Whenever I see a movie based on a video game, I feel a sudden rush of cringe, not because I am biased against it, but because of the many failures that have arrived on such adaptations. so imagine my feeling when I saw Tomb Raider when it was first teased, surprise, I was genuinely piqued with interest as it had the looks of something promising, thus I took a leap of faith yet again.
Side to side comparison between the movie vs the game
Before I begin my review of this movie, I do understand that many enter this movie with the mindset that compares this to the previous Tomb Raider movie which was famous for Angelina Jolie’s role as Lara Croft, but as all adaptations go, I came prepared knowing that this would be a complete reboot, and as such, I urge you to do the same.
Plot-wise, this Tomb Raider follows that of the video game of the same name created by Square Enix, which tells us of a younger Lara Croft before she inherited her fortune and on her very first adventure. as all Tomb Raider movies go, there are plenty of puzzles to solve and conspiracies are hidden within. This time, we see Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) on a quest to find out what happened to her father, which leads her to an uncharted island off the coast of Japan. From there, the adventures of Lara Croft has only just begun.
She basically guilt-trips you into going to the gym
Generally, when someone is cast to play a fictional character from a video game, there is usually a dissonance between how they portray the character and how they derive that character, which often leads to what we call wooden acting. But in Alicia Vikander’s portrayal of Lara Croft, we see a rare occurrence of a character that is pretty close in likeness to its source material.
From her movements to her many climbs, jumps and slides, you can pretty much feel the exhaustion she is going through just like we do when we play the video game.
Thematically, this reboot of Lara Croft is meant to be gritty and more realistic which is pretty much how the movie portrays itself to a certain degree of success. It is only a shame that while most of the world was perfectly created, the villain felt slightly subpar.
Daniel Wu plays a ship captain that apparently has experience in every firearm he comes into contact with.
While his character was meant to be a cold and ruthless killer, in this movie he felt somewhat flawed, in a sense that he is too predictable. Nevertheless, for those of you who would like to take a gander at another Tomb Raider movie, then I would say this wouldn’t be too bad a choice for a weekend rendezvous.