Plot Summary: Lara Croft, the fiercely independent daughter of a missing adventurer, must push herself beyond her limits when she finds herself on the island where her father disappeared.
Since 1996, Lara Croft has captured mythology seekers with a mutual love for video gaming and world exploration. The fascination with history conveyed in Croft's journey was a well of possible paths for the character to take, resulting games and films that survived multiple reboots including two migrations to the big screen. Lara Croft's story presented the adventure of Indiana Jones with the allure of a James Bond movie. Croft would discover a small clue in the vase on her father's nightstand that would snowball into searching for clues in jungles where you have to leap a pit full of spikes, shoot your way through a pack of rabid wolves and then decrypt a 4th Century mask in order to get your next archaeological feat. Seventeen games and over twenty years later, this world of complexities poses mythological wonder from the movie screen, dropping you into a cinematic portrayal that you'll remember from Angelina Jolie's run as the familiar "sultrily" marketed badass that is Lara Croft. Granted, there has always been controversy over the way that Lara Croft has been marketed, the brand has still always received great response from its market.
In a time where capable women weren’t really the trend, Lara Croft consistently stood out as a superhero in games and movies, with her own millionaire-orphan-turns-violent-zealot origin story. With Jolie’s rendition of Croft, we are introduced to the air of the character and storyline crafted in the games of the past, allowing the audience to witness her daring feats without the controller, and boosted the career of a Bond himself as a Croft Interest (move over Bond Girls for these Croft conquests). We get what was my favorite part of the games in the films containing Jolie: Home, the Croft Manor. We also got to witness the inventory that a self proclaimed archaeologist and spy collects after years raiding other cultures with the aim to prevent a sociopathic cult’s ambitions for world domination from coming to fruition. The approach to Croft’s story has taken many twists and turns with each telling, but in this 2013 game and film franchise reboot, we focus on Croft’s origin story more than the capable raider that she became as her adventures through deciphering mystical artifacts led her deeper into near death perils.
Lara Croft is a grieving thrill seeker in her mid to late twenties in search of answers as to why her father disappeared in her youth. She has his research and his knack for puzzle solving and goes off on adventures to piece together myths and legends that may have orphaned her. I could tell from the trailer that the journey Croft finds herself thrust into matches the recent video game story, which I loved for its compelling way of thrusting the audience (or player) into the moment where Croft must overcome all odds to live and discover.
In the 2018 film, you get to see that they did take a new approach to the story originally told in the game Tomb Raider (2013). Croft is a free spirit living in the city, trying to forget the large inheritance and grand upbringing that she left behind while overcoming the grief of her father’s disappearance. Through what seems to be chance alone, she goes to sign to claim her inheritance and is given the first clue she would ever discover from her father regarding his research. She follows her father’s research to the islands of Japan, where she discovers a sketchy team of raiders intent on discovering the secrets of Himiko.
Croft (Alicia Vikander) is searching for her father but discovers that the research she studied wasn’t just the rantings of an eccentric explorer. Her father has led greed to an island protecting the world from global death and destruction. She bands together with a few trusted individuals, one of which is Lu Ren played by Daniel Wu (Into the Badlands). Croft arrives on the island with recreational level skills in kickboxing and archery and must turn her skills into lethal weapons against a group of mercenaries forcing trafficked laborers into scouring the island for the secrets of Himiko. Lara Croft faces off against the leader of the group and quickly realizes that those she cares about will not make it off this island if she doesn’t solve the puzzles for this group of raiders and allow them to acquire the artifacts that would make it possible for their unnamed distant conspirators to profit.
True to her father’s principles, Lara Croft does everything in her power to prevent the acquisition of this world ending artifact. For two hours, we cringe and cry along with this adventurer as she honors her father with the bravery and determination to succeed that she puts forward.
What I Liked:
The film stays true to the parts of the 2013 game that made the story so compelling in gameplay. Croft takes risks and defies odds in her attempts to survive challenges sprung on her by both terrain and enemy targets. We get to know Lara Croft as a daughter and young woman trying to determine her purpose in the world. She hasn’t yet taken up the Raider mantle and we get to witness as she discovers the world of mystery and history that is her father’s research. Her survival is full of desperate and reflexive response to high-risk challenges such as surviving a drop from a deadly height when she and her plane slip from the lip of a raging waterfall or racing through a collapsing temple to safety before she is buried alive.
The film consistently provided solid action, keeping the audience interested in the constant near-death experiences that define Croft’s stay on the island of Yamatai, where Himiko was buried to end her destruction of the Earth. In the game, Himiko is a fantastic and undeniably magical final boss, while in the movies she becomes a symbol of how history can warp the truth. I appreciated how they tie the mystical into the real, allowing the audience a more comfortable conceptualization of what Croft must face in her tomb raiding by presenting the mythology as part truth, part history embellishments.
Vikander’s rendition of Lara Croft is daring and intelligent. We get less of her sultry reputation and more of her natural knack for archaeological research. This shift in focus doesn’t take away from the lethal and agile huntress that is Lara Croft one bit and the audience is left with a film that emphasizes the birth a young history buff turned vigilante. The island of Yamatai itself is full of dangers and falls in line with how the game presents the risky marooning of several sea adventurers.
What I Didn’t Like:
While the movie sports an interesting cast, it doesn’t really take advantage of Daniel Wu’s talents in the way that one would expect after witnessing him in such a stunt-heavy story as Into the Badlands. I can’t really fault the movie for focusing on Croft the entire way through. However, with this transition from game to film, it would have been easy for the new storyline to include someone she could trust to aid in her action-packed fights with a dozen men all twice her size. We get a few moments where Lu Ren acts as a cover for the raging tomb raider, but then he is shelved while the plot develops and we don’t see him again until after the climax of the film.
Croft is supposedly a cunning intellect capable of deciphering thousand-year-old folktales but somehow doesn’t notice the conspiracy under her nose at home until after she has signed away her power in the Croft company. This just doesn’t line up with the character we are seeing develop, but I can let it slide knowing that she is new to this world of constant danger and conspiracy. That said, it would have been nice to get more of the dangers she must navigate at home before the film wrapped up with the promise of an even bigger badass come to the sequel. Special effects lent well to the film, but there were a few moments where CGI lacked in realism.
9/10
Summary
Square Enix has released multiple movies recently and succeeded with both attempts to turn their video game stories into compelling action films capable of capturing audiences. I am glad that this film reboot chose to stay so true to a storyline that was multi-layered (thanks to its original conception as a few hours long game) and allowed for the development of a complex conspiracy that could last this franchise at least another three films. While there were some pitfalls in satisfying my curiosity for the character, this rendition of Lara Croft meets expectations of the badass we all want to see going into the theater. For these reasons, I give this film high marks and definitely suggest going to see it in theathers.
