“Uncharted” stars Tom Holland (Nathan Drake), Mark Wahlberg (Victor Sullivan), Sophia Ali (Chloe Frazer) and Tati Gabrielle (Braddock) discuss the video game adaptation movie in this interview with CinemaBlend Managing Director Sean O’Connell. Tom Holland shares the stunt he calls “the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Mark Wahlberg opens up about why his “Max Payne” adaptation didn’t work and yes, we sneak a “Spider-Man: No Way Home” question in there.
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00:00 And then like Tom Holland, I was like, wait a second.
00:02 What do you mean, Tom Holland?
00:03 What?
00:06 Literally no one on the planet knows more about the developments of this screenplay than you.
00:16 On CinemaBlend, we've been writing Mark Wahlberg uncharted stories for about a decade.
00:20 So I'm just curious.
00:21 I apologize.
00:21 You know what?
00:22 I should have kept my mouth shut until we were actually into physical production.
00:25 That's OK.
00:26 Listen, we need content, so we'll take it.
00:28 What were some of the changes?
00:29 I just don't like to count my chickens before they hatch.
00:32 I hate that.
00:32 I'm never one of those guys who say, oh, I'm doing this, I'm doing that.
00:35 But it just always felt so real, you know, whether it was with David Russell in the beginning
00:39 or whoever else we were kind of, you know, got close to the starting line but never got out
00:44 of the gate.
00:45 Right.
00:45 It was one of those things where you just feel like you sound like a broken record, you know?
00:49 Can you remember a project that you stayed that closely to or attached to for that amount of time?
00:54 No, because this now is well north of a decade.
00:58 But with The Fighter, it's oddly enough, all the movies that I wanted to make that I have
01:02 gotten made, usually it's like the six year rule.
01:06 So Fighter took six years to make.
01:07 A Father Stew took six years to make.
01:11 Peter Berg was developing Lone Survivor for, I think, almost about that amount of time.
01:16 Right.
01:16 So but this one, yeah, it was so funny because it was actually just like one of those things
01:22 where I just chalked up to not going to happen.
01:23 Same thing with Six Billion Dollar Man, actually.
01:25 Right.
01:26 So it was just kind of like one of those things where I just thought it wasn't going to happen.
01:28 Then I got the phone call and they were like, all right, we're going to make Uncharted.
01:31 I'm like, cool.
01:32 Who's the guy, you know, before it was De Niro, maybe, you know, Jack or whoever.
01:36 Right.
01:36 And they were like, Tom Holland.
01:37 I was like, wait a second, what do you mean Tom Holland?
01:40 That's me being generous.
01:41 Wow.
01:41 And they were like, well, Tom Holland.
01:43 I'm like, for what?
01:44 He's like, for Nate.
01:46 I said, well, who am I going to be?
01:47 And now, you know, we strapped on the mustache and here we are.
01:52 What is that thing on your face?
01:53 Puberty's right around the corner, kid.
01:55 You can grow your own.
01:57 I'm really telling everybody they have to see this in IMAX because the third act action
02:00 set pieces are fantastic.
02:01 It's pretty cool.
02:02 What was a harder one to film?
02:03 Is it the plane sequence from this movie or the finale of Homecoming?
02:08 The plane sequence from this movie is the hardest thing I've ever done.
02:11 Just months of hard work hanging off of these boxes, being pushed and thrown and dragged by
02:19 wires and smashed into boxes and falling off of boxes, losing your grip.
02:24 All of us tore our hands up because, you know, you're hanging on to these kind of ropes and,
02:30 you know, it gets to a point where you just can't hang on anymore.
02:32 But you're trying to, you're trying to, and you let go and you cut your hands up.
02:35 So we had bangs and bruises and tears all over the place.
02:39 It was it was tough.
02:40 It's definitely relieving to hear that for sure.
02:43 For him?
02:44 Yeah.
02:45 No, it's definitely yes.
02:46 Hard physical stuff.
02:49 Took some falls, took some hits.
