Lara Croft is more important now than ever

She has the potential to become a defining cultural icon over the next quarter of a century, if she’s written correctly.

Over two-thirds of my life have included Lara Croft and the Tomb Rader series of games and movies. Lara is as relevant a female figure to my adolescence as Rachel from Friends or the Spice Girls. In the 90’s she possessed improbably shaped pyramid breasts that defied any law of physics. Her hyper-sexualisation often detracted from the character; a confident adventurer, unconstrained by gender stereotypes, succeeding against incredible odds.

She was so ubiquitous to that period of time I’m still able to remember people like Rhona Mitra, who became famous simply for being paid to dress up like Lara Croft and appear at events.

The character was easily recognized by her clothing and accessories: a braided ponytail, hiking boots, a green tank top, shorts-so-small-they-may-as-well-be-a-belt, and a pair of silver guns. There is no doubting that every aspect of her was modelled to appeal to men visually, with no concessions made for women.

In the first game she wore a vest and hot pants in the snow, god forbid some practical outdoor clothing might be considered. In the second game the developers realised that was a bit silly so they allowed Lara to wear a shearling coat while out in the freezing cold, but when they combined the coat with the same ridiculous shorts it only magnified just how ridiculous her physical presentation was.

She didn’t really stand for anything, if you asked me what Lara’s personality traits were in 1997 I’d find it difficult to describe them. In writing that’s usually a big issue if your audience isn’t easily able to describe who your character is without listing their job. Her Wikipedia page calls Lara as “an athletic and fast woman” before going on to detail the various outfits she’s worn in the games. Showing who Lara was as a person was never presented as being important at all.

In (first game developer) Core Design’s defence the original Tomb Raider came out in 1996, a time when narrative and character development were not things anyone in the game industry placed much focus on. This was a time when arcade machines were still popular and exposition was seen as a distraction from gameplay. On top of this were the physical limitations of what a disc could store. Putting in lengthy cutscenes and fully-voiced dialogue could mean a graphically intense game like Tomb Raider would require too much time and money to develop.

I’d argue now the original Lara has a few distinct characteristics, but they come from an analysis of what tasks she has to complete in the game. She performs difficult physical feats which shows she’s both a capable and, because of her incredible fitness, dedicated person. She regularly outsmarts enemies and solves complex puzzles, showing her intelligence and street smarts. She doesn’t back down, never gives up, she’s brave and assured of herself.

That’s why the physical appearance of Lara Croft in her early years is so jarring when trying to present her as a positive female character. It’s not that you can’t be a sex-symbol and still be a feminist icon, it’s that it’s difficult to promote a designed character who has been purposely modelled to appeal to the absolute lowest form of appreciation.

Tomb Raider’s rapid rise in popularity and exposure quickly led to the inevitable outcome whenever a fictional character reaches a certain level of global consciousness: a film franchise. It was also a forgone conclusion at that that time as to who would get the role. Angelina Jolie was the spitting image of the digital version of Lara Croft, with the added importance of being a genuinely talented and accomplished actor.

Finally someone would be able to take the core components of the character, her capability, her excellence, her ingenuity, and give them the depth and understanding such a prominent, yet woefully underdeveloped, character deserved.

For the most part Jolie did a fantastic job of bringing Lara to life. She portrayed the confidence and power of Lara Croft in a way that didn’t resort to obvious female stereotypes and the writing made sure to present her as independent and powerful, almost always completely above any man she comes across, to the point where her only two real friends are lapdogs who’ll perform any task she demands of them.

It’s a power fantasy, someone closer to a superhero than a person. One of the few real all out action film franchises at that point in time to feature a female lead. While the strong, independent action woman wasn’t a new trope it was still a pretty rare one to see put front and centre. Charlie’s Angels had come out the previous year, but that’s a franchise about a group of women working for a man, which is a really terrible way to present female empowerment. Save for James Cameron films I can’t think of any female characters that resonated with me around that time that you could call positive examples. Maybe Trinity from the Matrix or Zhang Ziyi from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Angelina Jolie was still forced to conform to some of the more egregious clothing restrictions placed on the character, but because people actually have to talk to each other in films we’re able to get a good read on Lara’s values and her approach towards her work. We see how she treats people and we get to see the nuance in her language, the way she deals with those who underestimate her because of her physicality, and the way she responds to adversity on an emotional level.

