A few words from a professional procrastinator

One of the biggest summer movies this year is Indiana Jones. Uncharted is a video game exclusive to the PS3 and is considered as one of the best on the system. One is a movie franchise that was very popular last century and the other is a new video game series. Indy is an archaeologist while Nathan Drake is a grave robber. Both look like scruffy looking nerf herders (if you don’t know where that line came from you don’t deserve to call yourself a science fiction fan) and is generally unkempt.

Both storylines deal with the search of the missing city of “El Dorado”. Both have older “sidekick” buddies and a female interest who always gets in the way. Indy has one car/ motorcycle chase after another. Uncharted has one car chase and a lot of climbing and jumping around and best of all jet skis.

Villains are not American. Uncharted has Latin American pirates and thugs (and more since I don’t want to spoil it, let’s just say Indy and Uncharted have villians in common). Indy has stereotype Nazis and Russian KGB.

Nathan Drake always has a loaded gun in his pocket, whereas Indy is content in carrying a bull whip.

So what makes Uncharted more appealing than Indiana Jones?

Is Uncharted more attuned to the times than Indy? Indy 4 is set during the height of the cold war and the nuclear arms race while Uncharted is established as today.

The previous 3 incarnations of the franchise was released at the height of the cold war, where anyone who lived in Eastern Europe, most especially Russia were deemed the enemy. The western world believed in the world that Indy lived in.

But in the 4th? It seems that Lucas and Spielberg were unable to suspend my disbelief. I could see too many metaphors from Indy4 to what the world is going through now. The same stunts and tricks used in the past 3 movies kept coming up. If you follow the series carefully, you can actually predict what was going to happen next.

Uncharted gave us an adventure similar to the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider series but the team at Naughty Dog (the people who made Uncharted) created a world that could actually exist today. Not to mention, it didn’t try to tackle things such as saving the world or good vs. evil. Even though it was a videogame, the story had a mystery in it that we wanted to uncover. There were too many odd things being thrown in but it would make you continue on playing the game. In short, it was interesting.

Uncharted is a game and Indy is a movie. Uncharted isn’t exactly a runaway hit on the PS3 as GTA4 is. And despite the flaws in the movie, Indy will still make money in the box office and DVD sales.

Does this mean that Hollywood is getting old? Not yet (but it seems like it). More people still go to the movies than play videogames. But It cannot be denied that videogames are now making more money than movies. If videogames suddenly become an art form. Then things may look a little different in the next couple of years.