02:51 How many days does it take to put a sequence like that together?
02:54 The airplane sequence?
02:55 I think it took two weeks to film that.
02:58 I could be lying, though, but it felt like two weeks at least.
03:00 Oh my God!
03:02 Nate, come on!
03:06 Ready and action.
03:08 Tom, tell me about the first time you tried on the shoulder holster
03:11 for the scene that's such an important part for Nathan.
03:14 It was actually really exciting.
03:16 Gary Dawson, who was our props master, who is a very good friend of mine,
03:19 I've worked with him on numerous occasions,
03:22 he gave me the holster, I tried it on,
03:25 and there was something about putting it on which like completed the look.
03:29 It kind of just brought the character to life in a really, really visual way.
03:33 So it was it was really awesome.
03:35 It's pretty cool, huh?
03:42 Pirate ships are one of the most inspired set pieces I've seen in a really long time.
03:46 And I'm assuming it's a lot of CGI, but they also look really, really practical too.
03:50 What were those days on set like?
03:52 Well, they actually built a couple of ships.
03:54 So we had the ships, we had the ship suspended in air, you know,
03:57 or a portion of the ship.
03:58 It was pretty cool, you know?
04:00 I mean, for me, it's like it's a real movie, like an Indiana Jones type of movie.
04:05 It's not like a small intimate story.
04:07 This is like big, huge Hollywood blockbuster, action adventure, fantasy, all that stuff,
04:14 you know, which I just think is just a different level and height of cinema.
04:18 I gotta ask you about the line, "Nuns, why has it always got to be nuns?"
04:22 Is that an Indiana Jones nod?
04:24 It is absolutely an Indiana Jones nod, yes.
04:26 Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?
04:30 I think for us, you know, we realized that those films are so incredible and so unique
04:35 that we wanted to pay respects to them and we wanted to lean into that genre.
04:40 And what better way to do it than to reference it in the film?
04:43 You have no idea who you're partnered with.
04:46 Zoe, hurry!
04:49 It's gonna take a little longer than I thought, kid.
04:53 I love that Uncharted could end up becoming the film that's a gateway for young girls
05:00 who watch these characters on screen and they think, you know, that could be me.
05:05 And sometimes, you know, they don't see great representation in action movies.
05:09 And so I want to know who was your action role model when you were growing up?
05:12 Who did you look at and think, "Oh, I want to do that"?
05:14 My two action role models, the first was actually Zoe Saldana in Columbiana.
05:20 That was the first time that I had seen, especially like a woman of color,
05:24 seen like a just super, like, you know, dope girl do her thing.
05:29 Charlie's Angels.
05:30 Really?
05:31 Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz.
05:34 Yep.
05:35 And I was so young when it came out.
05:37 Too young to watch it, but I did anyway.
05:39 Second was Angelina Jolie in like Salt and Wanted and things like that.
05:44 Yeah, that made me like, "I want to do that one day."
05:47 And Tomb Raider, one of the better video game adaptations
05:50 before you guys knocked it out of the park.
05:52 Yeah.
05:53 All right, I need to know about your relationship with your unique weapon, with your knife.
05:59 Did it take a lot of training?
06:01 Is it something that you held onto all the time on set to get better with it?
06:04 What was that working relationship like?
06:06 So I didn't get a lot of like, I guess, one-on-one training with the cram bit itself.
06:11 Most of how I learned it was through like my own research, watching YouTube videos.
06:16 And then, yeah, they gave me a fake one, a rubber one that, yeah, I had that thing all the time.
06:22 Like at home, I would just like flip it around, just try to get as comfortable with it as I could
06:26 to make it look like it was something that, you know, was Braddock's weapon of choice.
06:30 Yeah, it's a unique skill set that you now bring with you to
06:33 whatever film you do next.
06:35 Right.
06:35 I love the Nolan North cameo, of course.
06:41 And I'm just wondering if there's anything that he was able to give you
06:44 from his own experience that you incorporated into your own portrayal?
