Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

Cafe Society
1

Since I hated the first Tomb Raider, I thought I’d make up for it by reviewing the second. It wasn’t bad.

Lara Croft is a really awesome action hero, IMHO. She’s so cool, following in the tradition of Indiana Jones. The similarities between Pandora’s Box, the artifact sought in this film, and the Lost Ark are striking, but fortunately there’s plenty of originality.

The only review I read before I went was Fandango’s [contains, IMO, minor spoilers], and it almost made me want to give it a miss. However, while I don’t think the film lacked flaws, I totally disagree with that reviewer’s assessment. He says that the plot falls apart in Act 3, but that’s completely not true. The film gets very creepy and bizarre near the end, but at no time does the plot stop making sense. I think he just wasn’t paying attention. I’ll put the explanation for his problem in a spoiler box at the end.

I liked all the different locations, even if the external shots only lasted a few seconds. However, my biggest gripe is that there was too much urban gunfighting and not enough tomb raiding, too many sleek computers and not enough dusty artifacts. Nothing that would normally be bad in an action film, but this is Tomb Raider - I want to see some archaeology. Also, although the review says that the technical effects are superb, nothing really stood out at me. Maybe The Matrix has spoiled me, though. :slight_smile:

[spoiler]Here’s what the Fandango reviewer said: “Lara parachutes into Africa. The first enormous plot hole is that she has no reason to be there. She has already stolen back Alexander’s map in Hong Kong, which ostensibly is her purpose in the scenario. And since Dr. Reiss has no way to know where the evil treasure is, why does she take the chance of unwittingly leading the doctor to Pandora’s Box.”

Really, though, Dr. Reiss has already decoded the map. The computer had finished its job, but Lara shot it up before she left in Hong Kong. I admit they didn’t come out and say that Reiss doesn’t need the orb in his possession to figure it out, but Lara’s actions make it clear. Reiss has only to fix his computer, which would take 24 hours, so she has to get to Africa right away.[/spoiler]

Nothing after the credits, if you’re interested - 39956

2

Yes but

When she shoots the computer in the lab she shoots the moniters and not the actualy computers. Doh! It really should take the bad guy about 5 minutes to fix the computers.

3

I’m probably going to skip this one after reading Mr. Cranky’s Review, as it received the elusive rating of ‘Proof that Jesus died in vain.’
http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/tombraider2.html

4

Zebra: Yes but That’s movie computer logic for you. It’s the same reason they have to have a 100% completed sign that takes up the whole screen. It’s not realistic, but I think it’s reasonable inside a movie.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I think the film takes itself a little too seriously. I could have used some more comic relief.

Stonebow, I looked on that link, but I couldn’t find a Review anywhere on it. There’s just some letter about how this guy can’t follow the plot or suspend disbelief. :wink: And I really think that the suspension in this case is minor:

Why does the shark surface? Because Lara is pulling back on its dorsal fin, steering it. Also, is it so unreasonable that Lara would have looked into a few homes and picked one that had a high-tech television? Also, we saw Terry was an extremely resourceful guy, and he had some money with him, so why is it so surprising that he can get to Kenya?

5

My wife and I saw The Cradle of Life over the weekend, and we both quite liked it. I myself didn’t like the first film very much, but the second one was actually pretty good. We went for brain-candy action, and we pretty much got brain-candy action. I agree with Achernar that it could have used a little more comic relief, though the action sequences mostly made up for that.

The last act was actually my favorite part, especially the sequence with the Shadow Warriors. Very reminiscent of the Alien Ambush scene in Aliens, I thought, and nicely-handled. And this movie actually had a pretty solid ending, unlike the first one, which was just sort of blah at the end.

What’s really funny is that I felt this one somehow captured more of the video game’s feel, while establishing a better story than the first one. And even though I don’t like Angelina Jolie all that much, I have to admit that she is ideal to play Lara Croft. It’s more than her being boobular and muscular like Lara (both of which are effectively played up in the first few minutes of the film, after the credits), but something about the way she delivers her lines… and her eyes in this film are really striking throughout. They lit her consistently so that her eyes were highlighted in almost every shot, and they were gorgeous. Again, I don’t normally consider her all that attractive, but in this… damn. Worked for me.

So, yeah… good movie, anyway. I’d say it compares favorably with the two good chapters of the Indiana Jones series… not necessarily better than those, but definitely in the same league of fun adventure movies.

6

One reviewer I heard liked the movie…up until the pole vault into the moving helicopter. Asking the moviegoing public to suspend disbelief is one thing but I think that’s going too far.

7

I was dragged to it, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it was slightly better than I expected. I had trouble paying attention to the first one, but this one actually had plot and angst and reasons for people to do stuff. Good for them! (I must admit though, looking back it was sort of like a really long trailer. But that’s all right, because I like trailers.)

8

I hated it. Sorry.

My biggest problem with modern-era action movies is that they misunderstand the function of the hero character. Lara Croft, as portrayed in the two movies so far, is basically indestructible and infallible. She always knows what she’s doing, she never has any doubt about what to do next, and she always succeeds at whatever she attempts. There’s no suspense in the story.

Compare the gold standard of modern action movies as represented by Die Hard or the Indiana Jones movies. The Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford characters spend half of those movies running away from stuff and just trying to stay alive. On the rare occasion they actually initiate an attack, barging into a situation, there’s almost always a moment where they pause to recognize that maybe this wasn’t exactly the best idea in the world.

