"But Drake, I thought we already made an Uncharted movie. You know,
the Uncharted video game?"

Uncharted 2 ranks as one of my favorite games of all time, but that doesn't mean I want to see it turned into a movie. I can think of a few titles that could translate to decent films. Halo comes to mind. I could see someone doing a good BioShock treatment. But the Uncharted games are already cinematic experiences. Naughty Dog hired professional actors to do the voice work and motion capture. In a very real way, Uncharted and Uncharted 2 are movies.

Nathan Drake, the protagonist of the Uncharted series, is a fully formed character. He has a distinct voice and look, both based on actor Nolan North. So when Uncharted devotees like me freak out about the casting of Mark Wahlberg as Nathan Drake, it's not because we're being stupid fanboys. This casting makes the Uncharted film worse than the Spider-Man reboot. It's takes a character and a story that we've only recently experienced, guts it, recasts it, and trots it around pathetically like the film equivalent of Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's.

When fans cry for Nathan Fillion to play Nathan Drake, they do it because the character seems so heavily influenced by Fillion's own Malcolm Reynolds (from Joss Whedon's Firefly). Also, he seems like the only established film actor who could fill Drake's shoes (if only Harrison Ford wasn't so old). Casting Marky Mark isn't a flawed idea because he's a bad actor; it's flawed because it shows how little attention the filmmakers have paid to the source material.

Director David O. Russell recently spoke to the L.A. Times about why the property interests him:

This idea really turns me on that there's a family that's a force to be reckoned with in the world of international art and antiquities...[a family] that deals with heads of state and heads of museums and metes out justice.... We'll have the family dynamic, which we've done in a couple of movies now. And then you take that and put it on the bigger, more muscular stage of an international action picture, but also put all the character stuff in it. That's a really cool idea to me.

Wait...what? Drake's family isn't in Uncharted. I think Nathan Drake had a father who might have been a treasure hunter, too, but I'm pretty sure he's dead. Sully kind of fills out the role of a father figure, but let's not forget a key fact: He isn't in Drake's family. What is Russell talking about? At what point does Nathan Drake "mete out justice" to heads of state? If Russell couldn't be bothered to play the franchise's paltry two entries, couldn't he have at least read the Wikipedia plot synopsis?

"No, I've never played the video game. But I'm really interested in doing a story
about Nathan Drake's life as a professional jet-skier."

Here's what I'm driving at: They haven't even filmed a frame of the movie, and they've already screwed it up. Even if you ignore its wildly inappropriate casting ideas (Mark Wahlberg as Drake and Robert De Niro as Sully), the movie they're making isn't Uncharted.

Naughty Dog's story isn't like others that Hollywood has adapted for the silver screen. Most games feature only a shell of a story led by a shell of a character. (I'm thinking of Max Payne and Tomb Raider.) Bland characters suit the interactive framework because the player fills in the gaps. That's why film directors often take creative license when doing adaptations.

Take Lara Croft for example: She has a very short checklist of items that need to be in the movie. Is she a bad ass? Is she wearing tight shorts? Is she British? If you said "yes" to all of the above, then congrats, you did it. Go ahead and get to work on a sequel.

But that won't work for Uncharted. It already has a great story. It features spectacular visuals, believable characters, top-notch acting, and a well-written script. And it's interactive. What can a film adaptation possibly add to that?