Roar Uthaug
19 connections found
Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Tomb Raider (2018)
Plot
The plot is similar to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where a father’s work leads to his child going on adventure right down the booby-trapped cave where the child’s cleverness results in victory (although Indy was never saddled with lines like “It’s a color puzzle!”).
The story here borrows heavily from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, since both involve a young adventurer following their father’s obsessions to exotic locales.
Although “Tomb Raider” attempts a more emotionally traumatic approach with it, there’s a significant chunk of writers Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alistair Siddons screenplay that teeters on the edge of straight up copying the dynamic of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
Unfortunately, the movie she’s in, loosely adapted from the aforementioned 2013 game, is depressingly derivative of Steven Spielberg’s series – to the extent that whole character beats, props, even the entire third act, is lifted from 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
When the film finally settles into its main conflict — between Lara and Mathias Vogel, an evil company man played by the always dynamic Walton Goggins — it becomes a fun hybrid of 1999’s The Mummy and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade .
The movie’s third act consists of watching Vikander solve a series of puzzles and the occasional quick-time event, in a sequence that feels more like a reskin of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade than a Tomb Raider game.
While those at least had a B-movie sheen and owned their campiness, the new effort is too earnest, too belabored and too predictable: It steals liberally from Raiders of the Lost Ark and National Treasure without ever having a vision of its own.
Given the sheer absurdity of the plot cobbled together by scripters Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons (loosely based on the 2013 game reboot and the comics that flowed from it), it needs a dose of comedy, even self-mockery, of the sort that made “Raiders of the Lost Ark” fun.
Picture Raiders of the Lost Ark wrung dry of all fun, suspense, and practical special effects and you have something approximating the action in Tomb Raider.
The movie is full of treasure maps and secret codes, and the second half is basically the opening scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — all underground booby traps and glittering riches — stretched to an hour.
The action, like the plot, is straightforward, lacking the cliffhanger tension that made Raiders of the Lost Ark so compelling.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
influenced Troll 2 (2025)
Plot Themes Characters
The film dives headfirst into a “Silence of the Lambs” cross-examination between Kelley and Göring, as the two match wits by trying to outsmart each other in a game of mental chess.
Imagine Judgment at Nuremberg refracted through Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter’s relationship in The Silence of the Lambs.
There’s a certain flavor of “Silence of the Lambs,” of course, with the German general as the super-intelligent locus of evil and the shrink as the somewhat naive innocent who thinks he can match wits with him.
There are definite similarities between the Göring-Kelley relationship and the one between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs—questions of morality and ethics, and intellectual power versus low animal cunning.
Hermann Göring was a flat-out monster, so scenes where the psychiatrist interacts with him should have an intense vibe similar to the Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter dynamic in The Silence of the Lambs.
Highlighting the banality of evil has become a trend in recent Holocaust dramas like The Zone of Interest. But unlike that film, Nuremberg relies on didactic expository dialogue.
…just as 2023’s The Zone of Interest depicted, Nuremberg captures how the Holocaust was not carried out by some supernatural evil but by everyday people so entrenched in their beliefs, ambition, and power that they committed horrific acts against their fellow human beings.
…while as an exploration of Nazi evils the film pales in comparison to Jonathan Glazer's masterwork The Zone of Interest (2023).
It’s unfair to make the comparison to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. Still, Glazer’s film was willing to sit uncomfortably with evil long enough to dissect it without turning its characters into a sideshow of Hollywood tropes. The problem is that it’s not as accessible as Vanderbilt’s film. They share the intent of dissecting evil, but Glazer is much clearer about how he wants to approach it, while Vanderbilt strings together a few conceptually interesting ideas before sacrificing them all for a more generic absolute.
While the plot may not deliver the same emotional gut-punch as The Zone of Interest, it also explores the banality of evil, suggesting that horrific acts are committed not by some supernatural force, but by ‘ordinary people’ motivated by ambition and unchecked desire for power.
While those at least had a B-movie sheen and owned their campiness, the new effort is too earnest, too belabored and too predictable: It steals liberally from Raiders of the Lost Ark and National Treasure without ever having a vision of its own.
This Tomb Raider not only recalls the Jolie films—with a bland Vikander lacking the preternatural, larger-than-life confidence projected by Jolie—but the legacy of other large-scale globetrotting archaeological adventure pictures, like the Indiana Jones and National Treasure films.
A little “Indiana Jones,” a little “National Treasure,” a little “Bourne Identity” — not to mention its similarities to those two previous “Tomb Raider” films — its script feels like the same sort of ancient relic those on the island are trying to excavate.
While there, she solves puzzles, fights bad guys, digs up relics, gathers clues and all the other stuff you’ve undoubtedly seen before in “Indiana Jones,” “The Mummy,” “National Treasure,” et.al.
You also get a slight sense of post-Oppenheimer cinema in the pretty rapid pacing, and it’s to its credit that it doesn’t feel like too much of a heaving object despite a two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
Films like Oppenheimer, which Vanderbilt seems especially eager to replicate in terms of its active pacing, heavily descriptive writing and even the use of shared cast member Rami Malek, managed to earn its unlikely combination of epic filmmaking and stuffy exposition through engrossing technical aspects like its cinematography and editing.
At one point, it looked like Lila showed up conveniently to move the plot along. Arguably, this was worse than the part Albert Einstein magically appears to see Julius Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer.