As a consequence, the audience gets involved with the story, because we’re actively participating with the hero’s dilemma: In a way, we’re projecting ourselves into the screen, trying to help even though we know it’s impossible to affect a static film. It’s a neat psychological trick when it works: “No, McClane! The fire-hose wheel will fall past you and drag you out if you don’t— Oh no! Untie it! Quick!”

By contrast, when watching the Tomb Raider movies (and similarly flawed modern action flicks), the hero radiates such confidence that we never put ourselves in the action. She’s so much more competent than we are that we have no need to get involved; we feel excluded. It’s similar to the James Bond problem, but those movies play much closer to self-parody and get away with it.

So we sit back and watch Lara Croft flawlessly leaping a motorcycle off the Great Wall, or sharpshooting bad guys from beneath the water (don’t think about the refraction at the surface that would make this impossible), or punching a shark in the nose (I mean, come on), and we just sort of let it happen in front of us. Whenever things look like they’re going to get out of control, she pulls some random trick out of her butthole — pole-vaulting onto the helicopter and attaching a tracer to the box, for example — and steps back with a smirk.

Yes, I know, this is a side effect of the video-game source material. The hero is specifically designed as a cipher, an empty vessel into whom the player can project during the adventure. But games are interactive; movies are not, which is why you need to use psychological tricks to fool the audience into thinking there’s a relationship, and an active role in which they can participate. Movies work differently than do video games, and the characters must be handled appropriately for the respective media. Otherwise you just get a plastic action figure in the central role, a hollow puppet at the service of the filmmakers.

And then the choice at the end of the movie, to try to humanize the action figure? That whole scene where she supposedly agonizes about the ally who won’t listen to her? That was just impossibly stupid: She’s invulnerable and faultless for the first hour and a half, and then in the last five minutes this one guy she knew once isn’t cooperating, and she weeps at the difficult choice. I mean, give me a freakin’ break.

So no, I didn’t care for this. Maybe it’s just my taste: I’d rather watch an actual human being trying to navigate difficulties with incomplete information and fallible tactics. To me, it’s much more thrilling and involving when Indiana Jones runs out onto that swaying bridge, finds he’s trapped in the middle, and mumbles, “Oh, shit,” thinking he’s suddenly out of options. It’s much more exciting when John McClane realizes he made a terrible mistake by crawling into that air duct and has to sit tight hoping the bad guys don’t find him.

I just don’t buy Lara Croft: I don’t believe she’d be able to show up in a random mountain village in China and have two brand-new motorcycles polished and waiting (especially when, as the village woman says, “you don’t normally work with a partner” — so why are there two bikes?). I don’t believe she’d be able to figure out where to put the Orb to unlock the landscape while under attack by spatially unrestricted shadow creatures (the magic key in the random hole: yet another bit of video-game plotting). I don’t believe her, and I don’t enjoy watching her work, because there’s no room for me as a viewer.

So again, maybe it’s my taste, but I thought Cradle of Life was simply awful.

9

I havent seen the second movie yet so i cant comment on that one but i think its safe to say that lara in doubt and unsure of what to do was pretty well covered in the first one.

she has the power of time blah blah, oooh power to save her father blah blah, ooooh what should she do, ooooh ANGST, oooh should she mess with something bad for her own selfish reasons blah blah?

sure it wasnt very well done angst but it was there and they did make a very large point about it.

10

At least this one has a basis in fact.

11

And they still called it a Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie? :eek:

12

Given how easily this particular point ruins the whole movie for you, I think you let Bond off the hook way too simply. I certainly agree that if you think that the ridiculous, inhuman modus operandi of James Bond makes a movie flawed, then enjoy this film you will not. :slight_smile:

13

Well, it wasn’t a very good plot. But it was more than I expected.

14

Yes, yes, yes. All this talk about Lara is nice. But what I want to discuss is the Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler) character. At the beginning we find out he’s probably not a very nice guy.

Then we find out he & Lara have a history. They spend most of the movie making us think he’s actually not such a bad guy deep down. He races across the whole planet to find & help Lara & then right at the end he gets greedy & wants to grab the box and run even if he has to go through Lara. So she shoots him. C’mon. My take is he realized he never really could have Lara, life really didn’t have much meaning after that so he forced Lara to shoot him. He did say he’d rather have Lara kill him than the bad guys earlier in the film. But they didn’t make that clear in the movie & I’m not buying this bad guy to the end thing. I like his character too much.

15

Yeah, but Bond is a comedy.

16

I haven’t seen the sequel yet, it isn’t going to be released here for ages, but this is a complaint i heard about the first one, and every tim I’d think to myself “Did you never play the game?”

The point is that in the game, whenever there’s a switch, you know to push it, when there’s a block, you pull it, when there’s a bad guy or animal, you kill it, when there’s a ladder, you climb it.

Lara’s in-built knowledge and confidence of what her next step is, is a direct translation of the ‘game’ aspect of her character.

At least, that’s how I always viewed it, and it always fit right with me. I am one of the few people out there who likes the first movie. I am looking forward to this sequel too.

17

I’m told that this is exactly what you should do if attacked by a shark: apparently there are a whole bunch of nerve-endings there, which makes it very painful for the shark.

18

Cervaise, do you mind if I quote you? I’ve done some (non-profit) writing on the nature of movie protagonists and antagonists, and I think you’ve summed up an issue quite well.

19

Do go see the sequel. I’m with you on liking the first. Upon walking out the theater at the end, it had a higher “feel good” rating with me than the second. But go anyway, come back & I’ll tell you more about why.