Tomb Raider 2018 4 out of 10
When Alicia Vikander was first announced as the new Lara Croft I thought.... that is an odd choice. She has proved herself as a solid actress in films like Ex Machina in which she was incredible, but she just doesn't look like the character from the classic video game. She is too skinny and has a very slight figure.
I'm sure I will be labeled by the PC crowd as sexist to even say this --but at least they got the characters look right the previous time around with Angelina Jolie. Alicia is a good actress she just doesn't fit the role. And before you label me sexiest for thinking that Lara Croft should have a body type that more resembles the original character think about this for a second because it goes both ways.
Do you think your wife would be as excited for the next Aquaman if instead of Jason Mamoa she got Raj from the Big Bang Theory.
Or if instead of casting Chris Hemsworth as Thor you got David Spade . I don't think so?
All I'm saying is cast someone who fits the character. People want to see buff Chris Evans as Captain America and not skinny Steve Rogers before the serum.
On a different note they even got the character wrong. Lara Croft is a total badass in the games. Instead she is portrayed quite differently in this film. The character with two guns from the original game seems more of a survivalist in this film instead of a fearless explorer. At times she seems very capable and at others like a victim struggling to just survive. It was almost as if they didn't know how the character should be played.
That aside the movie itself was a total dud. It was like the creators had never seen or played the video games before. A huge pet peeve of mine is when Hollywood tries to reboot a franchise and wastes half the movie giving us an origin story for the character we already know. If you are going to see Tomb Raider you know who Lara Croft is. The film wastes time showing her training as a kick boxer and riding a bicycle through the city in some race to earn extra money. She finally excepts her inheritance from her father who has been missing for 7 years and discovers his secret chamber in his castle estate. She watches a video of him instructing her to destroy his research instead she goes in search of him.
The film takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to get to anything resembling Tomb Raider after wasting time with her character getting robbed by street thugs in Asia and then hiring the son of the guy that took her father to a mysterious island that I half expected to find King Kong on. Then after falling off a waterfall she runs into her dad who looks like the crazy character from Treasure Island or Professor Oxyley from Crystal Skull. There is a straight out of Last Crusade where he states at least she destroyed his research like he asked. Not so much..... she actually brought the "Grail Diary" with her.
By the time it does get to Tomb Raider worthy story it is instead just a bad rip off of end of The Last Crusade. Unfortunately I had already checked out of the film by this point and was checking how much time was left on the DVD. Everything that could be considered good in this film was taken from other films.
