The Uncharted movie takes place before the events of the first video game in the series, making its exact placement in the overall Uncharted timeline a bit complicated. Directed by Ruben Fleischer, Uncharted stars Tom Holland as Nathan Drake, Mark Wahlberg as Victor “Sully” Sullivan, and Sophia Ali as Chloe Frazer, alongside a supporting cast that includes Tati Gabrielle and Antonio Banderas.
In the first Uncharted video game, Nathan Drake is 31 years old. By the start of Uncharted 3, he’s 35, and in the flashbacks that take place in that game, he’s 15. It’s in those flashbacks that Nate first meets Sully, starting what would become a lifelong friendship. Between the flashback scenes in Uncharted 3 and the start of the first Uncharted, Nate embarks on a number of adventures, including several with Sully and some others with his older brother Sam.
Given how old Holland’s Nathan Drake is in the Uncharted movie – seemingly around 20 years old, give or take a couple years – it would appear that the film is set within that largely unexplored chunk of time between the flashbacks of Uncharted 3 and the start of Uncharted. Because Nate is known to be 31 in the first game, the movie seems to be set about a decade earlier. However, there are some big problems in that timeline that retcon preestablished events from the Uncharted video games, suggesting that the upcoming film is not at all canonical with the rest of the franchise.
First of all, Sony’s Uncharted movie is clearly retconning how and when Nathan Drake and Sully first met. In the games, it’s revealed that they met in Colombia when Nate was 15, while they were both trying to steal a ring that belonged to Sir Francis Drake. The first official Uncharted movie trailer shows a very different meeting between Sully and Nate, which takes place in New York City when Nate is around 20 years old. That not only changes the origins of their relationship, but it also essentially erases the entire storyline of Uncharted 3, which hinges on the specific conditions under which Nate and Sully first met. Nate’s relationship with Sam is also a good deal different in the Uncharted prequel movie, as the older brother apparently went missing much earlier and in pursuit of a different treasure – that of Ferdinand Magellan.
Because the Uncharted movie is changing so much within the timeline of the video games, it’s difficult to say how exactly its story relates to the rest of the franchise, or if it does at all. Nate meets Chloe in the Uncharted movie trailer – an event that’s alluded to in the games, but never directly shown – but because of how his meeting with Sully has been retconned, that may simply be a full rewrite, rather than an attempt at filling in empty spots in the Uncharted lore. The Uncharted movie could still be great, but it’s already taking some big creative liberties with the established timeline of the video games.
