Netflix’s Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft assessment

Lara Croft is without doubt one of the most recognizable characters in online game historical past. Hollywood, nonetheless, has by no means fairly found out what to do along with her or her online game franchise, Tomb Raider, proper. Within the early 2000s, the business produced a pair of unlucky,Angelina Jolie-led movie diversifications, each of which have been poorly acquired after they have been launched and have kind of been misplaced to time. In 2018, Hollywood then took one other crack on the property within the type of an Alicia Vikander-starring motion romp that wasn’t as dangerous as its predecessors, however was additionally deeply forgettable.

Consequently, whereas live-action and animated online game diversifications have by no means been higher than they’re proper now, Lara Croft nonetheless appears like a participant who has been left by the wayside when she ought to arguably be on the entrance and heart of this present wave. That will change when and if Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s lengthy in-development Tomb Raider sequence at Amazon ultimately involves fruition. For now, although, the franchise’s speedy future in Hollywood appears to relaxation fully on Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft.

Netflix‘s new animated journey sequence provides a recent tackle Tomb Raider’s mythology and iconic heroine — one which each matches between the franchise’s acclaimed reboot trilogy and the unique video games that began all of it. It emerges over the course of its eight episodes as Hollywood’s most profitable Tomb Raider adaptation so far. That won’t appear to be excessive reward, and the sequence itself is imperfect and sometimes irritating. It is usually surprisingly, endearingly earnest, and it cares sufficient about its heroine to not let her get misplaced within the rubble of all of its logic-defying motion.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft begins after the occasions of 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It finds Lara (voiced right here by Mission: Not possible — Useless Reckoning star Hayley Atwell) struggling to maneuver on from the traumatic loss of life of her longtime mentor and surrogate father determine, Conrad Roth (Nolan North). Within the current day, she has gotten into the behavior of touring the world and interesting in fistfights with the intention to keep away from really coping with her grief and accepting the love and luxury of her two closest associates, Jonah (Earl Baylon) and Zip (Allen Maldonado). Her try to chop off all her ties to her previous by promoting her household’s many collected treasures is interrupted by a mysterious thief named Charles Devereaux (The Hobbit‘sRichard Armitage), who — like Lara — is haunted by a devastating previous loss.

Devereaux crashes Lara’s grand public sale and steals an ominous artifact of untold energy. Lara units off after him out of each anger and curiosity, and rapidly discovers that the artifact he’s stolen is however one piece in a conspiracy that might ship all the world into full chaos. What unfolds within the wake of this discovery is a race between Lara and Devereaux involving a set of magical gems and apocalyptic stakes. It’s a, maybe unavoidably, very foolish story, and The Legend of Lara Croft properly doesn’t attempt to develop its central, supernatural plot past its surface-level functions. As a substitute, the sequence invests extra time in crafting an actual emotional arc for Atwell’s Lara — one which sees her pressured to reevaluate her purposefully closed-off nature and the partitions she’s constructed to maintain even her most reliable associates from getting too near her.

At occasions, The Legend of Lara Croft‘s writing — overseen by showrunner Tasha Huo — borders on ham-fisted. Its first two episodes, specifically, endure from clunky exposition dumps and much more jarring flashbacks, in addition to dialogue exchanges through which characters like Jonah and Zip find yourself actually spelling all of Lara’s issues out loud to her. The sequence begins to discover a extra snug rhythm in its third installment, and its weaving in of Lara’s emotional hang-ups and self-destructive habits grows extra seamless from there on out as nicely. The Legend of Lara Croft is, fortunately, not content material to simply let its lead heroine parkour her means by means of numerous obstacles and set items. The present cares very deeply about her, and apparent thought was put into growing extra than simply her bodily and puzzle-solving expertise. Its affection for its flawed lead seems to be surprisingly infectious, too.

For her half, Atwell proves to be as well-suited a casting selection for Lara Croft as she appears on paper. Her vocal efficiency anchors and lifts up the Netflix sequence, and Atwell all the time sells her heroine’s emotional ups and downs, even when they’re taking place in probably the most ridiculous of circumstances. The actress, like Huo and everybody else concerned within the animated sequence, places actual effort into bringing Lara to life right here. She is a totally fleshed-out, multidimensional hero in The Legend of Lara Croft — one whose heroism feels alternately expensive and righteous at totally different factors all through the present’s eight episodes.

The sequence is, not at all, the perfect animated effort that Netflix has ever produced. Its attraction could not lengthen far past present Tomb Raider followers, both, and there are a number of cases when the present’s character designs and set items really feel too deeply indebted to The Legend of Lara Croft‘s online game roots. By placing a lot thought and care into its characterization of its protagonist, although, the sequence retroactively reveals simply how a lot humanity and coronary heart has been lacking from Hollywood’s previous, lackluster Tomb Raider diversifications. The Legend of Lara Croft, conversely, has each in spades.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is streaming now on Netflix.