With 18 games over 21 years, the Tomb Raider video game franchise got a much-needed reboot in 2013. Knowing Hollywood, it was a safe bet that a film reboot wasn’t too far behind. The new film, simply titled Tomb Raider, stars Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) as Lara Croft and will be hitting theaters Friday, March 16th. In anticipation for the new film, it’s only fitting the two prior films in the previous canon also get revisited. Both films hit shelves February 27, 2018 on 4K UHD disc in special editions that will remind fans just how much fun this franchise was.
In the late ‘90s, Tomb Raider was EVERYWHERE! The games were playable on every format imaginable (even Gameboy!), and the gun-toting, well-endowed protagonist Lara Croft had somehow become a virtual sex symbol, plastered on a plethora of magazine covers in various stages of undress. It was a bizarre time looking back, especially given her low-res appearance compared to the polygon and pixel count we have today. But something about this game and Lara had dialed into the cultural zeitgeist, and Hollywood was pretty quick to capitalize on the property, even with video game adaptations still being untested waters. For example, the last video game adaptation before Tomb Raider was the horrendous bomb Wing Commander, which starred ‘90s staples Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze, Jr., making 11 million on a 30 million budget.
Both films star Angelina Jolie, and this wasn’t the calmer, more world-aware Jolie, championing causes, adopting children, and directing thought-provoking cinema, that most of us are used to. This was peak Angelina — post Girl, Interrupted, Academy Award-winning, married to Billy Bob Thornton, crazy as a bag of cats Angelina Jolie, whose erratic bad girl behavior was a staple of tabloids. The studio was so reluctant to cast the actress at the time given her “wild” reputation that they regularly drug tested her on set. But looking back, she totally embodied the character, and her success and badass personae would brew a perfect storm that would leave her indelible stamp on the character. With Lara and the narrative seemingly built around that actress’s eccentric personality, the first film is strangely forward thinking and still is a lot of fun, even 16 years later. Well, except for the clunky ‘90s CG and its garish techno soundtrack that was all the rage at the time.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) had an amazing cast, with Jolie opposite a young Daniel Craig as Alex West, a rival tomb raider, and her real-life father Jon Voight playing Lara’s dead father. As our main antagonist we have Iain Glen (the eternally friendzoned Jorah Mormont of Game of Thrones) as Manfred Powell, a member of the Illuminati who is searching for “The Triangle of Light,” an artifact that must be found before the oncoming solar eclipse to unlock its true power. The story goes that “The Triangle,” which has the ability to control time, was deemed too powerful and broken up into two pieces. When Lara finds a strange compass-like key hidden in her mansion, she sets off across the globe to find the artifact to bring her father back from the dead, unbeknownst to her that the Illuminati is a few steps behind her.
To live up to unrealistic fanboy expectations at the time, Jolie did reportedly wear a padded bra in order to mimic the character’s impractical measurements, but drew the line at the iconic short-shorts. This actually turned into one of the biggest stumbling blocks to her signing onto the film, even though she eventually relented. This explains why she only appears in them as sparingly as possible, because they were “very, very uncomfortable.” But given those stumbling blocks, the film surprisingly has its more progressive moments, like while we do get the very pandering PG-13 shower scene, it was rumored to be very toned down from the script. It’s Daniel Craig who also gets his own shower scene later in the film, showing even more skin, thanks to a well placed table.
Also never once is the fact that Lara is a woman mentioned in conversation or used against her in the film; there is nothing but fear, admiration, and respect given to Lara Croft by those around her. This also probably was thanks to one of the six credited writers of the film being an actual woman, Sara B. Cooper. The other redeeming characteristic of the film is Lara isn’t looking for a lost love, nor does she become romantically entangled; she is simply a woman on a mission to save her father. Running at a scant 100 minutes, the film is surprisingly coherent and straight to the point, but still a lot of fun. It’s Jolie taking the character seriously as she does, even embracing some of the campier aspects, that makes this film work so well. This, coupled with some great acrobatic action set pieces like the infamous bungee battle, makes this one of the better ‘90s video game adaptations out there. The film was actually a commercial hit, even with Paramount’s rather creative financing of the film, garnering a sequel.
