Tomb Raider (2018)
Directed by Roar Uthaug
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.
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9 films that influenced Tomb Raider
What critics say influenced Tomb Raider
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.
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.
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.
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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 .
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.”
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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.