Rami Malek, as seen in Oppenheimer…
…not quite reaching Oppenheimer level but still having several A-listers show up for little more than a cameo…
…the tongue-in-cheek reprise of Crowe in Gladiator leading his war criminals down the tunnel into the courtroom…
Crowe’s performance as Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command was solid, with dialogue and monologues reminiscent of Maximus in Gladiator.
Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe, Gladiator)…
The one-time Gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius, reduced to cosplaying a bulging Nazi in his final days.
El último par de años, fueron las prometedoras —pero desgraciadamente decepcionantes— “ Warcraft ”, del talentoso Duncan Jones (“Luna”), y “ Assassin’s Creed ”, la cual desperdició a mucha gente capaz, tanto frente a cámaras (Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard), como detrás de las mismas (Justin Kurzel, director de la notable “Macbeth”).
For a character who began life as a video game avatar, she’s quite human – and certainly more so than the protagonists in past video-game adaptations (including the hero played by Vikander’s real-life husband, Michael Fassbender, in the 2016 debacle Assassin’s Creed).
To be fair, the last quarter century hasn’t given much room to think otherwise: from Super Mario Bros. to the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movies, all the way to Assassin’s Creed , it’s just difficult to translate the rhythms and mechanics of a video game to the intricate, character-driven dynamics of cinema.
And Goggins, channeling Dirty Harry -era Clint Eastwood, brings the right level of IDGAF to his villainous role.
Anything more than a laughable failure qualifies as a solid entry in the game-to-film canon, which qualifies the likes of "Resident Evil" and "Warcraft" to be hailed as successes.
The only truly successful effort was the Resident Evil franchise, which spawned six features (last year’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter being the last one), director Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2002 first film arguably the most enjoyable of the set.
Sure, there are some critics who celebrate Paul WS Anderson’s visual stylings in the Resident Evil franchise , and others still who defend the Silent Hill , but they do not represent the consensus.
Tomb Raider wants to be Indiana Jones but ends up more The Mummy (the good Rachel Weisz one, not the dumb Tom Cruise one).
And like “The Mummy,” “Tomb Raider” finishes with a strong hint of more installments to come.
The old Tomb Raider movies are terrible, patently silly and campy without the saving self-awareness of, say, The Mummy.
To the movie: Tomb Raider does everything right that last year’s The Mummy did so garishly, painfully wrong.
When the film finally settles into its main conflict — between Lara and Mathias Vogel, an evil company man played by the always dynamic Walton Goggins — it becomes a fun hybrid of 1999’s The Mummy and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade .
The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Directed by Michael Mann
influenced Tomb Raider (2018)
Visuals Characters
Based on the 2013 video game, and featuring Alicia Vikander as the latest incarnation of a character who's been around for 22 years, "Tomb Raider" surprisingly plays like a throwback to the classic late-'80s/early '90s era of action filmmaking, represented by the likes of " Cliffhanger ," " The Last of the Mohicans ," the first couple of Indiana Jones films, and Jackie Chan's "Armour of God" series.
Imagine a “Red Dead” style game that you can sling a musket over your shoulder and pick up a Tomahawk and kill French troops with Daniel Day-Lewis’ Hawkeye from “The Last of the Mohicans.”
Much more in line with 2015 Norwegian disaster-thriller The Wave than your typical Hollywood apocalyptic fare (think 2012 or San Andreas), Greenland believably traces how civil society would come to pieces in the eye of an impending disaster.
I believe it was taking influence from Roar Uthaug’s absolutely brilliant 2015 disaster film The Wave .
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced The Wave (2015)
Themes Characters Visuals
To be clear, The Wave doesn’t have the kind of budget that would allow it to stand toe-to-toe with Twister or The Day After Tomorrow or [insert favorite disaster movie title here].
At no point does Kristian shout down the phone to his son “I will come for you” like Dennis Quaid in The Day After Tomorrow and he’s a far more convincing father figure than The Rock ever could be.
Even on a meager-by-Hollywood-standards $8 million budget, the titular cataclysmic event is so realistically rendered as to put the water-logged ruination of blockbusters like The Day After Tomorrow and the recent San Andreas to shame.
Con posterioridad, y aún antes de que las escape se popularizaran en todo el mundo (a partir de 2011), un puñado de obras siguieron la estela de Natali, incluso en un territorio cotidiano alejado de su ciencia ficción, con el caso de la muy estimable película española La habitación de Fermat (Piedrahita y Sopeña, 2007) como singularísima aportación.
It brings to mind similar stakes and logistical dilemmas journalists faced in Spotlight, where a group of characters must navigate their morals while doing what must be done.
Admittedly, the competition is nothing close to formidable: Mortal Kombat, Sonic the Hedgehog, Minecraft, Super Mario Bros., Uncharted, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, the previous six Resident Evil movies.
But whereas Verhoeven’s take was so male gaze-y that the very first scene showed Kevin Bacon spying on his voluptuous neighbor in a sheer bra (played by Rhona Mitra, the original model for Tomb Raider ‘s Lara Croft — the subject of her own awful IP maintenance reboot attempt, in 2018), Whannell’s version is essentially a horror-thriller about gaslighting.
Aside from Karen Gillan in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, it has been quite some time since a woman has been allowed to become an action hero.