Although he calls the previous Uncharted scripts “compelling”, one script certainty stood out to him as a glaring example of its long delays. “When you start invoking ISIS and going to real-world politics with that world, you risk it breaking it and knocking the magic dust of it,” he says. “It becomes too visceral and real-time, and I don’t think that’s what the game is. The game has really wonderful rough edges and is very tough, but tough in a pulpy noir-ish way. I don’t know if it was anyone’s fault.” An Uncharted script featuring ISIS? Really? “I quite liked the script, but I understood that it was not Uncharted,” he says, speaking honestly. “It broke too much from the nomenclature of what Uncharted is. That’s not to say it wasn’t compelling writing or a good script, it was just – in my mind and humble opinion and I think this was also from the studio side of things – too thorny. It was a little too real. And not in a way that you could sell to a broader audience.”
The broader audience is something that Carnahan is quite keen to tap into, and he knows that he can’t just write something that fans of the video game series would like. After all, that’s smart business in Hollywood. “I’m always dubious about the ‘fanboy base’, who are woefully misrepresented and don’t nearly have the power they think they have,” he says. “You run into problems if you’re out to please and placate those guys. It’s a losing battle to begin with. Sony very smartly said, ‘you already have the audience who love Uncharted’. Look, we know most rednecks in this country are going to vote for Donald Trump – that’s what he needs to win the Presidency. Same thing with Uncharted. We gotta go get people who wouldn’t normally [see this movie] and get them intrigued.”
In the past, video game movies have been criticised by gamers for not following the plot or characters from the franchises they love. Paul W.S Anderson’s Resident Evil series in particular has come under fire from some corners for the fanbase for deviating from the game’s plot, but Carnahan believes this is the best way to approach a big screen version of a video game. “You can’t just do a straight adaptation, that’s always difficult,” he explains. “Early in the process I sat down with [Uncharted game director] Amy Hennig because it’s her game and I was very mindful of that. I wanted to get her blessing. ‘What do you think of this, what do you think of that?’ And she loved it. She understood that this is a creative process and in this realm, video games are not movies. They’re on different levels. I don’t think you can just take Uncharted 4 or Uncharted 2 and just say, ‘that’s the movie’. It always comes down to picking your poison and saying, ‘okay we’re going to do this’. You know, ‘Elena Fisher is going to be this character and Gabriel Roman is going to be this character’. You’re kind of cherry picking who you like and who you want in the movie. I don’t think it’s ever as easy as copy and pasting the video game and putting it into script form.” So what can we expect? “I think fans of the game will be thrilled, and those who don’t know the game from Gears of War will really dig it,” he says with jubilant promise. “It’s got all the makings of a big, fun, tense, action-packed film. All the stuff fans want from a movie and all the people who go to the multiplexes every weekend would want. It’s struck a very keen balance. So far, so good. I’m really happy, Shawn is really happy and the studio seems to be happy. You just have to keep moving forward in creating good stuff, and interesting stuff. There’s an action scene in there that I’ve never seen attempted. Whether it works or not, I don’t know. It works for the story! It could cost $30 million to do, but it’s awfully cool. And sometimes that’s your greatest piece of ammunition: if something is cool, that’s all you need.”
He also praises his director Shawn Levy, whose back catalogue of movies includes Real Steel, Night at the Museum 3 and The Internship, and is someone Carnahan calls, “a lovely human being.” He adds, “[Levy is ] a guy who gets it. And when I saw ‘gets it’, I mean he’s a guy who can get under the hood. There’s a script you love, and a script the studio is going to green light. And often times, you want to stay close to that as you possibly can and get the mechanisms in place that gets everyone enthusiastic about it and on the level you’re at so you’re moving forward and making a movie. Which is an artform, like an act of war as an artform. It’s very tricky and very labour intensive and a lot of moving pieces, and I think Shawn is adept and astute at that and has that acumen that I lack.”
When asked about potential casting for the movie, Carnahan is playing his cards close to his chest. “I always say, ‘Nolan North should play Nathan Drake’. He’s the one everyone is so used to,” he jokes. “But you never know. It’s the economic ecstasy of the moment you happen to be in. One second this actor is worth x and then another second and this actor is worth y. So I never go in with who is going to play whom, I just picture what Nathan looks like in the game, what Sully looks like in the game, what Elena looks like in the game. I’ve always made it a point to not write for a specific actor, unless I knew. Like, I wrote a script specifically for Frank Grillo [Wheelman] because I knew he wanted to make the movie with me, but I try not to angle my stuff in that fashion. Because then you find yourself writing in the wrong way. You’re not writing Nathan Drake, you’re writing blah blah playing Nathan Drake. You’ve got to keep it pure as long as possible. Shawn may have ideas, which I’m sure he does, but he’s got to go directive. He’s got to think about this in a very different way. I’m allowed to abstain from that for now as I’m servicing a very different part of the movie.”
As mentioned earlier, Mark Wahlberg had been attached to play Nathan Drake in the past, and other rumoured names have included Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy). However one man who campaigned for the role heavily was Firefly star Nathan Fillion, who took to Twitter to encourage his fans to get him the part (Twitter fans also started the hashtag #BrettforNate to promote Agents of S.H..I.E.L.D. star Brett Dalton the role). “I love Nathan Fillion, and he’s been a fan favourite for loads of things over the years,” Carnahan says of the fan’s passion. “Fans wanted him as Green Lantern. Which is wonderful, because if I’m Nathan Fillion, I want fans to celebrate me like that. It would be wonderful!”
When pressing for information on the plot, I noted that the IMBD page for the movie (which those in the industry jokingly refer to as the Inaccurate Movie Database) claimed it would follow Nathan Drake’s adventures to El Dorado, which was the plot of the first game. “El Dorado does not appear in this current version of the screenplay,” Carnahan replies hesitantly, trying not to reveal too much. “That may change, and it could. I certainly dig El Dorado, but I feel like a different location or something that differentiates that makes this its own cinematic world was important.” I note to him that, oddly enough, a quest to find El Dorado had been pushed as a plot for the first Tomb Raider movie by screenwriter Brent V. Friedman when it was being developed in 1998. “Oh you’re kidding me! Now I look like I’m a genius for taking that out,” he says laughing before adding, “The game did so well, so it doesn’t seem like that is the most interesting thing to do. Also, that story exists in a really good format, which is the first game. So why repeat that? If you’re a fan of the game and you hear it’s going to be El Dorado, you’ve already seen this pretty tremendous version that story. So what surprises or twists and turns can there be when you’ve front-loaded it.”
On the next page, Joe Carnahan discusses Bad Boys For Life, and why the franchise is making a return…