Next up was Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003), a film that had Jolie reprising the titular video game character, but without her padded bra or trademark short-shorts. While you think that would make this the better of the two films, you’re sadly mistaken. While Cradle starts off even more ridiculous than the first, with Lara punching a shark in the face so she could then ride it to safety, from there the film devolves into a convoluted two-hour mess that feels like a script from the Mission Impossible reject pile. The film was a blockbuster tent pole in 2003, opening in July opposite such other subpar sequels as Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
This film has Lara after Pandora’s Box after an expedition off the shores of Greece to Alexander the Great’s Luna Temple ends in the death of her team. An orange orb Lara was in the process of taking for herself is stolen from her at the last moment by Chen Lo (Simon Yam), the leader of a Chinese crime syndicate, to be sold to Jonathan Reiss (Ciarán Hinds), a Nobel Prize-winning scientist turned bio-terrorist. We soon find out the orb just happens to be the map to Pandora’s Box, an ancient object that supposedly contains a deadly plague and the origin of life itself. MI6 then approaches Lara to stop Jonathan and she does so, partly for revenge and partly to keep the artifact out of the madman’s hands. The wrinkle here is she recruits former lover Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler) to lead her to Chen Lo, but the question is, can she trust him?
The Cradle of Life definitely lacks the charm and humor of the original installment, and watching the two back to back you can really see the evolution of the blockbuster from the ‘90s to the 2000s. While the first film is a tight, focused 100 minute adventure, The Cradle of Life just wanders all over the place with the kind of action set pieces we see nowadays just for spectacle rather than story, simply chewing up that runtime. It also doesn’t help that Lara as a character doesn’t seem particularly engaged in the hunt this time around, whereas the last film had her trying to bring her back her father. Given the independence of her character and the lack of chemistry between Jolie and Gerard Butler, I began to wonder what was the point in having him around? This could have easily been a much more satisfying solo mission for our favorite tomb raider.
Whereas the first film seemed like what I would imagine Angelina Jolie actually doing in between films, the Cradle of Life has her playing a one dimensional video game character. On the press tour Jolie quickly started distancing herself from the character, saying this would be her last outing as the adventurer even though Paramount was already rumored in development on a sequel. When the film was finally released it bombed hard and took with it the career of director Jan de Bont, who was a big deal in the ‘90s. After helming Speed and Twister, his career hit a speed bump with Speed 2: Cruise Control, and The Cradle of Life was the final nail in his career. Paramount later would blame the failure of the film on the poor performance of the then-latest installment of the video game series, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. The game was DOA thanks to being rushed to shelves in time for the film and was riddled with bugs.
In a strange coincidence with Cradle’s artifact belonging to Alexander the Great, Jolie would go on to play Alexander’s mother Olympias in the Oliver Stone film a year later. This film would befall a similar fate at the box office.
So out of the two I recommend Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and say you kind of have to get The Cradle of Life for completionists’ sake. Both editions come with the previously ample Blu-ray special editions, with the 4K UHD discs being commentary only. As far as transfers go, I personally prefer the first film since it has a more film-like quality to it, with the grain intact, whereas the second film appears to have a bit of DNR applied to the image. Both films also come with DTS HD tracks, with Tomb Raider being the standout of the two; Cradle of Life just felt a bit more subdued in its soundscape compared to Tomb Raider. It’s funny, I just revisited The Mummy (1999), and I’ve noticed much like the advent of DVD, 4K is not particularly kind to CGI. Thanks to the clarity and brightness of the image here the seams are particularly visible.
Check out a full rundown of the special features below:
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 4K UHD
- Commentary with Director Simon West
Blu-ray
- Commentary with Director Simon West
- Digging Into Tomb Raider
- Crafting Lara Croft
- The Visual Effects of Tomb Raider
- Tomb Raider Stunts
- Are You Game?
- Deleted Scenes
- U2 Music Video: “Elevation” (Tomb Raider Mix)
- Alternate Main Title
- Teaser Trailer
- Trailer
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life 4K UHD
- Commentary by Director Jan de Bont
Blu-ray
- Commentary by Director Jan de Bont
- Deleted/Alternate Scenes (with Optional Commentary by Jan de Bont)
- Training
- Vehicles and Weapons
- Stunts
- Visual Effects
- Scoring
- Gerard Butler’s Screen Test
- Korn “Did My Time” Music Video
- The Davey Brothers “Heart Go Faster” Music Video
It was actually a lot of fun revisiting the Tomb Raider film franchise in 4K, which now given the history behind them feels like a relic unto itself. Angelina Jolie, after proving herself as a box office draw, went on to do more mature big budget fare, leaving behind the character that cemented her as a force to be reckoned with. I still think she should have given the character its due and righted the franchise, sending it off on a high note with a third and final film, but Jolie moved on to bigger and better things, like The Tourist. Paramount has done their due diligence in releasing encompassing editions of both films that both feature a plethora of special features that will bring a nostalgic tear to the eye of many video game fans who lived through Tomb Raider mania like myself.