Uncharted director Ruben Fleischer has explained why Mark Wahlberg’s Victor ‘Sully’ Sullivan doesn’t have his iconic moustache for the majority of the movie’s runtime.
Spoilers for the Uncharted movie follow.
Wahlberg’s mentor figure is known for two things to PlayStation gamers: loud shirts and his prickly moustache. Both were absent from the main movie. In the second of two Uncharted post-credits scenes, however, he delivered on both of those.
Why did we have to wait so long? For Fleischer, it was all about charting new territory away from Naughty Dog’s video game series.
"This movie is about the evolution of these characters," Fleischer tells 12DOVE. "We wanted to tell a different chapter of the story of Nate and Sully than that which fans are familiar with in the games."
Fleischer continues, "That allowed us some license to show their progress, from Nate going from being an unassuming bartender to becoming a globetrotting treasure hunter and similar with Sully. We didn’t want him to start off in the exact same places where he ends up later in the video games. So certain liberties, we thought we would be allowed to take – for example, not having his iconic moustache until the end of the film – felt like, ‘Oh, we're graduating to that later version of Sully.'"
That moment also highlighted leads Wahlberg and Tom Holland’s talent for working on the fly. The "You’ll hit puberty one day" line from Sully about Nate’s reaction to the moustache was actually improvised by Mark Wahlberg during filming.
"These guys make it their own and just add so much flavor to everything they do," Fleischer adds.
If you’ve already seen Uncharted, check out our breakdowns of the Uncharted ending and all of the major Uncharted Easter eggs.
