You’ll Be Raiding More Tombs This September

When Angelina Jolie signed on to play Lara Croft in a Tomb Raider movie, she was a recent Oscar-winner with a controversial reputation.

“Having Lara Croft leap around and avoid traps should be an easy formula-but for this crew, it remains an unsolvable puzzle”, Hoffman wrote.

With an actor dedicated to making this iconic character their own and great action set pieces Tomb Raider is a great film. How it was seen as the long-awaited injection of credibility in the sub-genre that has routinely under-performed both critically and commercially?

It was also an origin story, and its success kept the game firmly on the stars’ and filmmakers’ minds.

The new look series has a few things going for it. (Lara pretty much lives in the same T-shirt, pants and plain boots.) But all the good intentions won’t make up for a lack of imagination.

Alicia Vikander embodies Tomb Raider, Alicia is Lara Croft!

“We simply can’t wait to take you on Lara Croft’s defining adventure”. Despite her family being quite wealthy, she has chosen to live rather humbly working as a messenger.

In one, Lara bikes madly through London on a kind of two-wheeled fox hunt, dodging trucks and chased by cyclists; in another, she flees three muggers on the docks, leaping from boat to boat. She gets into her dad’s secret office, and instead of destroying the papers as he requested, she decides to track down where he spent his final days.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw similarly pointed out that the film’s origin-story setup – which shows how Croft came into her wealth, her martial arts skills and interest in tomb raiding – borrowed much from films of the past, especially the Indiana Jones films.

In the courageous new movie world of 2018, audiences are more ready than ever for a credible, powerful female hero.

“It was important to us to set her up with some abilities”, Uthaug said. Her earnest drive to find out about her father, rather than seek a treasure, adds to her likability. “She’s smart but also stubborn”. Here, though, she mostly just runs.

You know when you read articles about “the industry” and they discuss the degradation and dumbing down of audiences through the modern blockbuster? “To make an artful, interesting story, commercial and big and loud as it should be-that, I think, is the biggest challenge”. With this fumble as the first outing, though, it’s game over already.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means we receive a commission if you make a purchase using one of the affiliated links. It doesn’t matter how big the explosions are if you don’t care about the character in the middle of it. So that was our mantra.

There’s been a lot of discussion of what isn’t Tomb Raider’s strong point, but the movie does have one in its lead actress.

Tomb Raider opens Friday.