Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft Review

Lara Croft is one troubled archeologist 

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WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN DISCUSSIONS involving SPOILERS FROM THE Netflix show as well as content from the Tomb Raider franchise. It may include discussions of violence and sexualization. CONSIDER WHEN AND WHERE IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO READ THIS PIECE. 

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Nothing’s new with Lara

Just something nostalgic about raiding tombs isn't there?

Oh boy where do we start with Tomb Raider. Back in 2021 when I first heard that Netflix was greenlighting a Lara Croft animated television show that wasn’t going to use that tacky 3D animation that Netflix has been running with in recent years (looking at you Ultraman), I was extremely excited. I’m not the biggest Tomb Raider fan, but as a kid of the 90’s, Lara Croft was a big part of pop culture for me. Hell, I even sat through all of the Angelina Jolie films even though they were pretty terrible for the most part. It could only go up from there for the legendary franchise that hasn’t had the best results on film and television, or so I thought.

Then I watched the first episode of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. 

Look I’ll cut straight to the point, this show wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s average at best in every category that matters. What baffles me the most are some of the decisions that the production and Netflix decided to go with. There haven't been any big Tomb Raider projects in years now. To many gaming and casual fans of the franchise, Lara Croft was all but a nostalgic name. I’m willing to bet most viewers of this show on Netflix have never even played a Tomb Raider game before.  

Timeline

This netflix show continues the storyline that began in 2013's Tomb Raider reboot and takes place after 50+ hours of gameplay through 3 games, and countless comic book stories.

10 years of suffering

That brings me to my first point. Why in the world would they launch a television show in 2024 that is a direct canon continuation of a video game released in 2018? Yes, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is a direct sequel to the 2018 video game Shadow of the Tomb Raider. To make that even more irrelevant to modern society, Shadow of the Tomb Raider completed the trilogy (now known as the Survivor Trilogy) that rebooted the franchise with the first game Tomb Raider (they have a serious lack of creativity with naming schemes in this franchise), that was originally released way back on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era in 2013.  

Lara is haunted by the events of the past

I’m not going to sugar coat it and pretend to be a bigger nerd than I am so I will admit that I had no idea who any of these characters were while watching the first episode of this show. It wasn’t until Jonah entered the scene that I began remembering his distinct appearance from some of the events in the 2015 game, Rise of the Tomb Raider. To fully grasp the backstory events from the fictional Yamatai that contributed to the relationship drama between Lara and her friends, you as a viewer will need to be fully versed in over three full video games and an abundance of comic books (all canon too) that originated from more than a full decade now.   

This isn’t like Amazon’s terrific adaptation of Fallout, which technically is a story that exists in the same world as the games that anyone can pick up and get into without previous knowledge. Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft requires viewers to already know about the relationships regarding Lara and the supporting cast. If you don’t, then you’ll be confused as to why one person isn’t on speaking terms with another from the very beginning of the show. Even if you did play one or all of the Survivor’s trilogy, it’s understandable to forget who some of the supporting characters are. They’re not memorable like Nick Fury or Mary Jane Watson after all.  

I personally don’t think a majority of viewers tuning in on Netflix will have any background knowledge to this iteration of Lara Croft. In fact, I know many entertainment reviewers who probably had no idea that this was a pre-existing Lara Croft and not one designed from scratch based on the heavy praise going around the internet of Lara’s feminist-driven characteristics to break out of the “male gaze” she was originally designed to be.

No, this Lara Croft is a bruised, mentally drained, and emotionally damaged survivor who feels extreme remorse and guilt. She has survivor's guilt. A majority of the first season focuses on Lara as she struggles to reconnect with her support system due to the events of her past fracturing her once confident ideological demeanor. In the start of the show, Lara’s fully embedded into distracting herself of her issues through her work as an archaeologist (loosely). It’s great that we finally have a Lara Croft who has depth that can be explored instead of a one dimensional character who is only known for her big breasts. A character who grows and evolves past her demons instead of just mindless fan service she was once known for.

