When Lara Croft first introduced herself in 1996’s Tomb Raider she directly appealed to a young male audience of gamers with a mix of guns and breasts. (It’s worth noting that the ’96 graphics depicted the buxom Lara as a dangerously pointy chested woman with the face of a horror movie monster, but games were limited by what they could do back then, and an attractive woman was a difficult thing to create.) For years, you controlled Lara Croft in her adventures against bad guys and monsters while she wore short shorts and a revealing tanktop. And though, sure, one could argue that Lara was one of gaming’s first memorable heroines, she was definitely one crafted with the male gaze in mind. Rumours about a secret code that would make Lara nude in the game circulated for years and gaming magazines often printed original art with the lovely Lara in a swimsuit.
After a few successful sequels, Tomb Raider got its first film adaptation in 2001. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was directed by Simon West (Con Air) and starred Angelina Jolie in the title role. All things considered, it was a pretty faithful adaptation. Jolie’s Lara wielded double pistols, jumped on things, wore the signature clothing, and showed off her curves at every conceivable opportunity. The film was bland (complete with a plot that doesn’t make much sense if you squint at it even a little) but Jolie was perfectly cast for the role. A sequel was made and released in short order. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life hit screens in 2003. Directed by Jan de Bont (Speed), the sequel presented audiences with much of the same. Beyond Jolie, the movies are incredibly forgettable (I enjoy the sequel more, personally, if for no other reason than it’s the weirder of the two). So forgettable are they that you might’ve forgotten the supporting casts for the two films featured the likes of Daniel Craig, Gerard Butler, Simon Yam, and even Jolie’s own father, Jon Voight. The movies had the basic formula of the games at the time, which was to have a beautiful woman save the day in vaguely Indiana Jones-inspired adventures. All things considered, it should have been a series that went well beyond two films, as Jolie was young and popular enough to support an ongoing franchise and Hollywood didn’t exactly have a plethora of action movie heroines at the time.
Around the time of the second film’s release came the Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness video game, which was considered a major failure. The movie studio Paramount even went so far as to blame the game for Cradle of Life’s lacklustre box office performance (one should be dubious about this claim as even the most successful games do not equal successful films). Though Angelina Jolie would not return as Lara Croft, the video game series managed to recover and continue on for years. But while the graphics improved and the series had its ups and downs, sales started to lag and ‘the new Tomb Raider’ was no longer a hyped release in the gaming world. Changes had to be made.
In 2012, Tomb Raider changed its focus from male fantasy to female empowerment and the series is all the better for it. The depiction of Lara Croft became more realistic, the male gaze basically never dominated the visual approach, and her story of heroics became less of a guilty pleasure. A sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, only improved on the reboot’s new vision for the character. Lara Croft was popular again. and so, Film studios once again took notice.
All of which brings us to the new Tomb Raider adaptation, directed by Roar Uthaug (Cold Prey), which hits screens in March. This new film is an adaptation of the rebooted Tomb Raider of 2012 and features Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander in the lead role. Like the new look video game Lara, the movie’s Lara Croft has little in common with the Angelina Jolie vehicle from a decade ago.
Ignoring the games and just looking at the movies, one could say the filmmakers looked at the camp of the Jolie Tomb Raider films and Batman Begins’d the story.
Actually, no, seriously; this movie has a shit ton in common with Batman Begins. Lara Croft, a wealthy heiress to a family business and stately manor, has shut herself off from her responsibilities to the family name. She ignores the silver spoon she was born to and opts to fight for a day-to-day existence on the streets of London. But when a minor crime lands her in trouble, it’s the board of the Croft business empire that bails her out and asks her to come back into the fold. Like one Mr. Bruce Wayne, it seems Lara is also troubled by the loss of her father. I say ‘loss’ because Lara’s certain her dad’s not dead but the board wants her to sign the death certificate so that they can move on, she can gain control of the company, and assume her rightful place. But it’s an adventure film and so Lara follows the clues to dear old dad’s last known location—he was an archaeologist obsessed with an ancient Japanese ruler by the name of Queen Himiko—and in her pursuit of truth she finds the hero inside herself.
Tomb Raider has a moment that shares similarities to another successful gritty reboot: Casino Royale. While the Jolie Tomb Raider films featured Croft dodging bullets like a John Woo heroine with a pistol in each hand, Vikander’s Croft is new to real-world violence. There’s a moment in the film where Lara finds herself alone and wounded. She is attacked from behind by a man far larger than herself. It’s a brutal struggle in the muck as both are evenly matched, his strength vs her skill. In the end, she has to drown him in the mud in order to win the match; it hurts her to do this, you can see it in her. It calls to mind the opening bathroom scene of Casino Royale, where Bond, like Lara, kills his first man. “Made you feel it, did he?” played in my head as Lara sat up, close to tears and covered in mud, a dead man beside her.
For writers, we can learn two main things from the new Tomb Raider. 1) How to reinvent the intentions and depiction of a character and 2) that there is value in the gritty, get-the-basics-right approach of a reboot.
On that first point, note how the earlier Tomb Raider films sexualized Croft at every opportunity. She is depicted as really enjoying a shower not even 15 minutes into the movie. And later, there’s a breathy moan on the soundtrack when she straps guns to her legs (because some people find gun holsters sexy, I guess?). It’s a movie for men starring a woman kicking ass. And I’m not even against that. Such a movie has its place. Women can look amazing and kick ass at the same time. But it’s the intent that I mean to focus on. The original Tomb Raider was a male fantasy. The new Tomb Raider flipped that on its head, did very little to change the character at its core, and made it about female empowerment. It’s all about focus, how we the audience see the character. There are no shots in the new film that ogle Lara Croft’s bust or butt. If there is any moment where the film lingers on her body, it’s focusing on the magnificent six pack of abs that Vikander worked hard for in pre-production training. It’s much the same character, but I would argue that the new approach broadens the audience while also making for a more memorable heroine.
The gritty, back-to-basics reboot worked for Batman, Bond, and it works damn well for Lara Croft. One could even argue that the new Tomb Raider goes too far in this regard. The film flirts with the fantastical elements of the games which inspired it but chooses to stray more towards realism than what might’ve been necessary. But we can use this.
Understand that we need to address character first.
Tomb Raider spends a long time making us understand who Lara is, what she’s fighting for, and how far she’s willing to go long before the first bullet flies. We care about her story before the threat kicks in and that’s important. That’s the basics. The grit comes from cutting the robots, the shark punching, and basically anything that sounds like it was written by a teenager. But still, let’s not gut all the joy. Don’t go too far and rob your story of its sense of fun.
What other heroes or heroines do you think could use an update for the times we live in? What else that was once silly and forgettable could actually be pretty awesome if you grounded it in reality and made it about the characters? Now think up a way to make those new takes into original stories and you’ve got yourself a brand new idea worth exploring.
