Uncharted features two post-credits scenes, both of which set the stage for a possible sequel (and with the movie exceeding expectations at the box office, we're definitely banking on a follow-up). Now, in an interview with The Wrap, director Ruben Fleischer has broken down those extra scenes.
The first confirms that Nate's brother, Sam, is still alive and being held in a prison overseas somewhere. He's writing postcards to his sibling, hinting that we'll see a rescue mission when these characters return. Explaining that an actor hasn't actually been cast in that role yet, Fleischer went on to elaborate on the importance of the sequence and why it was ultimately included in Uncharted.
"That one was important to me just because I didn’t want, if we’re lucky enough to get to make a sequel for the film and we bring that character back, I didn’t want audiences to be like, ‘Wait, you said he was dead. How come he is alive now?’" the filmmaker explained. "I thought it was really important that we just have a degree of reality established in the film so that it’s not like people who are pronounced dead can just come back whenever. That’s why that scene exists."
A second scene more directly lays the groundwork for another adventure with Nate and Sully for what looks set to be a loose adaptation of the first game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. After stealing a map, the duo finds themselves confronted by an unknown threat. However, while Fleischer confirmed Mark Wahlberg always had Sully's moustache in that scene, it went through some big changes.
"It was always intended to have a tag. I’ll be honest that wasn’t the original one that we shot," Fleischer said. "But it was always intended to have one that just suggested Nate and Sully were a bonded team that was going to go on more adventures. The truth is just due to schedule and budgetary restraints, the original tag we shot just felt underwhelming after the movie."
"Once the studio saw the film and saw how well it was working and the dynamic between Mark and Tom, they decided to invest, to shoot another tag that had much bigger scale and consequences because they agreed that allowing audiences to know that this wasn’t the end of their adventure, but more the beginning," the filmmaker continued. "[The original scene] just was really static. It was just the two of them doing a lot of exposition at a table. There was no action. There was no bad guys. It was just a wrap up scene that felt a little lackluster after such an exciting film."
Uncharted is now playing in theaters.