Tomb Raider is No Easy Adventure, But Offers Some Fun

Yes, video game fans have been here before.

A trailer for the latest big-budget film based off of a AAA franchise appears on YouTube. As always, these are watched with tempered optimism, since history has proven that no movie film adaptation has been good.

Then there’s Tomb Raider. Based off of the 2013 reboot of the famous game series, the film follows Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander), a carefree woman living her best life in England and trying to cope with her father’s disappearance seven years prior.

First off, the film is not terrible. It is a decent action film, just deeply flawed. One of the biggest problems was the pacing. The first hour tells a boring origin story with pointless scenes around London. Only at the 90-minute mark does anything happen.

This is not helped by the shoddy editing, something that plagues modern action films in general. Every fight is a collection of edits that cut away from impact. Being a PG-13 film, it is understandable that the film would not want to show some more brutal scenes. But when the film is based off of a series of M-rated games, why try to hide the violence?

The film also follows the game incredibly closely. Sure, it sounds nice to see the movie be faithful to its source material. At some point though, it becomes exhausting to see scenes from the game shamelessly ripped. It’s as if director Roar Uthaug watched a Let’s Play on YouTube, decided what scenes would look cool on screen and called it a day. It gets to the point where a viewer could expect to see button prompts like in the games.

It was not enough for them to copy the exciting elements of the game, but once they start taking the weaker points, there is an issue. The biggest came from Lara’s characterization. The 2013 reboot was not the strongest in the story department and left some of the other characters in the dust. The film’s version of Lara is a decent characterization, offering some emotion. Vikander tries her hardest but can not save a boring script.

The film is bad, but in a strange way. It does not reach the awfulness that Assassin’s Creed did back in 2016, it just has several small flaws that could have been ironed out.

Tomb Raider is better than most video game adaptations. It has some fun moments and understands aspects of its source material. Unfortunately, it falters under the weight of trying to find a balance between video game film and action story.

Hopefully, that planned Uncharted film can use this as the best lesson in what not to do in a video game film.