“Uncharted” starring 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 (upbeat music)
00:08 - Literally no one on the planet knows more
00:13 about the developments of this screenplay than you.
00:15 On Cinema Blend, we've been writing Mark Wahlberg
00:18 on "Charted Stories" for about a decade.
00:20 So I'm just curious. - I apologize.
00:21 I apologize.
00:21 You know what?
00:22 I should have kept my mouth shut
00:23 until we were actually into physical production.
00:25 - That's okay.
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,
00:34 oh, I'm doing this, I'm doing that.
00:35 But it just always felt so real, you know,
00:37 whether it was with David O. Russell in the beginning
00:39 or whoever else we were kind of, you know,
00:41 got close to the starting line,
00:43 but never got out of the gate.
00:45 - Right.
00:46 - It was one of those things where you just feel like
00:47 you sound like a broken record, you know?
00:49 - Can you remember a project that you stayed
00:51 that closely to or attached to for that amount of time?
00:54 - No, 'cause this now is well north of a decade,
00:57 but with "The Fighter," it's oddly enough,
01:00 all the movies that I've wanted to make
01:02 that I have gotten made, usually it's like the six year rule.
01:05 So "Fighter" took six years to make.
01:08 "A Father's Stew" took six years to make.
01:10 "Peter Berg" was developing "Lone Survivor"
01:13 for I think almost about that amount of time.
01:16 - Right.
01:17 - So, but this one, yeah, it was so funny
01:18 because it was actually just like one of those things
01:22 where I just chalked up to not gonna 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
01:27 where I just thought it wasn't gonna happen.
01:28 Then I got the phone call and they were like,
01:29 "All right, we're gonna make 'Uncharted.'"
01:31 I'm like, "Cool, who's the guy?"
01:32 You know, before it was De Niro,
01:34 maybe, you know, Jack or whoever.
01:36 - Right.
01:37 - And they were like, "Tom Holland."
01:38 I was like, "Wait a second, what do you mean Tom Holland?"
01:40 - That's me being generous.
01:41 - Wow.
01:42 - And they were like, "Well, Tom Holland."
01:43 I'm like, "For what?"
01:45 He was like, "For Nate."
01:46 I said, "Well, who am I gonna be?"
01:47 And now, you know, we're strapped on the mustache
01:50 and here we are.
01:51 - What is that thing on your face?
01:54 - Puberty's right around the corner, kid.
01:55 You can grow your own.
01:57 - I'm really telling everybody
01:57 they have to see this in IMAX
01:59 'cause the third act action 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
02:05 or the finale of "Homecoming"?
02:08 - The plane sequence from this movie
02:10 is the hardest thing I've ever done.
02:12 - Really?
02:13 - Just months of hard work,
02:15 hanging off of these boxes,
02:16 being pushed and thrown and dragged by wires
02:19 and smashed into boxes and falling off of boxes,
02:23 losing your grip.
02:24 All of us tore our hands up
02:26 because you're hanging onto these kind of ropes
02:30 and it gets to a point where you just can't hang on anymore
02:32 but you're trying to, you're trying to,
02:33 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 tough.
02:40 - It's definitely relieving to hear that for sure.
02:43 - From him?
02:44 - Yeah, no, it's definitely, yeah, hard physical stuff.
02:49 Took some balls, took some hits.
02:52 - How many days does it take
02:53 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,
02:59 but it felt like two weeks at least.
03:01 [camera shutter clicking]
03:02 - Oh my God!
03:02 [camera shutter clicking]
03:04 No!
03:05 - Nate? - Come on!
03:06 - Ready and action.
03:09 - Tom, tell me about the first time
03:10 you tried on the shoulder holster for the scene.
03:12 That's such an important part for Nathan.
03:14 - It was actually really exciting.
03:15 Gary Dawson, who was our props master,
03:17 who is a very good friend of mine,
03:19 I've worked with him on numerous occasions,
03:21 he gave me the holster, I tried it on,
03:25 and there was something about putting it on
03:27 which completed the look.
03:29 It kind of just brought the character to life
03:31 in a really, really visual way.
03:34 So it was really awesome.
03:35 - It's pretty cool, huh?
03:36 [dramatic music]
03:39 - Pirate ships are one of the most inspired set pieces
03:44 I've seen in a really long time.
03:46 And I'm assuming it's a lot of CGI,
03:48 but they also look really, really practical too.
03:50 What were those days on set like?
03:51 - Well, they actually built a couple of ships.
03:54 So we had the ships, we had the ship suspended in air,
03:56 you know, 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,
04:03 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,
04:11 action adventure, fantasy, all that stuff, you know,
04:15 which I just think is just a different level
04:17 and height of cinema.
04:18 - I gotta ask you about the line, "Nuns,
04:21 why's it always gotta be nuns?"
04:22 Is that an Indiana Jones nod?
04:24 - It is absolutely an Indiana Jones nod, yes.
04:27 - Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?
04:30 - I think for us, you know,
04:32 we realized that those films are so incredible
04:34 and so unique that we wanted to pay respects to them
04:37 and we wanted to lean into that genre
04:39 and what better way to do it
04:41 than to reference it in the film.
04:43 - You have no idea who you partnered with.
04:47 [gunshots]
04:48 - Zoe, hurry!
04:49 [gunshots]
04:51 - It's gonna take a little longer than I thought, kid.
04:54 - I love that "Uncharted" could end up becoming the film
04:58 that's a gateway for young girls
05:00 who watch these characters on screen
05:02 and they think, you know, "That could be me."
