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She’s broken down barriers and been the valiantly dashing object of teenage gamers' affections for decades now. However, as amazing as theTomb Raidergames have been, fans have yet to see a film or TV adaption of the franchise that’s as universally loved as the games are. WithNetflix’s latest adaptation,Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, many were initially hopeful that this would be it.
However, after decades of becoming accustomed to the richly detailed storytelling of the source material, the series fails to deliver anything close to thekind of immersive entertainmentand thrilling plots of the games. In simple terms, there’s a vast discrepancy in quality between them — a sad state of affairs given that the show is animated — which should have given it ample scope to resonate with fans who love the look of the games.
However, it wasn’t just in terms of immersion that the show was a let-down.Everything from the story, characters, and overall execution simply wasn’t good enough— just a few of the reasons whyTomb Raider: Legend of Lara Crofthas so far been a bitter disappointment.
Why the Tomb Raider Franchise Means So Much to Fans
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is a new animated action-adventure series developed for Netflix by Powerhouse Animation (Castlevania, Seis Manos) and Legendary Entertainment. The series is set to pick up after the events of the video game reboot trilogy some time after Shadow of the Tomb Raider, with Haley Atwell voicing the titular globe-trotting protagonist.
The year is 1994, and the struggling game development company Eidos takes a chance on the idea of an adventure game led by a gun-toting British archaeologist character who has to solve puzzles. The project was led by Toby Gard, who was mostly responsible for creating its eventual lead character. She was initially meant to be a male character, though this idea was canned to avoidaccusations of ripping off Indiana Jones— though the accusations still came.
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That fateful decision gave the gaming world Lara Croft, now known as one of the most iconic and famous video game characters ever. She’s grown to become everything from a role model who helped launch a huge uptick in female gamers to a sex symbol played on the big screen by the likes of Angelina Jolie during the prime of her career as the most desired actress on the planet.
It also saved Eidos financially and spawned a vast media franchise that now has 20 games, three movies, an animated series, and even comics. It’s since grown to mean the world to gamers everywhere and has a massive following — which is why it’s such a big deal that the show isn’t great.
Where Netflix’s Tomb Raider Adaptation Falls Short
There are a couple of ways the show fails to live up to all its hype and the standards of the game franchise. One of its most glaring issues is thechaotic plot structurethat aims for complex but just lands as disjointed. The games are known for seamlessly blending coherent storylines with puzzles, quick bursts of intense action, and measured moments of intrigue.
Instead, the show rushes these elements and mashes them together without enough thought, almost as if it thought that merely having these elements would be enough even if there wasn’t enough restraint and thoughtful patience behind it.The pacing, the tension building, and even what’s meant to be its most vital moments all fall flat.
Unfaithful to the Tomb Raider Source Material
Worse than most of these issues is howthe show alienates long-standing fans by deviating too much from Lara’s core personality traits. While she’s traditionally tough-as-nails as alead female characterbut also packed with enough depth for fans to connect with her emotionally, the Lara from the show often comes across as flaccid and void of any personality at all. The worst part is the show is meant to connect to the modern game series.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen any show misuse its source material in such spectacular fashion before.Tomb Raideris an embarrassment that shames the very name of Lara Croft, sacrifices character and story integrity to work in all the tedious and cringey tropes of modern writing, wastes its talented voice cast on clunky dialogue and rams it all home with s****y animation that looks about 20 years out of date.”
Tomb Raider’s Lackluster Character Development and the Netflix Effect
Lara Croft is astrong female character, but she’s also meant to have heart and depth. She is a woman deeply struggling with the wounds of her past and her father, despite all her strength and amazing abilities. It’s these aspects that lend her a sense of vulnerability that has always added jeopardy to the fact that she often finds herself in remote locations, all alone while pursued by bands of armed men who she usually has to fight off alone.
Instead of all these aspects being leveraged to give her depth and actual strength, which speaks more to hergrit as a womanthan her physical fighting abilities, the show comes off as too derivative, where it could be creative, and too one-dimensional, where it could be layered.
The Tomb Raider Franchise Can’t Find Success Outside the Video Games
Given the many different adaptations of Lara Croft over the years, the way you feel about the series may depend on your favorite interpretation. It seems the series aims to stick closer to the reboot era of the games rather than the original portrayal, which will surely throw fans for a loop. Instead of being faithful to the character,the show seems hell-bent on exaggerating and playing on Lara Croft’s physical toughnessand misses the point of why so many first-generationTomb Raidergamers fell in love with her in the first place.
In that respect, the showrunners andNetflix abandon the original fansof the franchise in favor of highlighting her as a feminist icon. Yes, she indeed grew to become that, too, but the original success of the first game that led to the entire franchise was largely driven by Lara’s sense of vulnerability and not that she was some kind of superwoman who could never be killed or ever defeated.
Lara Croft was never meant to be amodern gender-swapped versionof an ’80s Arnold Schwarzenegger character who powers through everything. She was precisely the opposite of that, a character meant to break away from being compared to Indiana Jones, remember? She’s strong, capable, and rugged as hell, but she also gets hurt, overpowered, and routinely outmatched by the brutish enemies who chase her. However, in the end, it’s not just her strength that gets her out of tough spots.
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It’s a mixture of physical abilities plus her charm, her brilliant mind, her vulnerabilities, and her keen instincts that she finds a way to combine in ways that matter the most. Lara Croft is an icon, a role model, and abeacon for strong female characters. However, she’s also not invincible and far from perfect — ask anyTomb Raiderplayer who’s ever been stuck in a certain stage of their game for days because they keep dying at the same spot until they finally figure out that Lara was far more inventive than they ever imagined.
Unfortunately, for a franchise that’s so beloved, Hollywood can’t seem to completely nail downTomb Raider. If the series is picked up for a second season, perhaps Netflix will learn from their mistakes, but most fans aren’t counting on it.Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croftis streaming onNetflix.
