Hollywood for the 112th time is trying to create a decent movie based on a video game. After over 30 years of trying, when people ask ‘what is the best video game movie?’ The answer we get is “Well the first Mortal Kombat was decent…I guess.” The last time we tried this was Assassin’s Creed and that film was about as fun as diarrhea 200 yards away from a toilet. The build-up to Tomb Raider has been as hot as a wet fart. Many thought given the low bar, the film had a good chance at just being mediocre. Well, I don’t know if mediocre is the right word, but after watching Tomb Raider, neither is decent.

Tomb Raider begins with a young Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) on a path of recklessness after the disappearance of her father. She refuses to accept the fact that her dad is dead, but once her financial situation comes into question, she settles his estate. When she discovers her father’s office, she finds out that her dad was on a quest to find Himiko, the mythical Queen of Yamatai who could kill people just by touching them. After her father requested her to destroy all of his work to keep the whereabouts of Himiko a secret, Lara decides to use them to find her daddy and put the fate of the entire planet in jeopardy…our hero folks.

Last week, I said that A Wrinkle in Time was one of the most boring films of the 2010s. Tomb Raider may not be one of the most boring films of the 2010s but it is one of the most emotionless films of the 2010s because you just don’t care about this movie. Alicia Vikander isn’t a good leading actress. I have no idea how she won an Oscar (politics likely) but as I said in Jason Bourne, she feels miscast in this movie. Besides reminding me of Eliza Dushku, she has no reason screen presence here. When Angelina Jolie had the moniker of Lara Croft, she fit the bill (and her suit) while being believable as a leading lady. Here, Vikander feels more like a girl struggling with daddy issues and not an iconic video game character. The story is slow and uninteresting. It’s like riding a rollercoaster that only goes straight and one direction. You sit there waiting for the movie to kick into gear and pull you in and it never does. The action isn’t interesting, the story isn’t interesting, and the special effects aren’t interesting. It takes you about an hour to realize you are just sitting down watching a movie and you don’t care.

The film takes a trip to China for literally no reason so you have yet ANOTHER film trying to get those communist Chinese bucks. The visuals of a 100-pound woman beating up men bigger and stronger than her isn’t really an issue here, but a 100-pound woman surviving crashes and falls that would have put down a man 3x her size exposes a problem of realism. With movies based on video games and comic books, you always have to grade on a curve, at the same time the way Lara survives unrealistic circumstances, the film goes to the well one too many times with the convenient plot save and you’ll begin to roll your eyes the later in the film you get.

Tomb Raider is the most ‘meh’ films I’ve seen in years. I don’t even hate this movie, I just don’t care. It’s bland and generic in just about every way you can think of. How does this fair in the realm of video game films? Well, it’s better than Assassin’s Creed, however, I think I was more entertained watching Resident Evil: The Final Chapter which is NOT a good thing.

1/5

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