Tomb Raider (2018) Review

So I Just Watched Tomb Raider (2018.) The wait for a good video game movie continues.

Tomb Raider is the latest in Hollywood's continuing effort to capitalize on the lucrative video game industry. Based on SquareEnix's video game series of the same name this latest adaptation is heavily influenced by the recent Tomb Raider reboot developed by Crystal Dynamics. However while those games were successful at updating the series to fit the grittier modern pop culture landscape, this movie falls flat on its stupid boring face.

First off let's take a look at the new Lara. This movie takes great pains to set up her character before delving into the main plot. It's a shame that she's boring and generic as fuck. Seriously does anybody like a rich character who chooses to live like a poor person because they're so "rebellious." To me it just seems bratty and petulant not to mention cliché.

The whole first half of the movie ends up being a total slog. I don't care about Lara and her delivery job. I don't care that she boxes. I really don't care about her stupid bike race. Seriously can movies stop coming up with stupid variations on "extreme" sports and treating it like an interesting action set piece. It's not interesting. It's not clever. It's boring.

The movie could have started when she arrived in Hong Kong. Give Lara a couple lines about her looking for her missing father and maybe a couple of those extra generic cheesey flashbacks of child Lara and her father before he went missing. There's a reason we don't spend an hour with Indiana Jones at the University before the globe trotting adventure starts. We don't need that much characterization on an adventure. Let the character shine through their actions and reactions during the adventure.

All that being said the second half wasn't that much better, but at least there were moments that I liked. The part I thought worked best was when Lara was trying to survive alone on the island. Watching an injured person trying to survive alone against the elements creates more empathy than any contrived bicycle sport ever could. Of course though that only lasts about five minutes. Then it's back to generic Indiana Jones ripoff complete with evil organization bent on releasing an ancient evil on the world.

Tomb Raider is a boring contrived mess. It's not the harrowing survival story of the games that its' based nor is it the campy fun of the Jolie movies. Instead it's just forgettable. I give Tomb Raider (2018) 74 out of 612 cans of paint.