Uncharted Film Do it Right or Go Home

Kicking off the month with an interview in the LA Times, David O. Russell, the writer and director of Sony's Uncharted film, said he has a really great idea for his spin on the upcoming adaptation.

"This idea that really turns me on is that there's a family that's a force to be reckoned with in the world of international art and antiquities," Russell said. "[A family] that deals with heads of state and heads of museums and metes out justice."

We all know it's not uncommon for game canon to receive drastic alterations or to be abandoned altogether when it's adapted for mass celluloid consumption. That's not what is so profoundly asinine about Russell's idea. When Russell initially backed out of the project earlier this year over an inability to come to an agreement with studio heads, there was some semblance of a script already started—one that supposedly was a loose adaptation of Drake's Fortune, which involved modern-day fortune and glory hound Nathan Drake's quest to find the lost city of El Dorado. The screenwriters rumored to be attached to the project were perhaps a dubious lot, but taking cues from Naughty Dog's original script and the bizarre indie-leaning directorial choice of Russell seemed to suggest that perhaps Sony was actually taking Uncharted seriously.

However, when he later came back on as director, Russell was also now penning a script himself. And when he revealed what his intentions were with its narrative (which is rumored to star Mark Wahlberg as Drake as well as Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro as his uncle and father respectively), he's made it pretty clear that he has absolutely no idea what Uncharted—a series about a smartass, globe-trotting treasure hunter searching for legendary artifacts from throughout antiquity—is all about.

As if that wasn't enough, at the Hollywood opening of Russell's new film The Fighter, a fan pleaded with the director to cast fan-favorite Nathan Fillion—a man who was clearly born to play Nathan Drake if ever there was one—in Russell's film. Russell's response was that he'd never heard of Fillion. "So you want him because he looks like that guy [Drake]?" the director asked. When the fan went on to briefly explain the similarities in mannerisms between Drake and his would-be real-life counterpart, Russell appeared to be learning this information for the first time.

Now Russell has further muddied the waters. In a recent interview with Joystiq, Uncharted 3's director, Justin Richmond, has said that "all that stuff [about the film] was denied by David O. Russell," when the film director recently spoke to Richmond over the phone. "He actually called us up and was like, 'I don't know what these guys are talking about,'" Richmond said during the interview. Richmond also confirmed that Wahlberg isn't about to be confirmed as Drake, either.

So, not only has Russell basically outed himself as having never played any of the Uncharted games, but, what, was he high when he talked to the LA Times? What about all that talk about having a "family dynamic...on the bigger, more muscular stage of an international picture…[with] all the character stuff in it"? Is that not happening now? I suppose one can dream.

Needless to say, it seems pretty obvious that Russell doesn't know what he's talking about, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the Uncharted film. Either he's played the game and is just throwing the plot to the wind, instead penning a script that puts Drake and his extended family in an "antiquities mafia," (as Kotaku so eloquently put it) or he just hasn't played the games.

I had already disowned Russell's Uncharted film based on Russell's purported ideas for it—taking Drake's exploits out of the context of the pulp adventure serial format isn't just stupid, it's a slap in the face to Uncharted fans everywhere, not to mention Naughty Dog themselves. Now that Russell has suggested that all of this may not even be true, I have to wonder just what could have possibly possessed him to take on this project in the first place.

Since ignorance seems to be the order of the day here, let me spell it out: Nate Drake is clearly Indiana Jones for the twenty-first century, so any series of Uncharted films could, if handled properly, create be the start of a new pulpy adventure film dynasty—not some idiotic mash-up of Goodfellas, Repo Men, and National Treasure. As much as I would love to see Nathan Fillion as Drake, the reality of that situation still seems highly unlikely—even if he was cast that wouldn't account for questionable quality of Russell's script. And with Uncharted 3 now set to release late next year (and already shaping up to be stunning), do we really need further cinematic adventures of Nate Drake?

Maybe not.