06:47 I think for me, he gave me enough from what he did with the games.
06:51 You know, I was a big fan of the games.
06:53 I dabble.
06:54 And I went back and played them again in preparation for making the film.
06:57 And I just was able to, I didn't want to copy what he did.
07:02 If it like Ruben and Chuck and Alex, our producers, they didn't want me to mimic him in any way,
07:07 which I'm really glad because otherwise I wouldn't have been acting.
07:12 I would have been mimicking.
07:13 So I was able to sort of take the essence of the character and some of the lines, you know,
07:17 I say, oh, crap all the time.
07:19 And we have the well, well, well joke, which is something that he has been known to say.
07:23 So there's a few things I took here and there, but mostly I kind of reinvented the character.
07:31 What are some of the things that creatives need to pay attention to when they're adapting
07:35 a video game over the screen?
07:36 Well, I think we learned with Max Payne, there just wasn't, I don't know, it wasn't as big,
07:42 a broad and interesting a story and world for people to want to see, you know, it's kind of
07:49 dark brooding guy, you know, similar to like the Punisher.
07:52 And this movie, it's just, it's for everybody.
07:55 You don't have to know the video game to really go and enjoy this film.
07:59 There's so much wish fulfillment in there.
08:00 It really is for entire family.
08:02 And obviously we wanted to first and foremost do justice to the game and the diehard gamers
08:08 who made it so successful.
08:09 But then we also wanted to make sure we introduced a whole new audience to Uncharted.
08:12 I've been dreaming about this my whole life.
08:15 And the giant's gold, it's the biggest treasure that's never been found.
08:20 What's happening?
08:23 They're starting to come through and I can't stop them.
08:28 Over My Shoulder is my new favorite movie of all time, my friend.
08:31 It's a masterpiece.
08:33 I have to ask about a scene, it's my favorite scene in it.
08:35 That's when you're saying goodbye to the other two Peters and then you go in for the hug.
08:39 Is that scripted or improvised?
08:40 I don't remember.
08:44 I don't remember.
08:47 Okay.
08:48 Every, so much of this film was improvised, you know, based off of great writing, but,
08:53 you know, we all were allowed to bring our own spin to it.
08:56 So it wouldn't surprise me if it was something that was improvised,
08:58 but it definitely was something at the time that felt so right.
09:01 We had a very similar moment in real life only a couple weeks before.
09:07 So maybe some people saw that on set and were like,
09:11 we need them to recreate that, but just on camera.
09:14 So, so yeah, so maybe it came from that.
09:16 I'm your co-stars playing the most popular superhero on the planet.
09:20 Somehow you have managed to avoid outside of Blue Falcon, which I love.
09:26 Uh, you know, getting into the superhero genre,
09:28 is it's just a lack of opportunities or something you wanted to avoid?
09:31 No, I think I, I, first of all, I'm not brave enough to walk out of my trailer with a cape and
09:36 spandex, uh, but I did want to, and I had been trying to make $6 billion man for quite some time,
09:44 which I thought was a great balance of all this kind of wish fulfillment and these abilities
09:48 to do amazing things, but still being very grounded and real, uh, and,
09:53 and doing it with normal clothes on.
09:55 And this is happening?
09:57 Well, I mean, right now it's not happening, but we're, we're eager to get it made if we can.
10:02 I mean, we were kind of close, I would say, uh, within the last year.
10:07 And then the studio was like, oh, we're going to press pause for now.
10:10 So we'll see.
10:10 I mean, we, I would, I would never close that door completely.
10:14 Um, I still have Lee majors calling me, asking me what's going on and what's happening.
10:17 And I wish I had better news for him, but it's just one of those things where,
10:21 you know, unless I finance it myself, um, but right now it's probably not going to happen, but.
10:25 I know this is, this is a blast and, uh, I really appreciate your time as always, Mark.
10:30 Thank you.
10:30 Oh, thank you.
10:31 Appreciate you.
10:31 Hey, you still with me?
10:33 Barely.
10:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]