The film’s not great, the action sequences are pretty boring and the narrative devices used to get us from A-to-B are rote, at best. But it’s still incredibly important because it was the first time we got to appreciate Lara Croft as a fully formed person. It is sadly ironic that one of the most famous three-dimensional video game characters had been so two-dimensional up until now. It unlocked the concept of Lara not as someone to stare at but as someone who had value as a human. Writers could build ideas around her, ideas that fed off both her growing backstory and her beliefs.

Over the rest of the early 2000s the character slowly developed more. She grew in motivation and history, and yes, she was allowed to start wearing clothes on her legs. Her breasts finally started to get smaller and her waist started to resemble something a healthy human might possess, not something requiring a lifetime of starvation and corseting.

Unfortunately the depth and rounding added to Lara didn’t increase the sales of her video games by much, despite the last few video game releases in the 2000s being reviewed very well. Evidently the format and character were stale. She now faced competition from people like bumbling everyman Nathan Drake.

(I refuse to go into serious detail about Drake, suffice to say his success as a character baffles me. He lacks any charm or real skill. In fact his only defining characteristics seems to be luck and the fact he’s friends with a bloke who owns a plane.)

Lara Croft needed a reboot. A fresh start that would enable her to be reintroduced to fans in the modern era in a manner where they could view her as something new, but yet still comfortable embracing her because of her familiarity. Typically this means developers try to go “darker” and “grittier”, and that trope usually means lots of night time scenes, blood, mature themes and sex. Because, you know, it’s darker…

What Crystal Dynamics (the developers) did was altogether more bold; they decided to show a young Lara Croft, one who has yet to become the competent explorer we know her as, the multi-lingual, athletic freak who strikes fear into people with her intelligence and street-smarts.

No, this Lara was one yet to be forged in flames, a lost lamb with pluck in her heart but no experience to marry it with. It was an important step to take because it allowed the players to get to grips with the reality of the character. In order to respect, and believe, in her extreme prowess, it was necessary to show how she arrived at that point.

This meant showing a vulnerable Lara Croft, one who fails, who gets hurt, who struggles, who loses. This was a difficult proposition for some who viewed her as a symbol of female power. To have her get beaten up, to scream in agony, to seem weak, felt to some like she was being reduced back to her established gender role. This was the first time we’re introduced to how Lara is seen by the many male enemies: a girl. She’s very much the physical underdog when faced with enemies in this game, she’s very much a survivor.

In the most important (and controversial) scene in the game, when Lara kills someone for the first time, it is a struggle. The man she is fighting with dominates her. He rubs her body, he tries to impose himself on her. Lara reacts reflexively, bites his cheek, frantically attempts to wrestle with him. Eventually she manages to fire his own gun into his face, while he is lying on top of her.

This scene has been criticised because it contains sexual assault as a plot device to construct part of Lara’s backstory. Where you stand on the inclusion of rape in fiction is up to you, I can only speak for myself and I find the cause and effect, in this case giving credence to the use of deadly force in a life or death situation, completely justified. It gives a real meaty reasoning for both Lara’s future identity as uncompromising and aware, but also in this specific game as a survivor.

That survivor aspect is something criticised; Lara getting the shit kicked out of her has been described as masochistic, as unfair because she’s a woman. I don’t think it’s fair to tarnish someone like Lara Croft with that brush. We know she’s regarded as one of the most proficient humans in her future life, so why can’t we allow ourselves to see her trip and fall, to see her grow, to see what made her the person she is today?

As much as William Shakespeare would have you believe otherwise, no one is born great. Greatness requires work, it requires commitment, it requires an application of one’s talents and a consistent demand to improve oneself. Greatness comes from exceptional demands requiring great sacrifice.

If we’re to believe in Lara’s greatness we have to see what it took from her to attain it. We afford male characters like John McClane the liberty of getting every part of their body drained from them and we see it as a mark of achievement, of their hardiness. I understand that resiliency can be viewed as classic male trope, but why is it when a female character exhibits the same traits it’s treated as unfair or bad. Are people so afraid of watching a woman be physically tested, and surviving, that they must complain?

