As someone who has not played the games since the Playstation, I can not be sure whether or not to recommend this film to game fans. However as a film fan, go see this film. This didn’t feel like watching a film, it felt like a play through of a well made game.
The story follows Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) as she discovers what her father was working on uncovering before his disappearance: The Tomb of Queen Himiko. It starts off with what we’d expect of Lara, at a gym learning to fight, but quickly shakes away any feeling of an incredibly trained main character as she gets her ass handed to her no matter how hard she tries. We then find that she is not living a rich, luxurious lifesyle and works as a bike courier in London. After a police mishap, her former guardian, Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas), persuades her to accept her inheritance, and thus the puzzles begin.
Lara uncovers her fathers work, taking her to a remote island in the Devil’s Sea with the help of captain Lu Ren (Daniel Wu). The two are separated on the journey but make it to their island, which they find overrun with men working for Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), who is desperately searching for Queen Himiko so he too can go home. Lara escapes the imprisonment of Vogel and fights to stop him before he discovers the resting place of Himiko.
Thoughts on the story.
This story is nothing new, and reminds me a lot of the original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) film. But that’s not to say it’s a bad story. What it does well is subvert Lara’s goals. In this film, her goal has nothing to do with searching for the tomb, but instead looking for answers of her fathers disappearance, and spends the film trying to stop the discovery of Himiko’s tomb.
Himiko herself became an interesting twist and cleverly misleading throughout the film, as we are told that legends often have an origin from truth. Himiko in the film, who seems to have no resemblance to the real Queen Himiko, had control over life and death, and held a curse that would destroy the world if she was awoken. Throughout Lara’s readings, we are shown images of Himiko as an evil spirit, or monstrous cloaked figure, who could take a life at the touch of her hand. When discovering the tomb, we see more images of her, none of which show the same story as the books Lara has read. Instead she is depicted as a beautiful woman, who chose to exile herself to the island. Her masses of handmaidens offered their lives to keep her there, even having tombs of their own. She wasn’t the bringer of an evil curse, but the carrier of a deadly disease.
The idea that this evil that the protagonists were concerned with wasn’t the same danger they thought it was but still held truth was a great subtle change. Of course that doesn’t divert from the real antagonist of the film, Vogel. What I was concerned with when seeing the trailer, was they showed Vogel as the villain from the beginning. I didn’t want to go into this film and have to sit through a deception plot where we spend an amount of time being told that Vogel is a good guy, even if it was obviously a ploy. But it didn’t do that. Within the scene he is introduced, we discover he killed Lara’s father himself, and that he has felt the insanity the island brings after being stuck there for seven years. It was clear cut black and white, good and evil. I enjoy a good moral struggle between heroes and villains, but sometimes having a villain that is a straight up bad guy with no wavering emotions, is refreshing. This man is not going to be easily swayed.
What did you like?
Something that caught my eye a lot during this film, it may be accidental, was the idea that this was made as a game first. A lot of the scenes feel paced and told as if they were cut scenes in a game before going back into game play. We’re given story and set up for the next moment of game play. One moment in particular which was shown in the trailer was Lara on a wrecked plane at the edge of waterfall. The build up for that moment was Lara escaping and being chased by Vogel’s men. The first moment of game play would be trying to cross a log bridge, which would inevitably break, dropping her into a river. The way Lara was being thrown down this river was framed much like a third person perspective in a video game, I was half ready to press a button to grab on to a boulder, sadly no button combinations came up on the screen. Then she grabs onto the plane and climbs on. This is the scene from the trailer. The entire way this shot is framed, and the pacing of her movements feel like she is being controlled by a player.
What disappointed you?
As I didn’t go in with any expectations, there wasn’t much to be disappointed with. Though what got the film stuck in my head was the song used in the trailer, a remake of Destiny Child’s “Survivor” by 2WEI, and it didn’t appear in the film. In fact what did appear in the film was not especially my taste and didn’t fit the tone of Lara Croft in my opinion.
There were a couple of plot threads I wish had gone somewhere, or played with slightly more. We get introduced to three aspects of Lara’s life before she ventures to find her father, and they play little to no role after it’s introduced. The gym she goes to is the only aspect that plays a role throughout, as it introduces her money issues and her ability (or inability) to fight. The most pointless introduction was the restaurant owners son, who failed to ask Lara out, leaving her oblivious to his feelings. I understand it’s to highlight that Lara is not a character that needs to be paired off with a man, and is capable by herself, but the rest of the film shows that anyway. She doesn’t have any romantic moments with Lu Ren who is the closest to a deuteragonist.
Spoilers
I was pleasantly surprised to not have this moment ruined for me in the trailers, instead I was left thinking that Vogel being the villain was what got ruined. But finding out that Richard Croft (Dominic West) had survived was an enjoyable change. I wasn’t expecting, nor was I surprised, that he survived, but it was a surprise that this was something I could discover while watching the film. And to continue from the last paragraph, Lara shows that she isn’t the one who needs a man by being the one who saves her father.
The reveal of Vogel’s true employers was a surprise. Kristin Scott Thomas came across as a money grabber, but not some sort of warlord with influence covering the entire world. It’ll be interesting to see if a sequel comes about. I didn’t leave wanting more, but curious to see how it will go down between Lara and Trinity.
Conclusion.
Tomb Raider (2018) balances the line of an intense and fun action flick. It’s nothing taxing to watch, but it has something for those who like to watch out for details. Alicia Vikander is a great lead, Daniel Wu, and Dominic West are great in their supporting roles. Game fans or not, I’d recommend this film.
Royston D A 