It has long been known that film adaptations of video games have rarely been good.
This year saw the release of “Mortal Kombat” to mixed/decent response (Kano worked, not much else), and “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” which bombed hard.
Sony is trying again though with “Uncharted,” the upcoming film take on the celebrated Naughty Dog video game series. Four games have been published in the series with the second considered one of the greatest ever made (96/100 on Metacritic), while the third and fourth are also beloved.
The film has had one trailer so far which generated a lot of reactions. However, a good portion of it has been fans taking issue with everything from the odd casting of Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, to its seeming lack of resemblance to the franchise bar the occasional reference, iconography borrowing and one key action sequence.
The film’s director Ruben Fleischer recently spoke with Empire (via Slashfilm) about the ‘video game curse’ that has ruined various past adaptations of games into movies. According to the filmmaker, his approach to avoid such a curse is to try and avoid being too slavish to the source material:
“Part of the problem is that they’re trying to recreate the games. Because players have had such a visceral experience, I don’t think you can compete with that.
I wanted to make sure [‘Uncharted’] worked as a film first. When you’re playing the games, it feels like you’re inside a movie, so having the opportunity to bring it to life was a real dream come true.
We tried to take inspiration from the games whenever we could, but we also wanted to have original set pieces that aren’t a part of the games at all. I’ve never seen anything like our third act finale before and I think it will blow people away.”
“Uncharted” comes to cinemas on February 18th 2022.
