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For me, the biggest issue with video game adaptations is that a majority of them are movies and not television series. People play video games for hours upon hours connecting with characters. Attempting to truncate that experience into a 90-120 minute film is a losing battle. Just like the game, you need the audience to live with the characters for a long journey. The Last of Us would have failed miserably as a movie. Uncharted would've succeeded as a series(with different casting of course).
Similar to how Walking Dead was better then Dawn of the Dead (or even Romero's works) because they had far far more time for character development. You care when those characters died where as the people you literally learned about 30 mins ago don't have nearly the same weight.
It can work for shorter games or ones where the story isn't the the important part (like Mario and Sonic). For narrative-focused games though, yeah, a movie is just not long enough to make you care about any of it.
Agreed. You miss all those beautiful moments in the Jeeps and walking around ruins with Sully, Elena, Nate and even Sam with the littlest of dialogue that exposes who they are as characters rushing through a dog shit adaptation that seems to not care about the original game AT ALL.
Also the direction behind the Last of Us show is just masterful. They were able to make both subtle and major changes but still make the story feel complete and properly adapted. Like, the whole Bill episode could've literally been a standalone movie about 2 guys trying to find trust and love in a post apocalyptic world and it would've worked.
That episode blew my mind. I knew the writers could go the route of having Frank kill Bill the moment Bill let his guard down, but I was hoping they'd take a less cynical route and I was not disappointed.
Actually my favourite episode. Since it was standalone and very lengthy, it felt like a film and the pacing was just right. The whole of the season though, not so much. Was quite good at the start, and the individual episodes work quite well, but the pacing throughout felt kinda off. The ending also didn't do it for me. A bit anticlimactic.
I think the hallmark of good writing is the fact that every character feels like they could have their own films, or could at least carry an episode. Yknow? If you write every character well enough you must be doing SOMETHING right
Eddie looks like the dad that's desperately trying to bond with his son but Tony looks like the cool stepdad who the son admires and bonds with instantly
It's also worth mentioning Amy Hennig left Naughty Dog during the development of of the 4th game. She was very influential in the direction the story and the writing went. People like to erase her influence like she didn't matter but she absolutely did. And the movie definitely suffered as a result of this too
@@theleftybros4716 Straley helped co-write the story and made some major changes to things that Neil originally wrote. And for me personally, it definitely showed in TLOU2 that Bruce wasn't involved in the slightest with how terrible it is lmao
I was an extra in the last of us, and you could tell that everyone had a love for the production and the game. Even in watching set dec, they paid attention to every tiny little detail. For example, my back was to the camera most of my scene and you can only see my arm and the back of my head, but the makeup people decided they’d give me a sunburn because there wouldn’t have been sunscreen. Cool eh? Thought I’d share how dedicated everyone was for TLOU
That is such an amazing detail, I love when people creating things care so much that they cover details that very few people ever even would have noticed or thought about, thank you for sharing!
Mark Wahlberg being cast as Sully was one of the most baffling casting choices I’ve ever borne witness to and I’m so glad there are other people as angry and confused about it as I am
@@blueflare3848 it’s hilarious cuz he fits REALLY well for a younger Nathan or like a teenage Nate, for the sections of Uncharted 3 and 4 when we saw him that way. Other than those few sections, I completely agree. He’s got a babyface compared to older Nate from the games.
It was depressing how uncinematic the film was compared to the games. My favourite parts of the series are when you enter a new area and have these overwhelming landscape vistas revealed. There were no moments in the movie that inspired awe, mostly due to the fact that they only go to two different locations and there’s barely any ancient ruins (except for a small room hidden under a bar and a cave with two massive pirate ships). Also insane that there’s maybe two whole action sequences in the entire 2-hour run time!
The thing that gets me is Uncharted CAN be adapted! The fan film starring Nathan Fillion is AMAZING. And its because you can tell that everyone involved loves the games and wants to bring them to life. It references things like the transition from cutscene to gameplay in its framing. Nathan Fillion acts like Nate. He LOOKS like Nate, if maybe a bit old for the part. But no one really got paid for that project. They made it because they wanted to. The Uncharted movie was made for money, not love or art.
