![]() ![]() Rather than show the audience, the movie simple tells us – and not in the good Indiana Jones way.ĭespite the 2 hour running time, the movie also feels rushed, plot points and ideas are not fully fleshed out or given time to breathe and the time between Lara living on her own, to suddenly fighting on an island is reduced. Most of the exposition, about a Japanese queen, the mysterious island of Yamatai and, yes, Lara’s father, is told through overlaid wipes and voice-over, which comes off as both cheap and visually uninteresting. This is one of a few niggling issues with both the pacing of the film and writing. It is from here that the movie really sinks its teeth in. ![]() Once the film gets past the awkward introduction, a made-up backstory of a struggling, down-on-her-luck Lara, she suddenly makes it to Hong Kong and out to the island of Yamatai. This becomes wholly important later in the film but also sets the tone for what becomes a surprisingly blunt and violent film at times and pushes Alicia Vikander to the limit. From the first shot, Lara is introduced as a brawling, athletic, smaller version of the hero that is competent in both hand-to-hand combat and martial arts. In bringing this story to the big screen, Roar Uthaug doesn’t miss any punches. Lara was vulnerable and there was backlash in the media in regards to her treatment at the hands of her enemies, including the allusion that they tortured, assaulted and abused her. In 2013, Lara was reinterpreted as young, unskilled and untested, with a much narrower focus of exploring one singular Japanese island called Yamatai, supported by a number of other characters as she fought for her life and the chance to escape the island without really knowing the full extent of the horrors that lay within. The story of Lady Lara Croft will always be about her dead parents (who died in a plane crash in the Himalayas), the Croft Manor and exploring the mysteries of the world and the ‘tombs’ there in. Tomb Raider in 2013 then did a number of things differently. Such is the pedigree of the Tomb Raider games that a 20 th anniversary edition was also commissioned, completely rebuilding and remaking the very first title from the ground up. As the series went on, her story was fleshed out and at some point, Lara was even “killed off” canonically, only to be brought back and re-modelled a number of times through the different generations of consoles. Growing up playing the Tomb Raider games, you could arguably say that Lara Croft popped my video gaming cherry in so far as 3 rd person action adventure games go and eschewed popular opinion by casting a female heroine as the player character. ![]()
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