For the second time in four days, I’m watching a film in which an abandoned daughter goes searching for her long lost father. In this one, dad left years ago in order to seek the hidden burial chamber of a Japanese death goddess using a map only he had, and yet he still needed to “beat others” to the uncharted island where this goddess was buried a thousand years ago. In other words, Tomb Raider proved far more plausible than A Wrinkle in Time.
Tomb Raider, of course, began life as a video game before Angelina Jolie showed she, in fact, owned the requisite two dimensions necessary to conquer the role. I’m still not a fan of video game movie portrayals. The point of a movie is that the hero is on-screen; the point of a video game is that the hero is you. Lara Croft can’t be 7 billion people, so she has to be a generic one that, hopefully, fits the bill, whatever your bill is. That is not a recipe for avatar success.
True to gaming, our new Lara (Alicia Vikander) loses two “lives” right off the bat with some ill-chosen courier bicycle stunts. In the latter, she actually gets distracted while fleeing a pack of X-Gamers (a “stunt” of X-Gamers?). Anyway, it’s like Frankenstein’s monster interrupting flight from a pitchfork-laden mob with, “Oooh, a flower!” Can Lara help it if everything reminds her of dad? Next scene, she also gets distracted from signing the document entitling the mega-privileged-but-laying-low little snot access to untold family wealth. Lara, seriously, do you have the attention span of a gnat?
And what’s with the screenplay that doesn’t want a wealthy Lara Croft? Did the studio believe she somehow would be more relatable to her screen audience when she bikes around in lieu of private jet? The evidence says, “YES!” but my thought is if you look like Alicia Vikander, travel alone, and have the sole concern of finding dad, an audience will go to Nemo lengths to sympathize with you.
The plot here is something well beyond silly. The whole Lara Croft genre is an Indiana Jones knockoff, so you know the film is going to be a mix of faux mythology and irresponsible archaeology, but even at that — Lara, you’re going to follow dad’s grail diary to find the tomb of legendary Japanese Queen Himiko, who in her day doubled as a death goddess? And the only person this millennia to find Himiko’s URL is Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West). Geez, and I 
thought Indiana Jones was taking the “white savior” complex a bit far.
None of this really matters, of course. The point is how does Alicia Vikander look as an action hero? Do you buy it? Do you buy her solving puzzles and kicking ass? Does the character work without Jolie’s skin-tight wetsuit? Here, the screenplay gives Lara a little compensation for the compromise of a semi-dignified wardrobe, allowing her a bow and full quiver on Himiko’s mysterious island. A young woman in a strange land of danger fending for herself with just bow-and-arrow? Why that hasn’t been done in almost three whole years. Gotta say, I prefer Jennifer Lawrence slightly, but I couldn’t tell you why. I’ll give Vikander a pass as heroine only because I’ve liked her in pretty much everything else, but I cannot see this particular franchise -having risen from the grave- as securing a great shelf life unless the next screenplay is significantly better.
In lieu of poem or song, have some possible sequel ideas:
- Tomb Trader – Lara explores her capitalist side by swapping grave-burgled treasures
- Tomb Braider – After discovering Etsy, Lara takes up a form of morbid macramé
- Tomb Grader – Lara gives up adventuring and takes a turn as a spell checker for a local mortuary
- Tomb Seder – This time, Lara goes in search of her mother and discovers her Jewish roots
- Tomb Bader – Lara attempts to save U.S. democracy by resurrecting the corpse of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (too soon?)
- The Tombinator – Lara teams up with Arnold Schwarzenegger for some future hijinks
- Tomb Vader – Well, now these are just getting silly
Rated PG-13, 118 Minutes
Director: Roar Uthaug (As in Jack London’s unheralded sequel, Call of the Wild II: the Roar of the Uthaug)
Writer: Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons
Genre: Don’t say “Indiana Jones” … Don’t say “Indiana Jones”
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The girl from A Wrinkle in Time
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Real life Tomb Raiders, I’m guessing. “Oh, Hollywood knows nothing about plundering and pillaging and ancient curses. Let me show them how it’s done.”