That’s what a lot of people are saying about this show and that’s great and all, except this iteration of Lara Croft has had survivor’s guilt since 2014. It’s literally the name of the first issue of the Dark Horse Tomb Raider comic book when they rebooted the game, which makes it canon and part of the Netflix story. In fact, a lot of content in the two sequel games preceding this animated show revolves around Lara’s inability to conquer her own insecurities and failures she encountered after the first game in the reboot. This Lara and her demons have been going on for a ridiculously long time now. Too long. 

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If someone has literally consumed every piece of Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy content, Lara’s issues have been extremely drawn out to the point where it may feel insufferable to have to go through this again. There has already been so much story told of Survivor Lara that her unresolved issues have actually held her back from becoming an actual character. Her whole identity is that of a perpetual depressed narcissist. 

I can see why viewers who have no concept of Survivor Lara’s backstory would watch Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft and be deceived to rave about her character growth through the 8 episode first season run. It’s a partial glimpse of a long drawn out identity crisis.

One Identity To Another

I thoroughly enjoyed Tomb Raider (2013) when it originally came out. It still holds up well to this day. But to say that the original classic Tomb Raider Lara Croft was only meant to be a sexualization of a female game character, and that this Survivor Lara is the embodiment of modern feminism is disingenuous in my opinion.  

Gone are the big polygons and shorts, but what did the new Tomb Raider replace them with? Gore, impaling, constant physical decapitation, and whatever other crazy ways to describe putting Lara through the ringer. That’s what Survivor Lara essentially is. In a weird way it’s like they reconfigured one type of fetish into another.

This show does a good job of paying homage to some of the physical pain that Survivor Lara goes through prior to the show, but it’s pretty tame when you consider the fact that she was literally impaled mere minutes to the beginning of her story arc.  

Tomb Raider essentially swapped the sexualization of the character for physically abusing her. I don’t want to sound like I hate strong female-leading shows that revolve around women who have issues they’re fighting to overcome. In fact I’m an advocate for them. I really am. A few years ago, Seri and I had a huge debate over The Legend of Korra on the IGS podcast because I’m such a big fan of the deeply flawed Avatar Korra, of which many of her mental and physical trials are similar to that of Lara’s. 

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Survivor Lara is always banged up

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I just found myself so disinterested with this show right from the get-go. Dwelling over her mentor’s death was a prime story line that drove this season of the show. Once again, this isn’t something that she’s just dealing with now. Part of the frustration I felt was due to the extremely slow evolution of the character. Lara Croft never grows up. It shouldn’t have taken 10 years for Lara Croft to dawn her iconic dual-wielding pistols. Most of the episodes have Lara using a bow and arrow in modern society. It made sense for her to use this primitive weapon when she was trapped in the wilderness of Yamatai desperately fighting both nature and a cult to survive. But back in civilization?

In Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, the heroine brings her bow onto a train, a theme park, and other domesticated areas like she’s the Green Arrow or Hawkeye. This is just another example of Crystal Dynamics refusing to let this version of Lara Croft evolve. They’re so enamored with the identity of Survivor Lara that she will never become the true Tomb Raider she was supposed to grow into.

The longer time you spend with Survivor Lara, the more it feels like Crystal Dynamics forgot that the reboot in 2013 was merely supposed to be an origin story that helped show audiences how Lara Croft became the badass we all know and love. After 50 hours spanning three full video games, countless comics, and 8 episodes of a Netflix show, she’s still not fully out of her origin story. In a weird way, Survivor Lara has become a character in her own right. Trapped forever in an endless pit of self-pity. The question then becomes just how much can the audience digest of this before they too end up engulfed in a negative mindset?   

Where’s Lara?

Unless she rejected the role, it’s strange that they’d bring back Earl Baylon, who continues to reprise the voice of Jonah here, and not Luddington too. It’s like Crystal Dynamics intuitively wanted to bring Lara Croft back to the mainstream public so they casted Atwell for her name recognition as she is fresh off a hugely successful Disney run. Instead of creating something new for Atwell, they continued on what they had built for a decade because it’d be too much to reboot Lara again.

So where does that leave the voice of Lara going forward? I’m sure Hayley Atwell will be back for season 2 of the Netflix series. Will she then continue to be the voice of Lara Croft going forward on all other mediums? Will developer Crystal Dynamics be willing to pay her the big bucks to handle voice work on the next video game sequels of Tomb Raiders? If not, are they going to bring back Luddington for only the games now? How does that make any sense if they’re attributing this to be the same exact character in an ongoing franchise story. It’s a completely different situation than say Tom Holland not voicing Spider-Man for Disney+’s What If? show that makes no sense at all.

Lara rocking shades with her bow

Powerhouse Animation

Okay, that’s enough negativity for one day. I’m going to actually praise the animation here. Anything is better than the dreaded 3D trend. For this series, Crystal Dynamics partnered with Powerhouse Animation Studios to somewhat anime-stylize Tomb Raider. Responsible for other Netflix shows like Castelvania, Masters of the Universe, and Blood of Zeus, Powerhouse has a distinct character style. The facial reactions trend more towards the Japanese anime style with furrowing of the brows as well as defined lip action to exude exaggerated emotions. Lara has a cute pouting face which does make her appear less insufferable as she begins to open back up to her friends.

Powerhouse Animation also has a very distinct art style. Some background renders are gorgeous to look at especially for a franchise that is supposed to take viewers to exotic locations. The action sequences are also entertaining for what it is. There’s no way the show would ever match the cinematic action experiences of the video games, but for casual viewers who have no exposure to Lara Croft’s adventures to this point, there are no expectations to follow. 

They’ve also traditionally animated female characters to be bulky and well defined in muscle tone. I think that works in Lara’s favor as she’s an extremely active parkour adventurer so it makes sense for her body to be well built. In fact, there aren’t many distinguishing body differences between Powerhouse male and female characters. If the character’s name isn’t Jonah (sorry big guy), their body structures are nearly identical regardless of gender or sex. If you watch any of Powerhouse’s other shows, they’re quite consistent in this style. They’re not my favorite production house, but they also don’t do a bad job either.     

Supporting Cast

I’m not a big fan of the supporting cast of the Survivor trilogy though. Much of the series focuses on Jonah overexerting himself to reach out to Lara to bring her back to reality. There’s also a new character added into the Lara Croft team that contributes and that’s her childhood friend Camilla Roth. As an Interpol agent who had a falling out with Lara prior to the start of the Survivor’s trilogy, many people have begun shipping the pseudo-sisters together romantically. I don’t really see it myself, but if lesbian relationships are what’s needed for modern Tomb Raider, then by all means go for it. I initially felt more of a romantic vibe between Lara and Sam. Once again it took me a second to remember who Sam was, but once the Himiko thing came rushing back to my brain, I remembered how cute the two were together. 

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Lara clearly still cares a great deal for Sam. While she was only mentioned in passing a few times during this show, the showrunners have set up a major storyline once again that will revolve around her for season 2. From an LGBTQ+ perspective, I do think the current iteration of the character has been written well enough to be rather ambiguous about the sexuality of the Tomb Raider. It really doesn’t matter for Lara’s character and that’s what makes it work. 

And finally, the villain of this season was a man named Charles Devereaux. The mercenary who also has his own personal trauma gets to become a deity of sorts and things get a bit crazy by the end of the story arc. The show definitely has supernatural tendencies behind it. Unfortunately, I found Charles to be rather forgettable.

Missed Opportunity

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft could have benefited from a fresh start. A timeskip of sorts to mature a character that has been in a stalemate for a decade. Instead, it’s more of the same weary, indecisive, beat down Lara that should have wrapped up those insecurities in 2018. For hardcore Survivor Lara fans, any additional Tomb Raider content is good content. It keeps the story going. For casual fans who played the Survivor trilogy in passing, this show is 5 years too late to keep their interest. For non-fans who come across this show scrolling on Netflix? Well, the goal is to get them interested enough to buy all of the discounted Tomb Raider games being marketed right now with the release. The question is whether the new viewers will be interested enough in the 10 year old storyline to go back to the beginning of it.     

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