That fan film captured Nathan Drake as a character, but I think the Uncharted movie captured the silly, B-movie, early 2000s action adventure dumb fun (with it's own set of problems to match). Yeah it was made for money no doubt, that many change in hands between rando hollywood white doods tells us that much, but that doesn't mean the result is inherently purely shit. My point really is both were adapted, none were entirely shot for shot and they just had different goals that they achieved to varying levels. I think TLoU show was done really well and still *incredibly* and dangerously flawed, but I think a lot of the comparisons going on here are not really comparing the same things very fairly.
@@zumabbarHe was just terribly miscast. I think he could work so well in adventure movie if he played a character like Milo Thatch from Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
You forgot to mention how the adaptation of The Last of Us also went through development hell. They announced they were working on a movie not too long after the first game came out and, at one point, the project even had Sam Raimi attached to it.
That's not really a fair comparison at all. The Last of Us movie and the TV show are completely separate projects. Just because they were both planned adaptations of the same source material doesn't mean it went through development hell to get released. They scrapped the movie a long time ago and then Craig decided he wanted to make the show with Neil. The released product of the TV show didn't go through any development issues.
On the topic of the Percy Jackson movies, the author tried and tried to get the studio to stop messing with the film. He sent multiple emails and they just straight up didn’t listen. So he tried but ultimately the studio just didn’t care
I met Mr Riordan once and we spoke about the movie. He said the most frustrating thing was that he wrote the book to be as easy to translate to film as possible hoping it would be adapted one day... And look what he got 😢😂
@@andrewking9454 I really hope this new series will bring back the glory of the Percy Jackson series and do it justice. Pretty sure he’s much more hands on with the Tv series
@@therestingmitchface6241 It already earns points in my book by having the main characters be the same age as the characters in the book. No weird sexual tension between percy and annabeth to get in the way of them interacting like kids, hopefully.
Dude that moment where you guys talk about fools gold and how u both associate it with the same memory is such a good sibling feeling and im glad u included that
Is there more to say than a huge THANK YOU for the amazing actor playing eddys brother? Like damn he REALLY got into the zone as a close blood relative. Truly incredible impersonation with an original twist.
Uncharted felt like a Sparknotes recap from someone who played each game once many years ago. Last of Us felt like an extremely close adaptation that actually followed it very closely.
The chemistry/relationship with Nathan and Sully was so perfect in the games 😭 the fact that sully didn’t care about Nate in the movie but just the treasure is just SAD. When sully first met Nate in Uncharted 3 he was impressed by Nate and eventually helped him escape Marlowes Men and became best buds soon after… BUT in the movie he just comes in and says, “hey man want to steal this famous artifact, you in?”
Let alone, an apparent father figure and eventually grandfather figure for Cassie which was really cute additionally, an honorary inspiration for their dog's name too lmao
THIS. this is the biggest offender of the movie, Sully's character. I'm sure they wanted the relationship between Sully & Nate in the movie to be rocky at first so, generally speaking, it would be much more rewarding when they turned into a team in the end, hence why Sully is such a dick in the movie. Regardless of not they succeeded, that's not the Sully people who've played the games comes to know. Ii'll go as far as admitting Sully didn't have that much of personal arc in the games (which why U3 missed a big opportunity for that), but i dont care about that lol. Not a writer, but pretty sure you can figure out something interesting if they'd started Sully this way.
Y’all are so funny but also like- your passion is infectious. I never played the uncharted games and now I’m so upset with how dirty our story was done
Fun fact, the voice actors in The Last of Us (game) had secondary roles in the TV show, including Troy Baker (Joel/James) Ashley Johnson (Ellie/Anna) Jeffry Pierce (Tommy/Perry) Merle Dandridge (Marlene/Marlene).
9:55 I'm SO glad you guys brought this up! That scene with Elena is one of the most memorable scenes from the entire franchise, and as you guys have said, she IS Uncharted, together with Nate and Sully. I can't believe they cut her from the film.
The entire time I first watched the film, I kept expecting her to pop up somehow because it just felt so hollow without her (among other reasons, they really butchered the characterization of pretty much everyone)
I think it's a blessing in disguise that they cut her from the movie. With how badly they butchered pretty much every character, I shudder to think how Elena would've turned out.
