Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Uncharted and its ending.
Uncharted director Ruben Fleischer has broken down the shooting process of one of the movie’s most challenging action sequences during a recent chat with Polygon.
Spoilers to follow.
As the movie’s official synopsis had already teased, Uncharted revolved mostly around a young Nate’s quest to find the Magellan gold. This journey ultimately takes the ensemble of characters, including Mark Wahlberg’s Victor Sullivan, to a cave in Phillippines. There, they find two shipwrecked vehicles that contain all of Ferdinand Magellan’s remaining wealth.
That all leads to the movie’s climactic action scene, which involves Nate and Sully trying to navigate their way through two boats filled with the big bad’s thugs while they’re being suspended midair by helicopters. Fleischer discusses his first thoughts when he read the script on that particular sequence.
“When I read the script I was completely blown away,” He says. “You know, Pirates, the film franchise, was a definite kind of tonal reference for our movie. And that sense of adventure and all those pirate ship battles. We’ve all seen a million pirate ship battles, but we’ve never seen one in midair.”
I think the third installment in that film franchise would beg to differ, Fleischer. Granted, the pirates didn’t engage Davy Jones’ ship midair, per se, but you have to admit that doing so in the middle of a whirlpool isn’t far behind, in terms of scale and setup.
The director further explains that they had to build huge boat sets to film different parts of that sequence, noting:
“We never built an entire boat. Because of the size of it, we built different pieces for the different parts of the sequence. The boat was actually built in like five different pieces and we shot what we needed on each piece. We had unique set pieces, actual set pieces, for all of it.”
Owing to its ambitious screenplay comprising numerous set pieces and action sequences, the hardworking crew of Uncharted are currently basking in the powerful box office debut of their risky live-action adaptation, and cautiously optimistic about the prospect of sequels, which is increasing by the day.
