Tomb Raider – Review (Movie)
Editor’s Note: We don’t normally do movie reviews but, since this one is video game related we figured we would take it on. Also, though we’ve tried to leave most of them out, this review may have some slight plot spoilers so beware if you are particularly sensitive to spoilers.
The Tomb Raider franchise has seen its fair share of highs and lows since its inception. The first two films seem to have more lows in them than highs, but since the reboot of all things Lara Croft related in 2013, the brand has been on the upswing.
So… here we are with two new games since the franchise reboot and one just announced for a release in fall of 2018. The time was ripe for the movie side of the franchise to reboot as well. Can the film fight the video game movie curse and actually be good? The answer is complicated, but… yeah, kind of.
One of the hardest obstacles for a video game film is taking anywhere from ten to fifty hours of gameplay and compacting it into a two hour experience. Some things will get lost in translation no matter how you look at it. Tomb Raider is no exception. Lara’s reasons for leaving on her journey are fairly thin and, while we don’t really see much of her father in the video games for the most part, it becomes hard to believe that she would leave on such a treacherous journey without more backstory.
When we first meet Lara, played wonderfully by the powerful Oscar winning actress Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl and Ex Machina), she is on her own and unwilling to accept her father’s death who left seven years earlier and never returned. She lives a life of poverty as a courier delivering food. The kicker is that if she would just sign the papers and accept her father’s passing, she would be unfathomably wealthy.
Ana, her father’s employee and family friend, bails her out of prison and convinces her rather easily to sign and move on with her life. While signing the papers she receives a puzzle box left from her father that leads her to his secret lair. Here, she learns of his secret life, searching for the supernatural with hopes that he will at some point reconnect with his wife who has already passed on to the after life. While going through his things Lara suddenly becomes an expert at all things required for a good treasure hunt and she is on her way to find out what happened to her father.
Lara’s discovery about her father takes her to another country to move forward on his original quest. We meet several other characters who are, unfortunately, rather forgettable, and discover the full extent of exactly where and why her father left home in such a hurry. While these scenes have some ups and downs, from here on out though the movie is Tomb Raider through and through.
Tomb Raider is probably the “most accurate to its source” video game movie ever made. Everything that makes Tomb Raider… well, Tomb Raider… are all present here. She will run, jump, grab onto ledges with her axe, navigate tombs and solve puzzles. Most of these are so accurately depicted that anyone who had played through the recent games will actually feel a sense of familiarity. This is what is lacking in most video game adaptations. Often, you forget you are watching a movie based on a game and just feel as though you are watching a bad movie. While Tomb Raider doesn’t completely save the video game genre, it definitely is a step in the right direction. Though the story is thin, the action is really fun to watch and the MacGuffin is quite interesting and unexpected.
This is a version of Lara Croft that we really haven’t seen much of in the past, especially on the big screen. Vikanders take on Croft is very raw. She has some training in boxing and martial arts, but she isn’t setting the world on fire with her skills. What she lacks in training and ability, she makes up for with a killer survival instinct.
Throughout the course of the film Lara is changed. Events unfold that make Lara seem like a real person, not a tougher-than-nails video game character with no emotions. The most powerful moment in the film is undoubtedly centered around emotions that Lara feels.
If you’re looking for the next contender for best picture at the academy awards Tomb Raider may not be for you. However, for any fan of the game series looking for a fun way to spend a couple hours during the weekend in March, you could do a lot worse. It is easy to wonder if video games would make a better T.V. series than a movie. If the ending of Tomb Raider is setting up a potential franchise, it’s exciting to see where they could go now that the origin story is out of the way. With better direction and a tighter script, the Alicia Vikander version of Lara Croft deserves a sequel to see what she can do to grow the franchise even more.