@@the_julia_fairno I mostly do agree with what you're saying however I honestly thought that Tom Holland was a convincing version of Nathan Drake. For me he actually really worked, and I did not expect that at all. When I heard he was going to be playing the character I had zero faith in that but it turned out that he was pretty damn good. The real problem was that everybody else in the movie was not a good adaptation of the character they portray. And also Elena wasn't there, like she is number one girl in the entire franchise. They can't do an uncharted movie without her and expect people to appreciate it.
I think any adaptation of a game or a book or whatever HAS to be a tv show. Because they're almost always longer than what you can fit in a movie, so it will always lost most of what makes the game/book so great if you try to fit the story into 2 hours. But with a tv show, especially if the studio is able to give you so many resources like HBO with the last of us, then they can make the story exactly as it is.
I think it depends on the type of game. If it’s a heavy narrative game, then I think a tv show works best. If they are adapting the game that’s not so narrative heavy, a movie can work just fine. It’s basically the difference between the Last of Us and Mario/Sonic the Hedgehog
I agree with you somewhat, you CAN make a good movie adaption, but the problem lies in WHAT about it is getting adapted. Like, how to train your dragon is a book adaption, but it looks almost NOTHING like the book; but it WORKS because they kept the core theme of the book of the unconventional hero. The harry potter movies work really well because they're so loyal to the source material when it came to how the sets and characters looked. There ARE decent movie adaptions...it just feels like too many adaptions try to combine the first few books/episodes/games into one story and it all falls apart bc that's too much.
not necessarily but a tv show does afford some advantages. you can tell a very good story in little over 2 hrs, best case i can provide of the top of my head would be Shawshank redemption, 2hr 22 minutes, great story told well and it was based on a book.
I don't think it has anything to do with being a movie or TV show. Just look at The Witcher disaster. You just need writers that won't change things out of ego, the changes must be for the betterment of the pace, structure, or characters.
It really feels like they just casted Mark Walburg and Tom Holland so they could have two big names on the screen. When I watched it I hadn’t played the games but even I knew that there’s no way the games could actually be like this.
Another bop of a video, but I was absolutely pulling my hair out when you guys didnt bring up the Fan Made film starring Nathan Fillian as Nathan Drake, which was a 10ish minute short film that was genuinely better than the whole official movie, the casting was genuinely S tier
It's like you guys reached into my head and extracted a script for a video essay from a rant that no one in my life will let me dump on them. Sending you guys so much love for actually delving deeper into the Uncharted lore. Nate and Sully's relationship is just as deep as Joel and Ellie's, thanks for shining a light on them. Love you guys, keep up the great work, y'all are amazing!
obsessed with this video for a million reasons but mostly because I remember watching all the updates about the development of the uncharted movie over the years and impatiently waiting and it’s very satisfying to see it all laid out as the pure disaster that it was. but also honestly y’all hit the nail on the head with why these two adaptations worked out so differently
this video also perfectly encapsulates the issues i had with the witcher adaptation. passion is such an important aspect of any project but especially one that has a beloved source material like a book or game
So cool to see that you guys decided to adapt those inanimate voices into real people! Have to say though that this casting is a little offbeat, but it's nice to see you guys giving these two fresh actors a gig!
this format remains absolutely fantastic, your banter is great and your research and passion is very clear, and i think the face cams add so much to the humor and keeping it visually interesting. i think this was a really excellent direction for the channel!
I think the overall biggest issue is that writers are trying to sum up entire series in a 2 hour hodgepodge story. Filling in lots of visual highlights of the series at the cost of any meaning. The greatest video game adaptations have either been taking much smaller samples of the source material and writing around that (like Last of Us) or creating their own story that captures the essence of the game (like Cyberpunk Edgerunners and the Mario movie). Hollywood has seemed to think that people who love the games just want to see their favorite scenes in live action, but they’re finally starting to learn that characters are the most important thing to get right.
Dude they finally acquired an extra vessel for Tony's ethereal consciousness. The kind of things you can do when the subs start picking up, it is crazy.
