Review of Tomb Raider (2018) by Viniciusbrito — 26 Mar 2018

Adapt a game in a movie isn't an easy job, we can tell this because all the attempts that were made, mostly of them are bad or didn't reach the expectations from the gamers or even the general public. Much of that, I believe, happens because the games normally have more than 10 hours, and when they try to put it in a 2 hours story movie it gets limited and with missing pieces, they always replace things to make the story flow a little faster and the movie suffers cause of it, another thing that really makes the diference is that when we play a game we ARE the character, feel them and suffer with them because we actually are they, we feel in us the problems of the protagonist.. When this is tranposrted to the cinema, it's different, we need to the script to bring that to us, cause when we don't control the character it kind goes away, is easier for us to care about someone when we are controlling the person. Does Tomb Raider have this well done ?

The plot is based on the reboot from the video games, made to tell the origin story of Lara Croft. The father of Lara is considered dead, but she don't accept, once that she find her father's researches that lead to and island, she decides to go there hoping to find him alive.

I like how the movie starts, showing us how she gain her fighting skills, the physicality is justified at the 1st act, wich is very good, how they don't just throw she being a badass from nowhere, but on the other hand, they did not showed us how she got so intelligent, during the movie she do stuff and solve things that was just out of nowhere, it have a moment that a character say to her that she is very intelligent, but I actually wanted they to show this, not just say. This could have been fixed with the use of the flashbacks, the movie uses it a bunch of times but it simply repeat and tell the same thing a bunch of times, they could have used to show how interested she was in archeology and stuff, learning with the father. The flashbacks initially works to sustain something, but it gets to repetitive and badly used. Or also use the flashbacks to tell another characters story, it would fill the movie more.

The things the movie did to make it close to the game worked partially, it does have moments that Lara is interacting with the ambience and it is done in a very good way, the hole plane sequence works tremendously well, it can give you a sense of dangerousness, the action during the hole scene worked a lot, she trying to survive and struggling for it, that worked because you knew how she get the physicality to do that so, the sequence is pretty took out of the video game and was very good. But, again, on the other hand, there is a scene that she got to solve a puzzle to open a door, that she is really just pushing things for some minutes, and you have no idea what she is doing, they throw at us a nonsense flashback that didn't explained a damn thing, you don't know what she is doing or how she learn how to do so, the sequence is just terrible. It would have been so much better if they actually explained how thoose things worked, and we would be learning with Lara and solving the puzzles together with her, not just the puzzle, that hole ambience, I believe that it would make the movie much better to follow.

The cinematoraphy is wasted here, they had a big island with much to explor and show to us, it just have nothing to say neither about the island outside or inside the tomb. One thing that they did here in one moment and I enjoyed a lot, was that they filmed Alicia from behind, giving the impression that you were in the game playing it, it happens for some second, but I found it pretty dope.

The best thing in the movie is surely Alicia Vikander, she did everything that she could for portraying Lara at the best possibly way, not just mentioning her body, how strong she got, but the acting in general, much of the stunts that she did you could believe in what you were seing because of her. She have charisma, can pass different expressions and really make us believe that she is an adventurous with skills.

The movie is an generic adaptation, doesn't show nothing new, doesn't evolve the genre. It is a fun movie, that unfortunately isn't much memorable, neither for the gamers or the general public. Without great pretensions, the movie worked in some points, it is cool, but could have been so much better, considering how embracing the theme is and how good the acting was, so with a better script and montage the movie could have been great.