Movie Reaction: Tomb Raider

Formula: Raiders of the Lost Ark / Batman Begins

At first glance, the idea of adapting video games to movies sounds like a slam dunk. Both are visual mediums and often center on a recognizable hero. There are clear goals and the looser structure allows the studio to take liberties with the story that would get them roasted when adapting a book. By now, we all know this isn't the case. The successful video game adaptation is Hollywood's white whale and they appear to be no closer to succeeding. That's because there's a fundamental difference between what a movie does and what a video game does. A movie tells a single story. It's linear and can only move forward (even when it's moving backwards). It is fully formed before the audience ever sees it. The characters have their own personalities and the stories can go in directions the viewer never imagined. Books are the same way. That's why they work so well as movies. Video games on the other hand are all about the player. As video games have become more sophisticated the story is increasingly in the player's control. Making the game into a movie takes away that fundamental element of the game's appeal. While video game characters may be recognizable, they get so much of their personality from the player controlling them. A movie character should be able to surprise the audience. A video game character really shouldn't (i.e. If you move left on the controller, the character better move left).

Tomb Raider is just about the best case scenario for the video game adaptation. Lara Croft is the selling point, and she's broadly established enough to give an actress an idea of how to play her. The Tomb Raider premise is an easy pivot to a structure audiences can recognize. In fact, it's hardly a coincidence that the series already holds the distinction of biggest video game adaptation success with 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Fifteen years after the sequel fizzled and with a recent revitalization of the video game franchise, it's now Warner Brothers' turn to see what it can do.

The result is a delightfully generic adventure movie. And, honestly, that's all I was hoping for.

This Tomb Raider is an origin story, and one that is familiar to any fan of action/adventure movies. Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is the heir to a massive family fortune. Her father (Dominic West) disappeared 7 years ago. Rather than accepting his death and inheriting the estate, she passed up school and works as a bike courier. After a run in with the police, she's convinced by a friend of the family, Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas), to finally accept her inheritance. Before she does that, she gets a clue from her father that reveals where he disappeared to: a mysterious island near Japan where legend says a ruthless Japanese queen was buried. She goes to that island with the help of a ship captain played by Daniel Wu, and finds a small army is already there, led by Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), who wants to find the remains of the queen for nefarious (and possibly supernatural) purposes. By all means, it's a repurposed Indiana Jones script, and there's nothing wrong with that, unless you don't like Indiana Jones movies.

The big difference between the 2001 and 2018 movies is that Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft is cool and Alicia Vikander's Lara Croft is tough. Vikander isn't as obvious a choice as Jolie was. There was something superhuman about Jolie in 2001 which fit the famously impossible proportions of Lara Croft in those days. Jolie was a complete badass and it felt like everything she said was the last line of a Law & Order scene before it goes to the opening credits. I much prefer Vikander's version of the character. They still cast an insanely attractive person to play the role, but Vikander put in the work to play the part too. For instance, there's an early fight scene in the movie that exists just to show us that she's got abs. Like in all adventure movies, I question her ability to survive and recover so quickly, but it's no different than if it was Tom Cruise taking the beatings. I'm not sure that Vikander has enough movie star charisma quite yet to make the character work all the way. She's given a few quips throughout the movie and she doesn't have the swagger to pull them off. She still plays the character the way she would in a more serious role. She's still working on making it look easy. I mostly loved what she was doing though. She took everything seriously, no matter how silly it was. She carried herself like she belonged in that world. The swagger will come in time.

The rest of the cast was fine. There weren't any scene-stealers. No one was going against type. Dominic West is a paternal figure, flawed with destructive self-interest. Walton Goggins is slimy and composed in a nearly charming way. Kristin Scott Thomas, even when she's being nice, makes you feel like you aren't allowed to slouch as long as she's in the room. Daniel Wu is an amalgamation of all the adventure movie sidekicks you've seen before. Props to the powers-that-be for not forcing any sexual tension into Vikander and Wu's dynamic. The movie was better without it.

Nothing about Tomb Raider makes much sense and very little is plausible. It's the kind of movie where the good guys come out of a flurry of bullets unscathed, centuries-old traps work with the efficiency of the Disney Monorail, caves they take hours to get into can be exited in minutes, and the person with a bow and arrow is more lethal than the one with an AK-47. I feel like a hypocrite being so bothered by the lack of story cohesion in A Wrinkle in Time last week and not being bothered by it at all in Tomb Raider this week. That's all because Tomb Raider isn't aspiring to be anything more than a dumb adventure movie. The beats of a story in this genre are almost reflexive at this point.

I went into Tomb Raider hoping for a poor man's Indiana Jones and that's what I got. My only hope was that Alicia Vikander would get a chance to shine, and she did. Otherwise, the rest of the movie is no better than it needs to be. The rest of the cast is fine. The action set pieces are big and exciting and a little too convenient. The story makes enough sense to get from scene to scene. If this leads to 6 sequels, I'll probably watch them all, and if this ends up being the only one, I won't miss it. 

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend