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Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft makes me ask if this series can get our heroine right, where pretty much every film has got it wrong?
Well, it has a rather wordy title, but then it has to differentiate itself from the films which have already either begun with “Lara Croft” – for both Angelina Jolie films, or simply just used “Tomb Raider“, in 2018, for Alicia Vikander.
Voiced by Hayley Atwell (Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One), Lara’s derring-do kicks off from the start, as she leaps across a canyon to escape from bad guys, somehow grabbing hold of a cliff edge by jamming her knife into it. And that’s before she even climbs a high building! Seriously, if this was real life, she’d be dead 100 times over.
Lara’s in Chile, looking for the House of the Jaguar, but first, she needs to cross another large gap populated by a spiked pit and dodgy rope bridge. Her abilities also include holding her breath underwater infinitely, it seems.
Between her and her guardian, Conrad Roth, they grab a jade-green box that looks like it should contain bath salts, but instead, apparently makes any man wealthy who touches it.
Then we fast-forward to 3 years later, where Roth has since passed on and Lara returs to Croft Manor, alone, as she takes over from her father.
Well, that’s the basic premise, but it then started to lose me when an avalanche caused a big hole in the ground, and we learn a fox spirit named Daji took some children and brought them there… Erm.. this is the usual Tomb Raider-style plot gibberish, but at least in the games, you get to do something, as opposed to just sitting watching a screen.
I did find myself getting rather bored watching Tomb Raider: The Legend Of Lara Croft, as it’s not really a substitute for the games, and two episodes was enough for me. Plus, the animation does feel a bit ’80s, in the stilted way in which it’s carried out, like the original He-Man cartoons. Might be worth a look for families to enjoy together, though.
Oh, and at one Lara, she gets directions into her earpiece from a man who paints his fingernails… and blue. Erm… why?
Another question: Why are film studios still trying to get another movie off the ground, according to what I’ve read online? After a number of superhero flops, including the new Joker movie, sometimes, it’s better to keep your costs down, and you can have a far better movie, as shown in the incredible A Different Man.
Thanks to our friends at Netflix for the screener prior to release.
Tomb Raider: The Legend Of Lara Croft is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Netflix from today.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 25-30 minutes per episode (10 episodes)
Release date: October 10th 2024
Studio: Netflix
Format: 2.00:1
Director: Joey Soloway
Producer: Tasha Huo, Shakira Pressley
Writer: Tasha Huo
Music: Pinar Toprak, Gerrit Wunder
Cast:
Lara Croft: Hayley Atwell
Charles Devereaux: Richard Armitage
Zip: Allen Maldonado
Jonah Maiava: Earl Baylon
Sam Nishimura: Karen Fukuhara
Young Lara: Maggie Lowe
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.