I’ve been replaying the Uncharted series in preparation for a movie that I will almost certainly think is very silly, which is definitely a good use of time as our planet slowly overheats, corporations destroy the land we walk on, and the skeleton inside of me gradually crumbles in preparation for my death. Anyway, Uncharted. I’ve just finished Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on this run, and we need to talk about those damn yetis.
Uncharted as a whole is more into fantasy than it needs to be. Everyone's favourite thing in the series are the action sequences. The car chases. The explosions. The death after death after unjustifiable death. No one cares for the supernatural elements, and that's why we all collectively forget about them. Playing the series through again, they're even more jarring than they were the first time.
The first half of Uncharted 2 feels just like Uncharted 2. Funny that. You start the game dangling off a train and do some utterly impossible stunt work in order to climb it even as pieces of the thing come flying at your face, before jumping back in time a little to figure out how you got mixed up in such shenanigans. Turns out, you got there in a very Uncharted way. You scale some old buildings, shoot some guards who are minding their own business, get betrayed – the usual. There are shootouts in the street, scrambles through ruins, and lots of swinging on beams. That train you were hanging off at the start? You end up punching about 40 people off the roof of that train while ducking under signs and making your way to the front.
After all this, you end up waking up in a Tibetan village where a foreign person with somewhat mystical powers nurses you back to health. A bit tropey, but still pretty typical for Uncharted. After this you end up in an ice cave (very typical) and encounter a weird demon yeti (very what the fuck). Uncharted 2 is set up well enough already. Your friend has betrayed you. Another friend's allegiance remains unclear. There is treasure to find. That's a story. By video game standards in 2009, it's a good story. There is no need for the yetis to appear. They add nothing. No one likes them. I think they should go away.
I have no idea if these things will appear in the upcoming Tom Holland movie. The trailers don't seem to hint at it, but the video game movies are fiercely unpredictable. Tomb Raider, for example, ignores the entire story of Tomb Raider (2013), but still appears to want to be loyal to it. Both Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog completely ignore everything in their lore to make just a movie with either Pokemon or Sonic in them. The supernatural elements are both a major and minor part of Uncharted. Major in that they appear in the games so frequently, minor in that no one likes them or considers them a core part of the series.
Because video game movies ignore the major parts just as often as they ignore the minor parts, that doesn't give us much of a hint as to whether supernatural bullshit will feature. If they do, it'll be a rare example of a movie being criticised by fans for being too loyal to the source material. Still, if we see Tom Holland get his face ripped off by a yeti, I won't complain.
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