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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
Directed by Tom Gormican
influenced by Con Air (1997)
His unlikely action star status is also continually referenced, especially the holy trilogy of The Rock , Con Air and Face/Off .
It opens with a clip from Con Air , contains tongue-in-cheek nods to The Croods 2 , Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Guarding Tess , and features a scene packed with Cage-flavoured props, from Mandy ’s chainsaw to the twin gold guns from Face/Off .
It’s a fitting tribute to the over-the-top action flicks that its star was known for in the 1990s; it’s no “Con Air,” but it absolutely took notes from “Con Air.”
From opening with a scene from “Con Air” to countless references to the majority of his oeuvre, “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is an undeniable love letter to Cage, warts and all.
Uncharted (2022)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
influenced by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Themes Plot
Like Tomb Raider before it (and Indiana Jones before that), Uncharted borrows heavily from the adventure serials of the Thirties, digging deep into the romantic traditions of discovery and exoticised wanderlust.
However, the film struggles to develop meaningful character depth and emotional complexity amid its barrage of elaborate globetrotting set pieces that are its very reason for existence — settling for a standard-issue buddy comedy in the vein of the National Treasure or, um, Tomb Raider franchises.
“Uncharted” mixes and matches the adventure elements of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Tomb Raider” and “National Treasure” into a generic action movie that loses its way early on.
It remains to be seen whether Uncharted will work with those who are more devoted fans of the games than I am but, from a purely cinematic perspective, it’s an enjoyable adaptation in the vein of the surprisingly entertaining Alicia Vikander-led take on Tomb Raider which surfaced in 2018.
Like an alarming amount of recent video game movies — "Tomb Raider," "Mortal Kombat," etc. — "Uncharted" has decided to go the prequel route with its protagonist, aging down Nathan Drake to a twentysomething Holland, who still seems to be too young to be playing an orphaned bartender-turned-treasure hunter.
Obviously intended to imitate the 2008 hit Taken (right down to the title), this is certainly better than a lot of Cage's endeavours of late, but it still lacks anything resembling originality.
He was referring to " Battleship ," not " Taken ," but the sketch got to "Taken" later, and one sort of can't help but thinking of that while watching " Stolen ," in which the real Nicolas Cage plays a robber-gone-right after a prison stretch ... only he has to go wrong again after an ex-partner kidnaps his now-teenage daughter.
That's right "Stolen" is lifted from " Taken " -- and pretty unashamedly, to boot.
It's a familiar premise, and was handled with some flair in the Liam Neeson action yarn Taken, but here there are just too many standard movie conventions and too few surprises.
Stolen is very different from Pierre Morel's 2008 exploitation megahit Taken : There are six letters in its title, not five.
Stolen has been criticised for its seeming similarity to Liam Neeson's Taken , but those critics must have incredibly short memories.
Following on the heels of the most excellent updated version of True Grit we have a remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson-starring film The Mechanic (click for info about the original).
THE MECHANIC Jason Statham bares his six-pack before speaking his first line in this humorless, efficient remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson hitman movie.
“The Mechanic” is a remake of a largely forgotten 1972 thriller starring Charles Bronson.
Although most people will probably not remember the original, "The Mechanic" (opened January 28 throughout San Diego) is a remake of a 70s Charles Bronson film.
The Mechanic , a remake of sorts of the 1972 Charles Bronson film of the same name, plays the formula to a tee.
Along the way, we are treated to a are-they-really-gonna-go-there homage to the semiclassic and thoroughly disreputable '70s revenge thriller "Rolling Thunder" (two words, kids: garbage disposal), an urgent lesson in chemistry (if you wanna kill a guy with an adrenaline overdose, he can't have been doing ketamine before you hit him with that stuff; bet you didn't know that, did you?) and a lot of no-messing-around, intense action.
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
influenced by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Plot Characters
The fascinating mix of action-adventure elements, with numerous affectionate nods to staples Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider, surprisingly works with the overarching fantasy and mythological elements of the magical world inspired by South-East Asian culture.
That said, “Raya” is a pleasant enough kids’ adventure — “Raiders of the Lost Ark” meets “Mulan” who is now a “Tomb Raider.”
But before cutting bait and chancing it with the sharks, know that what lies ahead on “Death Race’s” Terminal Island is the most epically loaded triple-cheeseburger action movie since “Con Air.”
Though the “Death Race” story has a different book cover, Jason Statham’s character as Jensen Ames and then the masked Frankenstein can be directly correlated to (as just one example) Nicolas Cage’s character in 1997’s “Con Air”.
An attempt at giving Arthur a sensitive side goes as far as his penchant for listening to classical music in his downtime, while Steve, for all intents and purposes, is an unhinged soul practicing to be a serial killer straight out of 1981's infamously controversial William Friedkin thriller "Cruising."
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Plot Themes
There's enough of this to suggest that one of the movie's screenwriters may have heard of a movie called "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
The movie seems like all the movies you’d expect it to seem like (“Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Mummy,” for example).
The story is now an archetype of cinema, aped — and invariably aped badly — in countless pop culture projects from The Mummy to Tomb Raider .
Before the god-awful “Tomb Raider” and “Mummy” films there was “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” a film that still stands as one of the best action/adventure films ever made.
The hero is one of those cool, existential hit men who've been strolling across movie screens at least since Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (1967), and while that pop mythology was still relatively fresh back in Bronson's day, it's so played out at this point that not even the enjoyably no-nonsense Statham can pump any life into it.
It has echoes of an underwater Thor, which is probably where its tone should have sat, but it wanders off into Tomb Raider territory, and even has some horror elements.
There’s a Tomb Raider –esque puzzle quest lying at the center of Aquaman, taking our hero and his neon-ginger pal Mera (Amber Heard) from one place to the next in search of a fabled object.
