Sometimes good timing can reward you with great success, but it only gets you so far. Like the age-old question of what makes a good adaptation, this Uncharted audio drama launched at both an opportune and unfavorable time. That’s excluding issues brought on by the pandemic.

Uncharted Territory: Movie Adaptations of Video Games

The desire for a good video game movie adaptation that pleases fans, critics, and the average moviegoer has never been higher. You can count the number of good adaptations of video game properties on one hand. They are Mortal Kombat (1995) and Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). Released approximately a generation apart (25 years), it boggles the mind how limited choices are even now. We are caught between two extremes for video game adaptations on the big screen. One that ignores the source material or one that gets the adaptation right, but is a bad movie.

The Battle of Audible Fictions and Video Illusions

Being a popular franchise for Sony’s Playstation console and having clear Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones influences, Uncharted had the daunting task of trying to be both a good video game adaptation and a critical as well as audience success. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for “Uncharted” is 90%, while the critic’s Tomatometer score sits at 41. Is this another example of the growing divide between critics and audiences, or is this fan culture run amuk and influencing metrics? So, wow does Uncharted: The Hidden Kingdom fair as an adaptation. Not having played the games or seen the movie, my only experience with Nathan Drake and crew comes from the grapevine. As far as whether this is a good adaptation, look elsewhere.

The reason I’m bringing up the movie at all is that the voice actors for Nathan and Sully are similar to Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg in their other films. Spider-Man for Tom Holland and any Wahlberg film that uses his Boston accent. In particular, the voice actor for Sully is what you get when you cross Sean Connery and Mark Wahlberg together. If the blend of Scottish and Bostonian dialect sounds odd, it’s even stranger listening to it. Ken Murdock’s performance as Sully isn’t bad, but it does stand out.

Performances: Uncharted or Homaged

Being unfamiliar with Nathan Drake’s personality in the games—his voice actor—John Doyle borrows from Holland’s first outing as Spider-Man in “Captain America: Civil War.” Overly chipper and having quips for days, Doyle acts like an older Holland who perhaps never matured. If that description sounds like Nathan Drake from the games, then they successfully pulled it off.

Whether Doyle’s performance intentionally borrowed from Tom Holland as Spider-Man remains uncertain as both productions started filming/recording around the same time. The timing might work out in the film’s favor, having cast Holland in May 2017. The production start date for “Uncharted: The Hidden Kingdom” is unknown.

A Passion Project and Fanfic in Two Parts

Split into two parts that connect plot but not tone, this is the second most noticeable aspect of the audio drama. Part 1 feels like the setup for a slightly different second half. The first half feels like a complete story, but with obvious open ends for part two to wrap up. It evokes a certain schoolboy wizard and the last two films of his film series.

Not quite endorsed by prominent people like Nolan North, who voices Nathan Drake in the video game series, but recognized as a good story—it’s a similar origin to Team Four Stars’ own with Dragonball Z Abridged. Both have lovers and haters inside the creative team behind these franchises. Not being made available for podcast platforms is certainly a drawback for some, but a necessary one for legal purposes.

All in all, it’s made by the same team as the Shadow Black Rock Remake and does about the same job adapting as it does remaking an old-time radio classic.

8/10 Stars

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