The following contains major spoilers for the Uncharted movie.
After years of delays and false starts the Uncharted movie is finally here. While the project was in development for a long time, the plot went through many changes. One of the most interesting decisions was to make the movie an origin story for globe-trotting treasure hunter Nathan Drake, something the video games that the movie is based on never really bothered with. This gave the film a lot of room to play, as well as the ability to cast Tom Holland, an actor far younger than Nathan Drake has been portrayed in the past. But this also makes the Uncharted ending really just the beginning.
And so the Uncharted movie gives us a look at the life of Nathan Drake that we’ve never seen before, with an untested Drake, but one that still tries to capture the adventure of the games that fans know. That’s where things start at the beginning of the Uncharted movie, but just where is Nathan Drake at the end of Uncharted?
What Happens At The End Of Uncharted
Uncharted is about the quest for billions of dollars in hidden gold, and while there are essentially two sides fighting over the treasure, things are not that simple. Multiple double crosses take place on both sides, making it clear nobody can trust anybody.
When Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) discovers that his brother Sam, a character we know from the fourth Uncharted video game, who had gone looking for the treasure with Sully (Mark Wahlberg) and ended up dead, left him a secret message in an old postcard he had sent, he discovers the location of the cache. Having been turned on by his partner Chloe (Sophia Ali) once already, he leaves a fake set of coordinates for her to find, and she takes the bait and ditches Nate. And since Nate has been separated from Sully, and doesn’t much like him anyway, he goes to find the treasure himself.
And Nate succeeds in doing just that. Two ships, full of gold, have been left in a cave covered by a rockslide. And the gold is really there. Unfortunately, Nate runs into a pair of problems very quickly. First Sully arrives on the scene, having been able to follow Nate due to Nate having given Sully the ability to track his phone earlier. Second, the film’s big bad Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), shows up with her goons, forcing both Nate and Sully to hide.
Braddock ends up airlifting the two ships out via helicopter, and Nate and Sully come out and take out the goons on their ship. Sully climbs up and takes over the helicopter, but when Braddock realizes what’s happened, a mid-air battle ensues. Bullets are flying and bodies are jumping between the ships. Tom Holland gets a cool hero moment when he picks up a gun and a shoulder holster, a trademark item for Nathan Drake.
Finally the fight is down to Nate and Braddock, and rather than fight the woman who is clearly superior, and is very good with knives, he tries to flee. Braddock chases Nate up the mast of the ship toward Sully in the helicopter. Eventually Nate needs Sully’s help to make the jump with Braddock on Nate’s heels. Sully realizes the only weapon he has is a bag he had filled with gold from the ship, and in order to save Nate, he throws it at Braddock, knocking her off the ship.
In the end both ships sink to the bottom of the sea, and the military of the Philippines arrives to take possession of the gold. Not all of it though, it turns out Nate was able to sneak off with some gold in his pockets, so the quest was not a total loss.
Nate And Sully Are Finally On The Same Page
Those who know the Uncharted games know the characters of Nathan Drake and Victor Sullivan well. The two are an inseparable pair who go on all these adventures together. Sully is a surrogate father to Nate. He’s the wise and experienced con man, while Nate is the man of action.
In the games these two would do anything for each other, but that’s not the pair we meet in the Uncharted movie. Here, it’s clear to Nate from the beginning that Sully doesn’t trust him, isn’t telling him everything, and is ultimately just using Nate for his own ends. And this is valid. Sully isn’t a very nice person throughout the movie, leaving Nate behind to make his own escape more than once. Maybe all of Sully’s compassion is in his mustache.
Nathan Drake, whatever his flaws may be, wants to trust Sully. All he really cares about is hunting and finding the treasure that he and his brother dreamed about. He's willing to trust, but Sully and Chloe are not.
When it comes down to it, however, when given the choice between saving Nate and flying off with the gold, Sully chooses Nate. The two have built a strong bond up to this point and while they don’t quite have the same dynamic they do in the games, they’re certainly moving in that direction. And each one has rubbed off on the other. Sully is a bit more trusting, he will almost certainly trust Nate from now on, and Nate has learned to be a bit underhanded when necessary.
But What About Chloe Frazer?
But there’s a third member of our team. Chloe Frazer is introduced as a friend of Sully’s but theirs is clearly a relationship of convenience. We learn that Chloe is actually working for the bad guys at one point until it no longer benefits her, and while she and Nate team up a second time, when given the chance, Chloe turns on Nate again, though she maybe at least hesitates this time.
Nate, of course, suspects this might happen, so he leaves a set of fake coordinates for her to find before going to sleep. This at least gives her the chance of making the right move and not running off. She can decide to wait for Nate and they can work together, but she decides to go it alone.
In the final scene of the movie, we see Chloe in her boat, having tracked down Nate and Sully in the helicopter. Nate tells Sully what he did, and they can see through binoculars that Chloe is not happy.
The question is, has Chloe learned anything here? If she, like Sully, has realized that she could have gotten farther by trusting Nate, then perhaps these three will work together and trust each other in the future. If, however, Chloe is just angry she got tricked, then the relationship between her and Nate will likely be quite complicated. Of course, for those that know the Uncharted games, the relationship between Nate and Chloe has always been complicated.
And so, while the Uncharted movie maybe doesn’t quite get us to the Nathan Drake we know from the games, it does get us most of the way there. Nathan Drake is now a professional treasure hunter, and the shoulder holster fits him nicely.
