SONY’S action adventure film Uncharted is set to score big on its opening weekend. Director Ruben Fleischer’s live-action adaptation of the popular video game is projected to earn US$45 million (RM188.4 million) domestically over the four-day Presidents’ Day weekend – a tally that would notch it as the biggest theatrical opening of 2022 so far.
The film is also set to test star Tom Holland’s ability to anchor a new franchise, after achieving success with the recently concluded Spider-Man trilogy. Uncharted marks his first starring role in a non-Marvel theatrical blockbuster, apart from last spring’s Chaos Walking, which sat on Lionsgate’s shelf for years and hardly made any noise in the middle of a pandemic.
But while Holland may be making his mark as treasure hunter Nathan Drake, for many video game fans, the film would be incomplete without the participation of Nolan North, who voiced and performed motion capture for the video game icon for nearly 10 years.
Fortunately for fans, North has a brief, but memorable cameo in the Uncharted adaptation, right after Holland’s Drake and Sophia Ali’s Chloe Frazer survive plummeting from a cargo plane thousands of feet in the air.
The sequence, inspired by an action set piece in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, made waves once bits of it were glimpsed in the film’s trailer.
In the film, Drake and Chloe survive their fall, and end up landing on a beach – where they run into North lounging in a chair, who asks the two what happened to them.
“Fell out of a car then fell out of a plane,” Holland’s Drake answers, drenched, but mostly unfazed by his near-death experience.
“Huh. You know, something like that happened to me once,” North says knowingly. As Drake and Chloe walk off, North calls out: “Good luck!”
North recently spoke about his cameo, saying he didn’t want it to be self indulgent.
He explained: “It’s a quick little thing, and it works for the scheme of the film and it’s fun. Like Stan Lee’s stuff in Marvel movies. They always were perfect.”