Tomb Raider is a long-running franchise of action-adventure video games centered around a character named Lara Croft, an English archaeologist who is one of the better-known video game protagonists out there. However, some people might be more familiar with the franchise because of the Tomb Raider movies that were released in the 2000s, which starred Angelina Jolie in the lead role. Now, there is a new Tomb Raider movie that is set to come out in March of 2018. As a result, some people are now wondering whether it will be able to break the bad video game movie curse or not, which seems to affect a lot more video game moves than not. The new movie’s predecessors managed to do so to a limited extent, but it remains to be seen whether it will be able to manage even that much.
Will Tomb Raider Break the Bad Video Game Movie Curse?
Unfortunately, some of the signs for the new Tomb Raider movie are not that encouraging. For starters, one of the main reasons that video game movies get made is the existing fan-base for the video games on which they are based, who should be much easier to turn into movie-goers for those particular movies than the members of the general population. However, while the new Tomb Raider movie claims to be based on the critical and commercial success that was the first installment in the rebooted Tomb Raider series, it bears little resemblance to its source material save in the broadest strokes. As a result, one cannot help but suspect that this will not play well with the fans of said installment, who might have been looking forward to the upcoming movie under other circumstances.
Of course, non-fidelity to the source material is not necessarily a virtue nor necessarily a vice. After all, there are plenty of less than outstanding works that get adapted for movie screen, meaning that a lot of rewriting might actually do their narratives some good. Unfortunately, it is difficult to believe that this will be the case with the Tomb Raider movie because its source material had a simple and straightforward but nonetheless competent plot. Essentially, an archaeological expedition gets shipwrecked upon a remote island situated close to Japan, where they encounter the hostile survivors of previous shipwrecks. As the members of the expedition work to get off of the island, they begin uncovering more and more secrets about the island, which suggest that it is harboring something much older and much darker than they could have ever imagined. In contrast, the Tomb Raider movie sacrifices not just focus by bringing in enemies that receive more focus in later installments but also its ability to stand out by swapping the pseudo-Japanese character of the setting for something that looks much more generic.
Summed up, the prospects of the upcoming Tomb Raider movie are not looking too encouraging at the moment. Still, it is not impossible for it to produce a surprise, seeing as how it does have some factors going for it. For example, its lead is Alicia Vikander, who has won an Oscar as well as other awards and accolades for her previous acting, which is something that might reassure those who are hoping for something great from the upcoming Tomb Raider movie but are none too confident in that regard.
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