A TOMB RAIDER TO UNITE THEM ALL
It was the showrunner of the series, Tasha Huo, who said: Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft va “bring together the Tomb Raider timelines”and serve as “transition after the Survivor trilogy to begin following Lara’s adventures which will lead to the first steps of the first Tomb Raider game”. An idea illustrated by the simultaneous presence of Jonah and Zip, two adventure companions of Lara Croft in different parts of her story.
The ambition may be nice for Crystal Dynamics, which has run the franchise since 2003, but it is slightly daunting. In addition to rewriting history for the umpteenth time, since the 2013 game would no longer be a reboot but a prequel which once again overwrites the heroine’s origin story, there is the question of a thousand points. How to move from Lara Croft from the Survivor trilogy (sentimental, sociable, attached to his family) to those of the first games (solitary, austere, cold)?
The Netflix series reveals a well-known answer: Lara Croft is constructed in relation to someone else. There had been Werner Von Croy in Tomb Raider: The Final Revelation (1999), his mother and his friend Amanda in Tomb Raider : Legend (2006) et Tomb Raider : Underworld (2008), Conard Roth in Tomb Raider (2013), and his father in Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) et Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018).
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft just recycles the last two to install a new character: Charles Devereauxhalf-paternal figure (grey hair obliges), half-alter ego (reckless treasure hunter). It is him that she will face to find legendary boxes linked to Chinese mythology, in a kind of Thanos-style race for artifacts which could obviously cause yet another apocalypse.
THE CROFT RALE
In Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croftso there are many (too many) characters. There is Jonah and his friend Abby met in Shadow of the Tomb RaiderZip on the other side of the headset, but also French friend Camilla Roth, Jonah’s friend named Leo, and a few NPCs on the road.
All are there to make the heroine speak, proving that the series is first and foremost a sequel to the Survivor trilogywhere Lara Croft had never displayed her feelings so much. It’s an easy choice, which continues to water down the character, but the real problem lies elsewhere: in the clumsy writing of this Netflix production supervised by Tasha Huo (writer on several episodes of the turnip The Witcher: Legacy of Blood).
Not only is the series replaying the same ideas as the Survivor trilogy (Lara puts those close to her in danger, Lara feels guilty, Lara doesn’t want anyone’s help), but that’s with a few extra pounds of silliness. It’s particularly magical on Jonah, a stooge and a broken record that the series uses even more poorly than the latest games. When he is not left for dead to force a poor emotion on the heroine’s face, he gives her speeches about love, friendship and life that make you want to explode something (cheat code available In Tomb Raider II).
The series tries to question Lara Croft’s temperament, even going so far as to talk about death urges behind her exploits. But all this is swallowed up by monumental screenwriting facilitieswith lines that should be banned (“The people we love are the true treasure that cannot be found in a grave”), until a final fight which almost boils down to the victory of the power of love and friendship.
In other words: it speaks a lot in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croftand it would be better to keep quiet.
FLOOR IS LARA
Good news nonetheless: the series moves as much as it talks. True to the globe-trotting tradition of gaming, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft passes through China, Turkey, France and even Iran. The heroine travels through many urban and natural landscapes, ranging from a city to a train, from a desert to a jungle, and especially from one temple to another.
At this level, the series returns to the Tomb of Tomb Raiderunlike the first part of the Survivor trilogy. It thus looks like and the best of Lara Croft with a multitude of traps, puzzles, and incredible settings, where she will have to climb, swim and avoid falling into lava.
By bringing back some well-known enemies, which range from crocodiles to much larger reptiles, Tasha Huo is obviously paying homage to the games. And going the opposite of the film Tomb Raider with Alicia Vikander, who had rationalized the supernatural to the extreme, the series reopens the doors of the fantastic.
The animation may be very conventional, but it is difficult not to praise the generosity of adventure, which connects phantasmagorical and marvelous visions. The series is not afraid of anything, neither giant gargoyles, nor magical portals, nor temples beyond reality. And if some images worthy of Sailor Moon go too far, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft contrasts with the grayish lukewarmness of recent games, to find a little of this pulp aspect of the original adventures.
HUNGER FOR THE END
The problem is that It all ends up going nowhere. In the Netflix series, Lara Croft mourns her father, like in the Survivor trilogy. She learns to rely on others and control her emotions, like in the last games. She finds her two emblematic guns in a spectacular scene, like at the very end of the reboot 2013 prequel.
When the final episode ends with Sam being kidnapped (like in the 2013 game) and the discovery of a vast global network of big bad bandits (like Trinity), there’s reason to wonder what is this sequel-remake-reboot-tribute all about?
The last episode is almost a poisoned chalice. While Lara Croft has stopped the big bad, she must save the world by bringing back the precious artifacts to a temple, lost in a hallucinated dimension. To get there, she will have to activate a whole bunch of mechanisms, cross a lost valley populated by extinct animals, and even face a final boss that will delight fans.
Certainly, Jonah is in her paws, but Lara Croft is bathed here in pure Tomb Raidergargantuan and spectacular. Why not make this episode the key note for the entire series? Why did you create so many characters and blah, instead of just diving into the adventure?
In another world, the series Tomb Raider would have looked like Primalthe brilliant series by Genndy Tartakovski (and therefore the first games): a Lara Croft almost alone and mute, facing an infinitely large, wonderful and dangerous world, where she must advance from test to test, from encounter to encounter.
But in that of Netflix and Crystal Dynamics, there is only one very small adventure, much too easy and conventional to live up to a saga spanning nearly thirty years and a dozen games.
