Welcome back to Sound Off!, a semi-regular column where members of Speculative Chic gather together to chat about the latest BIG THING in entertainment. This time, get into a treasure-hunting frame of mind and discuss Tomb Raider, which premiered in the United States on Friday, March 16, 2018.
Sound Off! is meant to be a reaction, but not necessarily a review. After all, while we are all individuals, even mutual love of something (or hate) can come from different places: you may find everything from critique to fangirling to maybe even hate-watching.
Now, join Shara White as she talks about Tomb Raider. [Note: Spoiler-free!]
Shara: I don’t have a particular affinity for the Tomb Raider franchise. I never played the games, and I’ve worked very hard to forget the original film adaptations (specifically the second one) ever existed. Before this latest rendition with Alicia Vikander, the best thing I could say about the film franchise was that Angelina Jolie looked the part.
When the reboot was announced, I only got interested when the casting was revealed. I’m a fan of Dominic West from his days on The Wire. Walton Goggins will forever be a favorite for his role as Boyd Crowder on Justified (and it’s surely a crime he never received an award for it). And Alicia Vikander I’d seen in the period piece A Royal Affair but more memorably in Ex Machina. She’s an Oscar winner (like Jolie), so I found her casting to be intriguing and more than enough to get me to the theater, especially since the promo material (some, not all) avoided the over-sexualized poses.
So how was it? Without getting into spoilers, I can say in a word: enjoyable. It’s clearly set up for a sequel, and it’s a sequel I’d watch without batting an eyelash. The movie did a great job at showing us how and why Lara Croft is able to do what she does, so that when we watch her do it later on, when it really counts, we’re not rolling our eyes in disbelief. Vikander’s Lara Croft is believably frustrating and stubborn, sympathetic yet not. While the storyline relies on an old stereotypical trope, it gets decent mileage in the story and serves to propel our heroine forward, specifically by the end. She’s not a superhero, rushing through action with only a well-placed and “sexy” bloody scrape or two: she gets through the ringer, and it’s clear she feels it. So clear that it gets a little distracting after a while, but still, if your body went through what hers does, you sure as hell ain’t going to be quiet about it either.
The story itself wasn’t as full of cheese as I feared: while I could’ve done without the opening monologue/info-dump (as the info gets repeated within the first hour, almost verbatim), I appreciated the film’s attempt at reality (key word: attempt. I still have some head-scratching moments regarding how the plot was finally resolved), and I also appreciated that Croft wasn’t overly-sexualized by the camera, specifically during the action sequences.
It’s not to say there weren’t uncomfortable moments: Walton Goggins’ character made me uneasy when he related to Lara, and how it was explained away really didn’t work when you saw the scope of his set-up (I’ll be happy to spoil in the comments). The conflict at the heart of this film was about belief versus practicality, and Goggins’ Mathias Vogel could’ve easily stayed and filled the latter’s role without having to get weird about things.
In short: sometimes characters did things because the writers said so, not because it made sense for them to do so.
Tomb Raider isn’t a perfect film, but it’s nicely acted and even passes the Bechdel Test at the start. I look forward to seeing where Vikander can take Lara Croft now that the “origin” movie has been made, and she’s grown into a character people know and love. Definitely worth a matinee if you want a popcorn flick, and I’m glad I gave it a go.
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