Uncharted Movie Review

Uncharted narrates the story of Drake and Sullivan, who compete against the wealthy Santiago Moscada and mercenary leader Jo Braddock to find the lost treasure of the Magellan Expedition. This movie adaptation of the famous PlayStation game has been successful during the past week since its debut on February 18th. Uncharted has made $83.5 million in US and Canadian theaters, ranking it #1 in the Box Office. However, even though the numbers are great, the movie did not reach the expectations of RenderQ’s editors. In this article, you will read each editor’s opinions on the new film, Uncharted. 

Shane’s Review

Uncharted uses the typical tropes that we’ve seen a million times in movies to create a bland action-adventure film that is only entertaining on the surface level. Many of the story points and characterizations come right from a million movies that we’ve seen before, leaving everything to feel cliche. The word that I will be using a lot during this review is bland because that was how I felt while watching the movie. The characters were boring and uninteresting, and the plot was just a general treasure hunt movie. Having characters constantly turning on each other for me became frustrating. 

I think the part of the film that I disliked the most was the story’s villains. I literally saw this movie about 40 minutes ago and I can’t tell you their names; I know that my memory isn’t that bad yet. Having the lead henchman turn on her boss and become the bad guy was a foolish decision because she was just as uninteresting a character as her boss. The Chloe character was okay; I’m just unsure why they decided to feature her so heavily during the second act, ultimately for her to disappear during the third. Tom Holland and Mark Walberg had some good on screen chemistry. If the film had a little slower pace to develop the two of them, I would have enjoyed it more. 

    As far as the action in the movie, I felt that it went a little crazy during the climax. Every movie has to have some level of suspension of disbelief, but I felt the logic of some of the action set pieces were a little too outlandish with this movie. For example, the film’s climax  has two ancient pirate ships that were being carried over open water by helicopters. Every time it would cut to one of the ships crashing into a mountain or into each other, I  wondered why the ships didn’t just come apart given how old they are but in the movie they’re even more sturdy than the day they were made. I would overlook issues like these if I was more invested in the story, but I was so far removed that these kinds of things stood way more than they usually would.

I think this movie is perfectly okay. It wasn’t a negative experience watching it ,but it’s the kind of movie I’ll see once and then I’ll forget about a week later. To the average person who just wants to watch an adventure movie, I would say that there are plenty of better choices. However, I wouldn’t say  they should avoid watching this if they wanted to. 

Andrea’s Review

Uncharted was a movie full of adventure, drama, and conflict. However, most of its success was because of the cast. After Tom Holland’s successful debut in Spider-Man: No Way Home, we were eager to see him once more on the big screen. The chemistry between Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg really sold the movie. In addition to these actors, the reappearance of Antonio Banderas and the beautiful performance of Tati Gabrielle as the villain are what attracted audiences to see this movie in theaters. Apart from the actors, the setting in New York, Spain, and the Philippines gave the film attractive visuals that audiences would not want to miss. However, even though the cast and setting were great, many other aspects did not reach my expectations. 

Plot-wise, Uncharted was a very predictable movie. This adaptation of the Play Station game echoes what we have seen in other famous adventure movies such as Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider. It consists of a treasure hunt and all the conflicts the protagonist has to go through to find gold. Apart from the movie being predictable and repetitive, most of the main characters’ obstacles were solved at a very fast pace and in an unrealistically easy way. This approach left me feeling like the film did not provide the space for the characters to develop with all the realistic ups and downs that one would expect from these types of films. The fact that Uncharted is a movie adaptation of the Play Station game might justify many of the plot’s downfalls. However, there are some aspects that the filmmakers should have reconsidered when making games into movies so it won’t end up being a cliche.

When we talk about Uncharted’s visual effects, this film also had its ups and downs. My first impression of the plane scene would be that some of the shots seemed unreal or not perfectly composited. However, researching the behind the scenes, it left me impressed that most of the stunts were done practically on a blue screen set to the point that even the actors were injured while performing. This movie was definitely not easy to make. 

Another significant physical critique was how filmmakers pulled off the scene in which massive wooden ships were carried by helicopters. The whole scene was hard to believe, and even though the main action scenes were done practical,  it was evident that the flying pirate ships were CG elements.

