Video game to box office crushing movie, Uncharted, has extremely surpassed expectations upon its February 18 release.

Releasing just under a month ago, this box office success has grossed nearly $230 million worldwide as of March 3. With the budget for this movie only $120 million, its safe to say Columbia Pictures has most definitely had a good return on this film.

Uncharted is based on the classic PlayStation 3 and 4 series of action-adventure games created by Amy Hennig.

The games are developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation consoles. The main series of games follows Nathan Drake, a treasure hunter who travels across the world to uncover various historical mysteries, much like in the movie.

This was no mediocre game, or else it would’ve never been turned into a movie. The staple of the series, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, was rated on the top among every Uncharted release to-date. Three weeks after its release, the game had grossed over $56 million in digital copies alone.

By December 2016, the game had sold 8.7 million copies, making it one of the best-selling PlayStation 4 games, and by May 2019, the game had sold over 15 million copies.

Not only were the ratings for the game good, the movie outperformed expectations, and brought in good reviews as well. The Rotten Tomatoes audience review came in around a 90% enjoy rate, yet harshly reviewed by critics with a strong 41% enjoy rate.

Typically looking at a critics analysis only serves to throw off the common audience such as myself, as they review films based on their substance and plot.

There was almost no way this movie could go wrong with the two main protagonists being superstars, Tom Holland playing Nathan Drake, and Mark Wahlberg playing Victor Sullivan. For the entire cast see the custom cast list infographic.

The two playing alongside each other seemed to come natural as the two jelled perfectly on screen. Nothing seemed out of place as each character’s acting complemented the other. It’s safe to say, the duo will definitely be acting alongside each other in the future.

The plot of the movie used parts of the video game series, yet didn’t completely borrow from them, rather they built upon a fresh foundation and sprinkled in parts of the iconic games.

The movie follows treasure hunter Victor Sullivan, who recruits street-smart Nathan Drake to help him recover a 500-year-old lost fortune.

What starts out as a heist, soon becomes a global race to reach the treasure before the villainous Santiago Moncada gets his hands on it. Sully and Nate attempt to decipher clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, in which they stand to find $5 billion in treasure, yet only if they learn to work together.

Personally, this was a very enjoyable film, following a very solid plot and story, although at times with some cringe-worthy one liners from Holland.

The movie outperformed my expectations, keeping me intrigued during the progression of the plot and not having me point out obvious unrealistic scenes during the action scenes.

The movie’s end credits made it clear there would be a following sequel to this “part one”, with a return of the duo, Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan.

From a CGI/VFX standpoint, I thought they did a great job, especially when masking unrealistic storytelling to make it seem like it could genuinely happen. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary or janky, with a very good balance of realism and fiction in the CGI for this movie.

With the newfound success of this movie, it’s clear that, much like the games, Columbia Pictures, could most definitely make a wealthy franchise out of Uncharted.