05:05 And sometimes, you know,
05:06 they don't see great representation in action movies.
05:09 And so I wanna know who was your action role model
05:11 when you were growing up?
05:12 Who did you look at and think, "Oh, I wanna do that"?
05:15 - My two action role models,
05:17 the first was actually Zoe Saldana in "Colombiana."
05:20 That was the first time that I had seen,
05:23 especially a woman of color,
05:24 seen a just super dope girl do her thing.
05:29 - Charlie's Angels.
05:31 - Really?
05:32 - 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 - The second was Angelina Jolie
05:41 in "Salt" and "Wanted" and things like that.
05:45 Yeah, that made me like, "I wanna do that one day."
05:47 - And "Tomb Raider,"
05:48 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
05:56 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
06:03 to get better with it?
06:04 What was that working relationship like?
06:07 - So I didn't get a lot of, like,
06:09 I guess one-on-one training with the cram bit itself.
06:11 Most of how I learned it was through, like,
06:14 my own research, watching YouTube videos.
06:16 And then, yeah, they gave me a fake one, a rubber one,
06:20 that, yeah, I had that thing all the time.
06:22 Like, at home, I would just, like, flip it around,
06:23 just try to get as comfortable with it as I could
06:26 to make it look like it was something that, you know,
06:28 was Braddock's weapon of choice.
06:30 - Yeah, it's a unique skill set
06:32 that you now bring with you to whatever film you do next.
06:34 - Right.
06:35 - You do next.
06:36 I love the Nolan North cameo, of course,
06:41 and I'm just wondering if there's anything
06:43 that he was able to give you from his own experience
06:45 that you incorporated into your own portrayal?
06:48 - I think for me, he gave me enough
06:50 from what he did with the games, you know?
06:52 I was a big fan of the games.
06:53 - I dabble.
06:54 - And I went back and played them again
06:55 in preparation for making the film.
06:58 And I just was able to,
07:00 I didn't want to copy what he did.
07:02 If it, like, Ruben and Chuck and Alex, our producers,
07:05 they didn't want me to mimic him in any way,
07:08 which I'm really glad,
07:09 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
07:16 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,
07:21 which is something that he has been known to say.
07:23 So there's a few things I took here and there,
07:25 but mostly I kind of reinvented the character.
07:27 - Oh, crap!
07:30 - What are some of the things
07:32 that creatives need to pay attention to
07:34 when they're adapting a video game over the screen?
07:37 - Well, I think we learned with Max Payne
07:39 that there just wasn't, I don't know,
07:41 it wasn't as big, a broad, and interesting a story
07:44 and world for people to want to see, you know?
07:48 It's kind of dark, brooding guy, you know,
07:50 similar to, like, "The Punisher."
07:53 This movie, it's just, it's for everybody.
07:55 You don't have to know the video game
07:56 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,
08:04 do justice to the game and the diehard gamers
08:07 who made it so successful,
08:09 but then we also wanted to make sure
08:10 we introduced a whole new audience to "Uncharted."
08:13 - I've been dreaming about this my whole life.
08:17 And the challenge goal
08:18 is the biggest treasure that's never been found.
08:20 - What's happening?
08:22 - They're starting to come through,
08:24 and I can't stop 'em.
08:26 - "Over My Shoulder" is my new favorite movie of all time.
08:31 My friend, 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,
08:37 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 - So much of this film was improvised,
08:51 based off of great writing,
08:52 but we all were allowed to bring our own spin to it.
08:55 So it wouldn't surprise me
08:57 if it was something that was improvised,
08:58 but it definitely was something at the time
09:00 that felt so right.
09:02 We had a very similar moment in real life
09:05 only a couple of weeks before.
09:08 So maybe some people saw that on set
09:10 and were like, "We need them to recreate that,
09:12 but just on camera."
09:14 So yeah, so maybe it came from that.
09:17 - Aw.
09:18 I'm your co-star playing the most popular superhero
09:20 on the planet.
09:21 Somehow you have managed to avoid,
09:23 outside of "Blue Falcon," which I loved,
09:25 getting into the superhero genre.
09:28 Is this just a lack of opportunities
09:30 or something you wanted to avoid?
09:31 - No, I think, first of all,
09:34 I'm not brave enough to walk out of my trailer
09:36 with a cape and spandex,
09:39 but I did want to,
09:40 and I had been trying to make "Six Billion Dollar Man"
09:42 for quite some time,
09:43 which I thought was a great balance
09:45 of all this kind of wish fulfillment
09:47 and these abilities to do amazing things,
09:50 but still being very grounded and real
09:53 and doing it with normal clothes on.
09:56 - And this is happening?
09:57 - Well, I mean, right now it's not happening,
10:00 but we're eager to get it made if we can.
10:02 I mean, we were kind of close,
10:04 I would say, within the last year,
10:06 and then the studio was like,
10:08 "Oh, we're gonna press pause for now."
10:10 So we'll see.
10:10 I mean, I would never close that door completely.
10:14 I still have Lee Majors calling me,
10:15 asking me what's going on and what's happening,
10:17 and I wish I had better news for him,
10:19 but it's just one of those things where,
10:21 unless I finance it myself,
10:23 but right now it's probably not gonna happen, but.
10:26 - This is a blast,
10:27 and I really appreciate your time as always, Mark.
10:30 Thank you.
10:31 - Oh, thank you.
10:31 Appreciate you.
10:32 - Hey, you still with me?
10:33 (gunshots)
10:35 - Beryl E.
10:36 (gunshots)
10:38 (cheering)
10:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]