In general, I did enjoy watching this movie. Even though it did not reach my expectations, seeing the actors perform, their chemistry, and the film’s beautiful cinematography were satisfying to watch.

Alexis’s Review (With some minor spoilers)

Although the movie piqued my interest in playing the Uncharted video games, it did a poor job of piquing my interest in the storyline or characters. This movie had some positives, such as the actors’ enthusiasm in acting and some beautiful cinematic shots. But there were also a lot of negatives, such as the storyline and the poor development of characters.

Starting with the positive of the ‘Uncharted’ movie, I will say the actors all acted very well together. You could tell they were very enthusiastic and were excited about playing their characters. Especially Tati Gabrielle as one of the villains in the movie. I will say the movie as a whole had some really nice lighting and cinematic shots. The colorists of the film did a good job, and it definitely gave off a video game vibe.

Since it was based on a video game, I can see that the screenwriters might have had difficulty coming up with a cohesive story. But instead of coming up with something creative out of their challenges, they took the easy route out and made something ghastly cliche. The storyline seemed to me like a middle schooler’s creative writing midterm; a typical exposition, predictable betrayals, and the usual greedy character’s arc at the ending. Additionally, the plot was not very surprising. Some scenes felt like I had seen them before in other movies, such as when water is coming up to drown two of the characters and another scene where they find the treasure in a sunny abandoned cave. I felt like the movie was a mixture of other films and novels like The Davinci Code and Indiana Jones. For a story to be good, you need your audience to connect with the characters and make them relatable. Because the character development for the main character was incredibly cliche- losing his brother, who was his role model figure and then following in his footsteps-  we as an audience cannot relate to him. There were also not many hurdles for the character to develop further; he stayed the same person throughout the entire film. Most films that have good characters are ones where you go on a journey with them as they learn more about themselves which in the process connects them to you, the audience. Because all of the “hurdles” in the movie were so incredibly easy, the characters did not struggle enough to develop as people. The challenges in the film were also not very surprising when they were revealed how something gets solved; it was just an “oh okay, nice” reaction to it all. If you want just any old action movie to take up some time in your evening, this one will do.

Most of the visual effects were pretty decent, but a couple of shots could have been worked on a bit more. One scene that really negatively stood out to me was when the main character and the girl with the black hair (I can’t remember their names because they developed the characters so horribly, Jake Cage? John Drake? Honestly I have no clue) were falling from the airplane trying to grab onto a box. The concept was interesting, but the execution was lacking. You could visibly see that they were using a ton of motion blur to hide the fact that they were using CG characters instead of the actual characters. The scene looked very sloppy overall. Additionally, there was a scene where the villain was walking out of a plane with her henchmen. The virtual background for that shot looked incredibly integrated. It didn’t look photoreal at all, but I will say, if they were trying to achieve video game quality graphics, they got that right. Visual effects is all about making fake things believable while still being based on the rules of reality. One story aspect that the director thought was alright to have on-screen was the ending chase. Good Lord. Visual effects are indeed fake, but what makes their fakeness so real is that they still try to follow the rules and physics of reality even though there is some creative leeway. The moviemakers really thought it was “cool” to have little helicopters hauling ships made in the 1500s that also held tons of gold in their cargo. I can’t even begin to talk about this scene because it is so incredibly childish that it makes me laugh but also cringe. Just think about it, helicopters trying to lift wooden ships made in the 1500s that have been exposed to the elements and nature for hundreds of years…

At the beginning of my review, I didn’t think this movie was that bad. But thinking back upon it, many things made me change my opinion more towards the negative. Hollywood needs to try putting in some effort to make good stories instead of creating half-assed cliches that are just chucked in the theaters to rake in money. Negatives aside, I think it must have been a fantastic opportunity for Tom Holland to live his dream acting as a character that he had always wanted to play. In the future, I hope that screenwriters stray far away from cliches such as this one.

Overall, many people might disagree with our opinion. Audiences love adventure movies and enjoy watching a classic treasure hunt. Also, if you are a fan of the game, you will definitely enjoy this movie since many scenes were faithfully recreated from the game. Uncharted is available to watch on Theaters. Give it a chance, watch it and develop your own opinion.