![]() (Technically, there’s not even any raiding in this movie.) It’s more or less a retrieval quest, giving us a pretty good sense of how things will go down from the outset. It’s diverting, a good way to spend a couple of hours, but it’s hamstrung by something that’s unavoidable: The whole central concept - raiding tombs - is just, well, not that interesting. (And she’s ridiculously, admirably strong - you may find yourself wanting to go straight to the gym and start doing chin-ups immediately.)īut for all of Tomb Raider’s strengths, it would still be a stretch to call it a good movie. The Lara of the rebooted games must gain confidence and push through her own pain in order to become a badass Vikander embodies just that sort of character believably. As Lara, Vikander is terrific: By turns vulnerable and strong, brave and frightened, impish and determined, she ably fits the evolved character. The film’s other great strength is its cast (which also includes Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, and Kristin Scott Thomas), especially Vikander. But there are enough differences to keep even the experienced gamers engaged, including some big, unexpected plot twists. There are other similarities too: Though the game of course has many more challenges and puzzles, a few game sequences appear in the movie (including a sequence in which Lara keeps herself from hurtling over a waterfall by swinging into a rusted-out airplane hull, only to have it start to fall). Those who’ve played the 2013 Tomb Raider video game reboot will detect some similarities between the plot of the game and the plot of the film, both of which feature Lara on the island and the ancient queen. For all its strengths, Tomb Raider can’t overcome the weakness of its central concept And - this being a movie based on a video game - the fate of the world may hang in the balance too. ![]() Whatever is in that tomb holds the key to Lara’s past. However, circumstances conspire and Lara finds herself in Hong Kong, determined to find a way to a mythical island that might exist off the coast of Japan, where an ancient queen may or may not have been imprisoned in a tomb by her guards long ago. Instead, she works as a bike courier in London. He’d been an adventurer and an explorer as well as a wealthy businessman, and he left behind a business empire that Lara stands to inherit.īut she’s not willing to declare him dead, not yet, and thus refuses to sign the paperwork that would let her collect her inheritance. Lara’s father, Lord Richard Croft ( Dominic West), disappeared seven years earlier, when Lara was a teenager. The screenplay (by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons, from a story by Robertson-Dworet and Evan Daugherty) works like an origin story for a superheroine. Tomb Raider, directed by Norwegian director Roar Uthaug, takes a “both/and” approach to the problem of audience engagement, dialing up the emotional core that’s always been at the heart of the Tomb Raider franchise - the relationship between Lara and her long-lost father - while also finding ways to deviate from the story told in the game. So to keep the audience’s attention, the movie has to involve the audience emotionally, or surprise them, or otherwise keep them guessing and engaged. In a movie, though, there’s no direct participation. Players get to make choices and explore worlds and figure out puzzles, but the player is the one doing the work. Movies based on video games are almost uniformly terrible, with very few exceptions, and the reason is sort of obvious: The fun of a video game comes from participating in the story. Tomb Raider sidesteps the problems common to video game movies Lara Croft 2.0 has finally made it to movie screens. And it both parallels and diverges from the rebooted game, taking its cues from what players liked while throwing in just enough surprises to make it interesting to general audiences. The movie isn’t particularly clever or innovative, but as an action film, it’s satisfying. It’s got a story, and characters, and an emotional center, and it’s plotted in a way that sets up sequels. But the 2018 reboot of Tomb Raider, starring Alicia Vikander as Croft, actually wants to be a movie. The old Tomb Raider movies are terrible, patently silly and campy without the saving self-awareness of, say, The Mummy. Two movies, in which Angelina Jolie (in a padded bra) played Croft, came out in 20, and both filmed her body in ways that are beginning to feel dated the first more or less introduces her with a lingering crotch shot. But it also tracks with how audiences and filmmakers have slowly changed their ideas about women in action movies, something that’s paralleled by the Tomb Raider movies. That development certainly mirrors shifting ideas about the place of women in the gaming world - and in games themselves - over the past two decades. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark
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