The new Tomb Raider movie starring Alicia Vikander as video game heroine Lara Croft opens in theaters this weekend. The action-adventure flick is an attempt to reboot the stalled movie franchise which originally starred Angelina Jolie as the globe-trotting archaeologist. The first Tomb Raider movie performed reasonably well at the box office back in 2001. Two years later, Paramount was looking for someone to blame for the failure of the sequel, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. They got pretty creative with their scapegoat.

Movies based on video games don’t have the best track record. Twenty-five years after Super Mario Bros., there still hasn’t been a really good one. At best, movies like Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil and Silent Hill are watchable. For every half-way decent video game movie there are at least a half dozen lousy ones. Uwe Boll can be blamed for a staggering number of crappy movies based on video games.

Whenever a new movie based on a popular game is announced, there is some hope that this could be the one that reverses the trend. There was reason to think the first Tomb Raider could rise above the rest. Lara Croft was basically a female Indiana Jones, so the character was well-suited to cinematic adventures. Better still, director Simon West scored a casting coup by casting Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie as the movie’s heroine.

Believe it or not, Paramount was not initially enthusiastic about the casting of Jolie as Croft. According to West, the studio was throwing around names like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ashley Judd, and Jennifer Lopez. At the time, Jolie didn’t have much of a track record at the box office and she had a reputation for being a bit of a basket case. But West thought Jolie brought an edgy quality to the role:

It was quite hard for me to get her through the approval process at the studio, because I wanted an actress who was going to bring something to the part, and she brought this great Angelina Jolie mythology with her as this dark, crazy, wicked woman with a very particular and interesting personality. I wanted that mythology of Angelina Jolie to fuse with Lara Croft.

Critics panned the first movie as an Indiana Jones rip-off (with the notable exception of Roger Ebert who enthusiastically endorsed both Tomb Raider movies). Audiences didn’t care. They made Lara Croft: Tomb Raider the number one movie at the box office with an impressive gross of nearly $50 million. Paramount was excited for a sequel and quickly put Cradle of Life into production. What they may have overlooked was that those impressive box office grosses fell off quickly once word of mouth got out.

The sequel hit theaters just two years later with promises that this one would improve upon the original. Con Air director, Simon West, was replaced with Jan de Bont on Cradle of Life which was theoretically an upgrade. De Bont had back-to-back hits with Speed and Twister in the 90’s, but his career had hits the skids after Speed 2. Tomb Raider 2 was the director’s shot at redemption. Instead, it ended his career as a director.

Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life opened in fourth place at the box office narrowly edging out Seabiscuit which also opened that weekend. This despite the fact Tomb Raider opened on over 3,000 screens while Seabiscuit had a more limited release with under 2,000 theaters.

What went wrong? By most accounts, Crade of Life is no worse than the first Tomb Raider movie. Many consider it to be a slight improvement. But when you’re dealing with a movie as disappointing as the first one, you need to make great strides rather than taking baby steps. Audiences who felt burned by the original decided to take a pass on a second helping.

At least that’s my theory. The suits at Paramount had another explanation. Paramount distribution president Wayne Lewellen blamed the most recent installment in the Tomb Raider video game series. “The only thing we can attribute that to is that the gamers were not happy with the latest version of the ‘Tomb Raider’ video game, which is our core audience.”

Riiiight…

Let’s break this down:

How many movies in the series? 2

How many of them were good? 0

Health of the franchise before it died? Off to a shaky start

Likelihood of a reboot? It opens in theaters this Friday!

Any redeeming value? Jolie is terrific in the role. It’s a real shame they couldn’t make this series work

0 0 vote Article Rating

Advertisements