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‘Tomb Raider’: Reboot for the #MeToo Era
by Sandra Olmsted
While the sight of Angelina Jolie in the earlier versions of this video-game adaptation were clearly designed to intrigue the male gamer audience, this version, starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, is clearly aimed at a different audience. Norwegian director Roar Uthaug helms this origin story of Lara Croft with a clear vision of that a female superhero should be part Rambo and part Peter Parker without the Wonder Woman hour-glass figure. Lara Croft as a regular human able to endure incredible fights and wounds yet also a likable average gal with high ideals makes her quite a role model. In Uthang’s reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, Lara Croft’s superpowers are her physical and intellectual abilities and her tenacity and loyalty.
The story opens with Lara (Vikander) living a meager existence in London. She can’t pay her fees at the kickboxing gym, where she routinely gets beat in the ring. She has a student apartment and works as a bike messenger and food delivery person. Just so the audience doesn’t forget this is based on a video game, Lara gets involved in a bike race through the busy London streets and ends up in jail, yet she could be the Lady of the Manor, Downton-Abbey style, if only she would sign the papers to declare her father dead. Lara doesn’t want to acknowledge he’s really gone. Her dad, Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West), the explorer father who frequently vanished for long periods all through Lara’s childhood, has yet to return from his last adventure. Now, he has been gone for seven years. Then Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomason), Lord Croft’s business partner, informs Lara that it is either sign the papers or loose the Manor House and childhood home.
When Lara finally consents to sign the papers, she finds a clue regarding her father’s last quest to the tomb of Queen Himiko, “The Mother of Death,” who was supposedly sent by her mutinous generals to die on a forbidding island off the coast of Japan because her very touch caused death to thousands. The clue is accompanied by a plea for Lara to destroy all her father’s papers and notebooks regarding Himiko. Lara, of course, does not do this because she still needs closure to let her father go and move on with her own life. With her father’s notebooks and research in hand, Lara follows his trail.
Once on the docks of Hong Kong, looking for a boat captain named in a letter, Lara confronts three young robbers in a platform game-esque chase and fight in order to retrieve her stolen backpack. Miraculously, Lara lands on the boat owned by the son of captain for whom she was searching. Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), the captain’s son, seems to be a drunkard, in a Bogart sort of way, and is soon revealed to be grieving the disappearance of his father, too. After Lara flashes some cash, the pair heads to the remote island in the very dangerous “Devil’s Sea.” Plagued by storms as well as entirely surrounded by rocks and currents designed by nature to wreak any ship that comes near, Himiko’s island tomb provides another game-type obstacle to Lara’s search. What awaits them on the island, however, is even worse.
When Lara final wakes up, she seems to have found a rescuer in Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), who must find Himiko’s tomb in order to go home to his daughters. Using the notebook that Lara rescued from Lu Ren’s ship, Mathias now has a chance to see his daughters for the first time in many years. Then, Lara finds out Mathias is working for an organization that wants the power of Himiko’s deadly touch for evil purposes. Knowing that her father warned her time and again that Himiko’s supernatural power to kill must remain buried or all the world will die, Lara begins to plan. Lu Ren has also survived their shipwreck, and he and Lara join the slave laborers doing the bidding of Mathias and his well-armed henchmen. Mathias plans to blast away at the imposing mountain until the tomb is revealed, and the slave laborers must tote the blast rock away until they can’t and are shot.
Although Lara escapes, she falls into a coursing river headed to a huge waterfall, leading to another game-like escape sequence. Lara’s physical strength, brains, tenacity, and luck get her through in the nail-biting problems of surviving. With a henchman on her trail, she won’t have long to wait before the next survival challenge. The most video-game like challenges and escapes come once Lara is forced by Mathias to open the tomb, and a small group enters and searches for Himiko’s body, or, perhaps, a living being, thousands of years old, as the myths surrounding Himiko state. Science, technology, and myth, the primary ingredients of many a video game, mix with greed and power-hungry men to make this Tomb Raider a solid adaptation of the video game. There are problems, however, with script by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons.
The dialogue is not great, but it does the job required by explaining a few key points without feeling too much like talking heads. The father-daughter relationship doesn’t get the development it deserves or needs; however, the twisting plot provides lots of surprises. The action has nods to the Indiana Jones franchise, and Lara seems more an heir to this adventure legacy than the super humans in the world of video games, which is not a bad thing. The reference to Indiana Jones might disappoint male gamers who aren’t already put off by a less sexy Lara Croft. Vikander’s Lara Croft isn’t for ogling. For Vikander, Lara’s courage, smarts, power, and devotion demand respect, which is simply all that the #MeToo movement is demanding for women — respect for their human abilities and talents not their potential as an object to be used, abuse, and discarded.
Director Uthaug’s origin story for Lara Croft is a solid film in that regard, and he doesn’t forget to include the possibility of sequels should the audience, and especially women, take to this new vision of women’s potential and power. Tomb Raider (2018) is worth seeing to show women that they can be as powerful, smart, and strong as any man. Running a fast paced two hours, Tomb Raider is packed with action and rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and for some language, making less appropriate for really young audiences. Tomb Raider is a Warner Bros. release and is currently in theaters, awaiting an audience.
