Okay, so I thought we learned our lesson here, Hollywood. You can’t make a good video game movie. It’s just not possible. Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, it just doesn’t work. But you know what? Maybe this film will change that, maybe this will be the film to break that cycle. Well I’m here to tell you folks, it didn’t. Not even close.
Tomb Raider is a 2018 action/adventure film directed by Roar Uthaug and stars Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Daniel Wu, and Walton Goggins. The film follows Lara Croft—the fiercely independent daughter of a missing adventurer—as she finds that her father’s work might lead to a rather interesting discovery, and provide her with closure she has been seeking to find since her father’s disappearance.
Glass half full, Zach.. you can do this. Yeah this movie sucked. I can’t lie to you guys, I really did not enjoy this film. On the bright side of things, I thought that Alicia Vikander did a great job with her performance as Laura Croft. Although I haven’t been a huge fan of the series—since I’ve never played the games—I will say that the genre does intrigue me. Games like the Uncharted series are some of my favorite games of all time. The problem is that I’d much rather play Uncharted than watch an Uncharted movie. The same goes with this film. Although Vikander’s performance keeps me from impaling it with a “Very Bad” on theVade Review Bar, the film can’t survive on her performance alone. The rest of the cast is just plain boring. Dominic West’s character made me feel like I was watching a really bad Pixar film, and Walton Goggins’ character was just f’ing stupid. No character development, no reasonable ambitions, nothing. A boring, lack luster, piece of crap villain. As for the rest of the cast, I just couldn’t care less.
So what made this film so horrendous? A multitude of things. To start off, the CGI and visuals were either hit or miss, and for the most part it was a big swing and a colossal miss. I just don’t understand why it is so hard for films like these to do practical effects and realistic set pieces. Sometimes it’s just not necessary to try to defy reason with unrealistic stunts. Suspend my belief in something believable, not someone surviving a free fall from a plane with a parachute in their hands while falling next to a waterfall. Even that sentence sounds stupid when say it out loud. I would also understand the lack of practical effects if the film’s budget isn’t great, but they had $94 million dollars to make this film. Yeah, $94 with a fat ‘M’ following it. We live in a time where convincing CGI is not a hard thing to do, and you don’t need to wow audiences with overly ambitious stunts. Sure there were some good moments, but in a film about a girl who avoid death’s every obstacle—via land, air, and sea—you’re gonna need something a little more believable than what Tomb Raider is putting out.
On top of this film’s hit or miss visuals, Tomb Raider takes it upon itself to incorporate every single film cliché it can get away with. Protagonist’s family is dead or missing? Check. Protagonist finds out there’s more to her dead or missing parents? Check. Protagonist goes on a journey to find answers? Check. The list just goes on and on. Sure some film’s just can’t break away from clichés—and I get that—but when almost every plot point involves some sort of film cliché, you gotta wonder who wrote this film. An actual screenwriter or Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Who’s that you ask? The joke of a screenplay writer they got to write this awful film. The film is just so predictable, so boring, and just incredibly unbelievable.
This film is just so disappointing to look at and review. With $94 million dollars they could have easily put that towards a new game or even a television series, but instead we got this pile of crap film. So much wasted potential. And to think that they were gonna make a second one of these.. Ha! I guess that’s where this all leaves me. Really damn disappointed. But what was I really expecting? I have not seen a single good video game to film adaptation yet. It’s just impossible now-a-days. With video games becoming more and more cinematic as time goes on, it’s becoming harder and harder to take a 20+ hour game and pop it out as a two hour movie.
Sadly Tomb Raider suffers the same fate as the other video game films that came before it—awarding itself a “Bad” on theVade Review Bar. It is boring, stale, predictable, and lifeless. Although Vikander’s performance is a glistening light in the self dug tomb this movie lies in, her performance still isn’t enough to stop me from burying this film right next to the other video game films that lie in the shallow graves beside it.
