It’s been a long, hard climb up the side of a train dangling over the side of a cliff (metaphorically) for the Uncharted movie, but the trailer for the Sony film has finally landed. The movie stars Tom Holland as Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg as Sully, finding the pair meeting for the first time and acting as a prequel to the games, where Sully is Nathan’s mentor and they’re both older.
The trailer is basically one long action set piece with a bunch of quipping thrown into it, which, to be fair, is what the games are as well. There are definitely plenty of nods to the game as well, like Holland climbing up some crate straps to get back into a plane (You can just feel the QTEs.) and his shirts’ sleeves always being rolled up no matter what the situation. Aside from that, however, there doesn’t seem to be much in the trailer to separate the Uncharted movie from the rest of the generic action blockbusters out there other than the branding. The Uncharted games excelled at putting players into these cliches, but taking the interaction out of them just makes them cliches again.
The movie also stars Tati Gabrielle as Braddock, Sophia Ali as Chloe Frazer, and Antonio Banderas in an unidentified role that is clearly the bad guy. He looks to be trying to stop Sully and Nathan from discovering a treasure somehow connected to Magellan and Nathan’s brother, Sam, who, at this point in time, is thought dead. Ruben Fleischer is directing the film, which might be another strike against it as his action direction in Venom was a total mess. It seems pretty clear from this trailer that the Uncharted movie will live or die on its action, and if Fleischer delivers the messiness of Venom with none of the campiness that Tom Hardy brought, then it won’t be good.
Uncharted will land only in theaters on February 18, 2022.
