for DiCaprio.
Uncharted, starring Antonio Banderas, Sophia Ali and Tati Gabrielle, at least boasts a pretty cool “Never seen that before” action scene set on pirate ships being flown mid-air by helicopters, which is true to the game’s “What if you could play an Indiana Jones movie?” mentality.
The film opens February 18, alongside Channing Tatum’s military dramedy Dog and just after Jennifer Lopez’ Marry Me. Fingers crossed, but, unless Nathan Drake is as big a marquee character as Lara Croft or Sonic the Hedgehog, we usually know how this story ends.
