TV Show Review: Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft - Globetrotting Animated Adventure Edges Lara's Arc Forward 1
Image: Push Square

We’re in the eye of a video game adaptation frenzy, but Tomb Raider has always been well ahead of the curve. During the peak of its early 2000s popularity, Angelina Jolie signed on to star as the well-endowed archaeologist Lara Croft, in a movie that would buck the trend of game-related Box Office busts and gross over $250 million worldwide. It was followed by a sequel and, more recently, an Alicia Vikander reboot – cementing the action adventure series as a true cross-media property.

This animated instalment feels like a no-brainer, then – a collaboration between Legendary and Netflix to help bridge the gap between Crystal Dynamics’ recent trilogy and whatever it’s been quietly concocting next. Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’s plot blurs the lines between the vulnerable Lara found in the most recent games with the strong and capable heroine from the original PS1 trilogy; that means there’s still a lot of handwringing over the star’s selfish, isolationist personality – but also plenty of acrobatics along the way.

The first episode, with a running time roughly 10 minutes longer than the remaining seven that follow, is a little stodgy and, dare we say, dull – as a flashback shows the protagonist discovering a non-descript box in Chile with her mentor and family friend, Roth. It then skips forward to the present where, wrestling with her demons at the infamous Croft Manor, she decides to do-away with her father’s stolen archaeology possessions – only to find the aforementioned artefact swiped from under her nose.

A globe-trotting story ensues which takes Lara from London and China to France and Iran, with all of the touristic spectacle you’d expect along the way. The visuals are largely adequate, although there’s an overemphasis on cheap-looking CG in some spots, which wouldn’t look massively out of place in early PS2 games, like The Angel of Darkness. There are a lot of set-pieces which fiddle with perspective, and they remind us of the ballroom shot from Beauty in the Beast – ground-breaking at the time, but dated today.

The animation’s largely fine, though, and we like Lara’s design here: she’s got jacked arms and massive shoulders, exactly what you’d expect from someone who spends her life scrambling around death pits. Hayley Atwell, who’s taking over from actress Camilla Luddington, also does a great job of bringing more maturity to the character – even if her performance is rarely ever remarkable.

It’s the supporting cast we’re still not keen on: the hulking top-knotted goody two-shoes Jonah returns from the games, and is as forgettable as ever. Zip, a character first introduced in Tomb Raider Chronicles, makes a surprise but largely uneventful return – acting as a kind of Q-type character, offering technical support for Lara from afar.

The villain, Charles Devereaux – who’s voiced by Richard Armitage – is perhaps the only interesting supporting character, and it’s through his parallels with Lara that the story finds its thrust. Without spoiling some of the twists, he’s effectively the victim of an illuminati-like cult similar to Trinity from the games, and is on the road to revenge. The aforementioned artefact – which contains a precious green gem – is stage one on his plan, but in true MacGuffin fashion, there are three more jewels to find, which can be combined like the Chaos Emeralds or Infinity Stones.

Unlike the largely grounded content of the recent trilogy, this animated adaptation dives head-first into the paranormal, leaning on Chinese mythology to create all kinds of supernatural scenarios. In one episode, Lara needs to take on a spirit fox composed of the shadows of dozens of different animals – and the series finale, which we won’t spoil here, will prove a rousing affair for long-time fans of the franchise.

Despite these set-piece spectacles, though, we couldn’t help but roll our eyes when the heroine acted selfishly and then started weeping about it later. While we understand the character needs depth beyond her parkour and problem-solving, her complaining can get irritating – especially when, honestly, her own thoughtlessness is almost always to blame.

Still, with the majority of the episodes running for little more than 20 minutes, there’s no real time to get too bogged down – and outside of the aforementioned first episode, the story really does start to move. There’s a great episode midway through the series where Lara and Jonah are forced to explore a tourist spot in China, and the writing really has fun with this, refreshingly exploring the protagonist’s lighter side.

There’s plenty of actual tomb raiding, too – although some of the combat set-pieces can be anticlimactic, so don’t expect any extended animated fight scenes. We did find the payoff to some of the major plot points a bit abrupt, but it makes for breezy viewing – and, honestly, we’d rather this than the series overstay its welcome.

So, all in all, if you’re looking for a brisk globetrotting animated adventure, then this should more than adequately meet your needs. We sincerely hope this is officially the end of Lara’s origin story now; by the conclusion of this series, her demons have been purged, she has some familiar weapons, and she’s got bigger biceps than those meatheads who live in your local PureGym. This show does a good job of moving the character’s story arc forward, and now we’re eager to see what Crystal Dynamics has been cooking for consoles.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft will be available to stream on Netflix from 10th October. Will you be watching the next phase of the heroic heroine’s next journey? Are you enjoying this recent flurry of animated and live action video game adaptations? Find a mythical gemstone in the comments section below.