I wrote an essay on this topic for college and the general idea for game adaptions is just to make sure you stick to the games premise and don't make an entirely new unseen story
Yeah exactly episode 3 is the biggest deviation from the game and it’s still my favorite episode. I love how it tv can expand the world and still give he same result
I loved the games and have been playing the first game regularly for the past ten years, and I love every episode of the show. The show is great because of the appreciation it has for the games and because of the little changes that add to the story better than the game did. Episode three is phenomenal, they took my favorite part of the game and changed it from teaching Joel how to use a shotgun to being able to play a significant part in the story by showing the audience that in this violent world, the only thing that matters most anymore is the loving relationships we have.
@@cdw2468 yes, that was the Offerman episode. Their story was changed to be "the happiest ending in the world of Last of Us", and it still had me bawling on the couch.
As a gay transgender man, having a non-stereotypical gay couple have a story that is still tragic, because the setting is tragic, but the tragedy isn't the focus, two people meeting and falling in love and making the best out of their tragic setting that ends with them choosing how their story ends was just so absolutely fantastic. Also, the fact that we never see their bodies, and their friends respect the note (literally burying the "bury your gays" trope by NOT BURYING THEM) and then finishing on that window shot that is reminiscent of the menu screen from the first game, the absolute perfect casting of both characters... it all comes together to make one of the greatest episodes of television ever made. The little giggle Nick Offerman does when he eats the strawberry is also one of the most adorable things I've ever seen in my entire life.
Whoever scored the uncharted games will forever be remembered. Just Eddy playing the music for drakes fortune gave me goosebumps. Ironically, the complete opposite effect the movie had on me in theaters.
The best part of the Uncharted movie was the Nolan North cameo. Not only does it pay respect to the original actor, it also suggests that somehow the Nathan Drake from the games actually exists in this universe and Tom Holland is just some other guy who happens to have the same name and a similar life.
The fact that they didn't cast Nolan North as Sully makes me so livid. It would have both been a great nod to his tenure as Nathan but he would have played Sully as the lovable yet tough character Sully is in the games.
Not related to this video, but.. Yesterday, I was watching an old Eddie video (The Dare one) while playing Breath of the Wild. I caught my first horse for the playthrough while watching the video, so I named him Eddie. Eddie died 5 minutes later to a Guardian. Sorry, Eddie. ❤
great video as always! in my opinion, adapting these sorts of linear narrative video games into movies is generally a bad idea because you'll be squeezing dozens of hours of content into one movie. it makes much more sense to adapt them for tv.
It's acutally kinda sad seeing how they butched it that hard, I'd still love to see a mini series or something like that, just another try to do it right this time with a cast of characters that fit
As much as I like Tom Holland in the Spider-Man movies, he's kinda trapped with his baby face - It's not only going to be hard to see him as anyone other then Spider-Man, but also as someone older then 20. Mark Wahlberg simply isn't a good choice for movies outside of his normal wheelhouse, let alone in a role that requires gravitas.
Hey boys! This video feels like what I’ve been waiting for from Burback!!! I’ve LOVED every other video but this feels like y’all have hit your stride! Hilarious and accurate! Love y’all!
With a different cast and a character driven script where the plot was secondary to the motivations of the characters, who knows, it could’ve been super fun. Great video!
I absolutely loved watching you guys play through KH2. I rewatched the VODS everyday until twitch deleted them. Those VODS got me through one of the darkest times in my life and I really miss watching them. I’d pay to see them again.
Love the new development to the stye! I love how the Burback vids feel like a combination between a classic video essay and a podcast, and addition of seeing you guys really adds to that! Keep up the good work!
i watched te uncharted movie w my mom and sister (none of us have every touched an uncharted game) and we were all incredibly bored until the ship chase which was the most anxiety inducing thing ive ever seen. like my sister actually yelled out loud when the shit crashed into the rocks THEY WERE PERFECTLY PRESERVED FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS same with the salt urns it actually made us upset when they broke
I care soooo incredibly much about TLOU. Obviously the show did some things different, but I loved it. nothing will ever compare to the game ofc but as far as video game media goes, TLOU was for sure top tier.