Throw in scenes directly lifted from or inspired by pictures such as "The Mummy," "The Fugitive," "Event Horizon" and plenty of others, and the result is a film that's most notable for reminding viewers of how such scenes were better in the original films.
Captain Marvel (2019)
Directed by Ryan Fleck
influenced by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Characters
It’s a bit of lead-up to get to the meat of the story — Vers discovering she’s Carol Danvers and learning the truth about what happened to her before she landed on Hala and joined the Kree Starforce — but when Boden and Fleck, who wrote the script with Tomb Raider scribe Geneva Robertson-Dworet, bring us to that place, Captain Marvel blooms beautifully.
This is evident in the script, co-written with Geneva Robertson-Dworet (“Tomb Raider”), which builds up the action-adventure stakes while also focusing in on Vers’ struggle to understand herself.
Writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who co-wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider), know what they are doing for the most part.
Captain Marvel isn’t just a notch for gender equality in front of the camera, as the film marks the first female writer-director (Half Nelson’s Anna Bowden sharing responsibilities with longtime co-writer/director Ryan Fleck), who is joined by a second female screenwriter in Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider).
Captain Marvel was woven in a little bit of a random hot potato fashion by the story and screenwriting brainstrust of Inside Out ’s Megan LeFauve, Guardians of the Galaxy contributor Nicole Perlman, Geneva Roberts-Dworet of the Tomb Raider reboot, and the indie-minded directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck ( Mississippi Grind , Half Nelson ).
She lacks the steel of Angelina Jolie ( Wanted ) or Sigourney Weaver ( Alien ), the exotic appeal of Gal Gadot ( Wonder Woman ) or Alicia Vikander ( Tomb Raider ).
Black Adam (2022)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
influenced by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Visuals
That Black Adam kneels before and could simply be mashing up parts of 300, Clash of the Titans and Tomb Raider for much of its running time, especially visually, just makes a dull movie duller (the DCEU really can't move on from Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League director Zack Snyder, so it seems).
Co-written by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, “Black Adam” features a lot more action than most DC movies, cramming the exposition into a series of supercharged set-pieces — including an early “Tomb Raider”-like sequence wherein Adrianna and three accomplices explore a cave, recovering the crown and unleashing Teth Adam from his millennia-long imprisonment.
The number of — ahem — call-backs to other films is pretty sad — “Tomb Raider,” “Back to the Future” and plenty of “Star Wars” (even, unforgivably, the line “You’re our only hope”.)
After some flaccid “Tomb Raider” stylings, as Adrianna and her painfully unfunny brother Karim (Mohammed Amer) go into the caves, they’re thwarted by traitors to the cause, and whoopsie-doodle, they awaken Teth Adam, who kills pretty much everyone but them.
He is awakened centuries later by Adrianna (Sarah Shahi), when she and her colleagues go Tomb Raider -ing in Khandaq for a powerful crown made out of Eternium.
Other than Chris Barrie who makes his feature film debut and gets in a few amusing moments as the protective butler, Iain Glen ("Mountains of the Moon," "Gorillas in the Mist") and Daniel Craig ("Elizabeth," "I Dreamed of Africa") are completely flat as the one-dimensional villains and Noah Taylor ("Almost Famous," "Shine") can't do much with his limited techno guru part.
And there's no excusing the film's criminal underuse of Noah Taylor ("Shine," "Almost Famous") and Chris Barrie (the British TV comedies "Red Dwarf" and "The Brittas Empire"), wasted as Lara's tech-whiz sidekick and long-suffering butler, respectively.
Noah Taylor (the young David Helfgott in "Shine") is Lara's sidekick, Bryce, who is supposed to be some kind of techno-geek, but comes across as just a plain geek.
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Directed by Richard Donner
influenced The Mechanic (2011), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Characters Plot
Nobody's asking for Mel and Danny in Lethal Weapon - and certainly not for Will and Mark in The Other Guys - but it'd be nice if Jason Statham and Ben Foster, The Mechanic's mentor/protege duo (this week's theme, see The Rite) , could crack a smile.
To make matters worse, the film sports an absolutely awful ending lifted from "Lethal Weapon" and a gazillion other films where the hero and villain lay down their weapons and fight each other with blows that individually would incapacitate even the toughest athlete or fighter, but collectively have a hard time taking out the Energizer Bunny/Timex Watch hybrids here.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Directed by Michael Jelenic
influenced by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Visuals
Nothing about “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is game-changing, but it’ll be difficult for fans to ignore the entertainment value – in the same way that “The Lego Movie” or “Tomb Raider” or “Mortal Kombat” (and countless more) presented and visualized iconic imagery during introductions to famous worlds, missions, personas, and interactions.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Directed by Mike Newell
influenced by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
Plot
About on par with the Tomb Raider movies, Persia plugs a respectable star (Jake Gyllenhaal) into a stock adventure story that mashes together familiar elements from other movies, along with some so-so action sequences and sparkly special effects.
Some do make money (such as the first "Tomb Raider" and "Pokmon" films), but most are mediocre hits at best, and nearly all of them are ugly ducklings (what's with all of the animal metaphors?)
Along with the brilliant performances and fun story, Collet-Serra excels in directing big-scale action sequences and fight scenes, including brawls, prop-based scenes (with a particular nod to the ladder scene in The Mummy ) and Tomb Raider type puzzles and booby traps, which signals a positive future for their next collaboration in DC’s Black Adam .
A charming tête-à-tête unfolds detailing Muerrto’s informant arrangements with the feds thus setting the stage for an all out brawl between the two, but not before other slimy personalities, notably Toby Huss’ Anthony Lamb, a serial killer who rivals Steve Buscemi from “Con Air,” enters the scene looking for his piece of the pie.