“Tomb Raider” has finally done it. It is a film adaptation of a video game that is not completely horrible. Now, to be clear, it is not a fantastic movie. It has plenty of flaws. The plot could serve as the bare-bones example of the “buried treasure” story. The third act relies too heavily on tropes from other “buried treasure” stories such as the “Indiana Jones” films. The antagonist is a generic bad guy with a generic motivation, though he does serve as a fantastic manifestation of the male gaze. But we will get to that later.
“Tomb Raider” shines as a tiny beacon of hope among the turd-filled litter box that is the graveyard of video game films. It is not great, but it is not horrible. It blew past the admittedly-low expectations and has set a higher bar for video game films — hopefully one that will be exceeded again so this genre of films can actually claim to be a successful one, but we will take the small victories for now.
Most of what the film does well surrounds the central character in the franchise, Lara Croft. The film did away with her professional archaeologist, female-counterpart-to-Indiana-Jones background and gave her a simple, human motivation: her love for her missing father. It really is a novel concept, that protagonists are more relatable when they have motivations and desires that audiences can identify with. Who knew?
The film also humanized her in regards to her physical abilities. While they are still fantastic and unrealistic at times, she runs into situations that she cannot get out of. She cannot fight off three guys with knives by herself. She cannot swing from a chain and perfectly stick the landing while running away from men who want to kill her. She makes mistakes. She gets injured. It is a difficult thing to adapt when your source material would fix a bullet wound or broken leg by taking four seconds to slap a bandage on it. But the film makes Croft seem less like a muscly superheroine and more like a person.
Lara Croft has been a sex symbol for sweaty 14-year- olds covered in a thin layer of Cheeto dust since she was introduced in 1996. The most important thing about this film is that it firmly dispels that garbage by literally punching the male gaze in the nuts. It was clear from the beginning that Alicia Vikander’s Lara Croft was not going to be portrayed as a sex symbol. The film’s antagonist, a slimy man named Vogel, acts as a physical manifestation of the male gaze. He is watching Croft sleep when they first meet, and he continually does that disgusting thing antagonists do: he grips her chin or strokes her cheek while she is on her knees and tied up. But she has none of it, eventually punching him in the gonads and kicking him off a cliff. It is justice, and well-deserved at that.
All in all, “Tomb Raider” is a step in the right direction for the genre. It is not perfect, but it is finally an example of the genre that Hollywood can feel proud of. With a bit more effort and a lot of hope, maybe we will finally see a critically-acclaimed video game film in the next few years.