This is relevant now because the film franchise was rebooted recently and the movie has taken the plot of 2013’s Tomb Raider and essentially mirrored it completely. This is a great thing because the story of the rebooted game fits perfectly with what kind of character Lara Croft is aiming to be. In the future Lara becomes a bona fide badass. Most people in the audience are also aware of that and therefore if they’re going to like this new Lara, they’ve got to trust in her construction as a character. She’s not a superhero so to create someone as brilliant as her you have to show the adversity she faced to create the legend.

The new film edges us so much closer to the Lara Croft that’s always deserved to be shown to the world. In Alicia Vikander we have, like Angelina Jolie before her, an incredibly accomplished actor who is able to both display the vulnerability of inexperienced Lara while moving towards the physically confident and intellectually adept mature Lara.

Some of the same criticisms of the 2013 reboot have arisen, mostly centred around the idea that her getting hurt is somehow a bad thing, but other than that they’ve been quite muted. That’s because the Lara Croft we’re being presented with now is exactly who she should be respected as: someone who is able. Who is hard. Who has courage.

She isn’t defined by her sex; people in the film who underestimate her because of her physicality always lose. It’s important that narrative is reiterated multiple times throughout the film. It’s important that there’s no love interest in this film. It’s not about a “traditional” film female doing “traditional” film female things.

It’s about redefining what a traditional film female is; someone respected and noted for their skill and aptitude, not for their gender. That’s what Lara Croft has almost always stood for. Despite missteps in her original design, the essential ingredients have always been there. She’s a commanding figure that pursues brilliance.

Because of her rich history she is the perfect conduit to explore complex female themes with a wide-audience without her narratives being deemed female. Too many times interesting ideas have been boxed in by slapping a tag on them. When was the last time you heard of a group of men going to see a chick-flick? Why market it as a chick-flick? Think about how many people who haven’t enjoyed a piece of art because they wrongly assume the gender of the leads informs who the audience should be.

Lara Croft allows a smart writer to introduce people to concepts they might have otherwise shied away from. There are some very interesting plots you can create from her that tackle themes from a diverse pool. Even really basic female themes like motherhood become fascinating, conceptually, when you apply Lara Croft to them.

This is why I think Lara is one of the most important modern characters in any medium. She has an accessibility that few others do and she has a rich enough backstory now that she can be positioned to fit ideas that speak to greater societal thoughts without less engaged audiences feeling they’re being lectured to.

She represents the ideal role model: someone completely in control of their destiny, a master of their craft, beautiful as a human (mentally and physically), and sharp. She’s not encumbered by being a woman. That part is incredibly important because if we teach children that their gender defines how they interact with the world then it will only serve to be a hindrance in some form. Lara Croft meets people all the time who see her on those terms and they always end on the losing side.

That’s why imbuing Lara with characteristics like vulnerability are fine now, because we know they’re not informed by her gender. They’re informed by her complexity and depth as a human. The more layers we can see of her the more we can relate to her. The more we can relate to her the more formidable she is as a character.

While the reception to the new film has been mixed, at best, the reception to Vikander’s portrayal of Lara Croft has been anything but. She is fantastic occupying this incredibly important character and given her the gravity she deserves. The parts criticised in the film are the parts that deserve criticism, the same parts that Angelina Jolie’s films were criticised for: weak action and weak story. It’s not good enough anymore just to chuck someone with guns at someone else with guns and set the whole thing in a jungle.

What Lara needs now is an opponent who the audience can respect as her equal. Someone who extracts the best out of her, the most from her, someone who makes her take the next step towards greatness.

That’s what I hope for in the next film. I want to see this rise and fall, it’s natural. Only in conflict do we find out who we really are. It’s also a very big deal because of the world we are trying to create. Seeing Lara Croft become who we know her to be will feel like an affirmation of that world. It won’t feel like Lara is an anomaly, a superhero. It will feel Lara Croft, and everything she represents, is the new normal. The standard that people should strive for, a life of excellence in the face of struggle.

It’s taken 22 years to get this character to a point where she’s finally ready to start being involved in some truly interesting adventures. That’s a hell of a long time for a basic arc to come to life, but that speaks more to the delay in the games industry’s maturation and the difficulty people had in recognising the true qualities of the character, because they were too interested in talking about her looks.

We’re lucky because it’s very possible this character could have easily died out, but she hasn’t. Now we have the great fortune of seeing what the next 22 years will bring for us and her. Lara Croft is one of the most interesting characters in culture today, just because of her growth getting here. Hopefully the next half of this century she will be defined by what the she was able to do with that growth.