Really enjoying seeing both of the burback boys on screen. Also loving the interesting content you're uploading on this channel. Keep up the great work boys! Edit: the henchman death was fantastic.
although i’ve only watched a let’s play for uncharted 4 (and immediately fell in love with it), i was so excited for the movie, and then early on in the production, i find out one of my most favorite actors is playing a young nathan drake. i swear it was a perfect match. here i was thinking that maybe a quarter of the film was going to be nathan’s past meaning the adult nathan drake is still to be casted… and then years went by… and then that photo of tom clearly dressed as adult nathan drake came out. i’ll admit, i thought it was pretty sick, but i was also worried… and then the movie came out.. although i still had fun watching it, it wasn’t the adaptation i was looking for of the game i fell in love with a few years back. but honestly, i feel like tom holland could’ve pulled off nathan if they actually put love and care into the movie. it’s not even an adaptation at this point, it’s just a completely different movie that so happens to have the same name as a game.
I think the biggest reason is that TLOU has a laser focus on what story it want's to tell, the story, tone and characters are all in synch which make sit easy to adapt. uncharted is a big mix, there are serious interpersonal problems in 4 and serious discussion about identity on 3 but also the violence wildly goes from campy and whimsical to being shot in the gut and fending off a kill squad in a very tense scene; add Nate doing hand puppets on a Moroccan prison and you have a blend that is very difficult to translate. Not impossible because we have the OG Indy movies but that is even worse because the inevitable comparison is there...... all that said, yes the biggest screw up is not getting Bruce Campbell to do Sully.
as someone who barely saw any of the marketing for this movie and have never played any of the uncharted games, i thought mark was gonna be nathan drake and they were gonna have flashbacks where tom was young nathan drake
There was an Uncharted fan film with Nathan Fillion (of Firefly fame and Nathan Drake's primary inspiration) and besides more faithfully adapting Uncharted's cast, it also faithfully captured the energy of the games' blockbuster action sequences and shootouts with a low budget. One of the reasons for the fan film's success, in my opinion, is its cinematography--the camera tracks Nate in a single shot during an extended action sequence to make the viewer feel like they're *with* Nate, like a player viewing Nate in the game. The Tom Holland film rarely, if ever, does this, instead doing very bog-standard action shots you'd see in any blockbuster with hard cuts and shaky cam. While filming sequences in one shot is logistically very difficult, doing so would have gone above and beyond to making the Hollywood adaptation of Uncharted a far more enjoyable film (alongside recasting Nate and Sully).
I'm SO glad you commented this! I had no idea about the fan film. I just watched it and you are so right! It's everything a filmed adaptation of Uncharted should be. Just had to come back and thank you for bringing it up
I actually really liked the Uncharted movie. The only issue was that I didn’t know it was an Uncharted movie til the very end as my mom put it on without telling me the name of it.
counterpoint: Annihilation, not a game, a book, but the movie is a near complete departure from the book, you know what tho, they kept the vibe, they got the themes to come through, and it’s a great adaptation
The marketing of the Uncharted movie was incredibly confusing. Especially the claim the movie was going to be “a prequel.” A prequel to what? They didn’t do a young Drake story. They created a disjointed amalgamation of the games.
That one short fan film with Nathan Fillion was so much better than the entire uncharted movie. When I was younger, I thought Nathan Fillion was Nathan Drake lol. I wish he was in the one new rather than Tom
While the Uncharted series doesn't bring anything new to the table like TLOU does, the adaptation still could have pleased fans of the game and other movie-goers if it would have been faithful to the characters and stories in the game, which are far more interesting than the movie.
I think the reason Tom Holla d was cast was because the was the era of Sony making him their “golden goose.” Obviously his Spider-Man movies did really well, Far From Home was Sony’s first movie to make a billion dollars. Sony wanted Tom Holland to be in everything because he was popular and in successful movies. Unfortunately that meant he was in a lot of bad movies and people got tired of him. I think Uncharted was the breaking point as Tom Holland hasn’t been in anything since Uncharted (he has stuff coming up, but he hasn’t been given constant work).
Uncharted was actually hugely successful for its budget. Made $407,141,258 worldwide on a budget of $120 Million, and the chairman of Sony Pictures said it's now a new franchise for them. I think they see casting him as a success.
As someone whose never played uncharted I watched this movie and it became my hyper fixation for a year. Do you know how embarrassing it is to say your favorite movie has mark wahlberg in it? I’m so brave for that.
