Why we need another Lara Croft
With talk of a new silver screen outing for gaming's leading lady Lara Croft, I look at why I think
we need another Tomb Raider movie and why I believe Lara Croft is as relevant as ever.
Lara Croft, were she bound by the rules of time as you and I are, would be getting on a
bit by now and may well be considering
hanging up her gunbelt and throwing out
the
camo pants. Of course, that's given that she hasn't already succumed to
a spikey
pit in some tricky Aztec tomb, been eaten by a big cat or spent the rest of her days in
a Perisian jail, framed for having killed her mentor, Werner Von Croy. How then, does
she avoid old age, a violent death, or fading away?
The answer is simple, because
in 1995 Toby Gard of Core Design created an icon.
Since the smash hit debut Tomb Raider outing that saw Lara struggling to collect the
mystical Scion artefact, Lara has had eight unique adventures all over
the planet.
Despite this success, she has had her fair share of bad rap. For instance, the first five
games all utilized the same engine and these sequels were criticised for bringing little
new to the table. Lara's boobs were made stupidly large in all of the posters and adverts.
Finally, when they did try to change tact for the next gen console PS2, the controls (long
considered too fiddly to master) got worse. This episode, Tomb Raider: the Angel of
Darkness (AoD) effectively killed the
franchise and lost Core design Tomb Raider for
good. It was a bleak time for Lara and the future of the series was put under strain.
Luckily, three years after AoD, Crystal Dynamics brought
Lara back in the short but
extremely enjoyable Tomb Raider Legend. Much had changed. Lara felt good to control,
fluid - the
way an athletic adventuerer should be. Gun fights were fun and once again
locations where atmospheric
and exciting, using next-gens technology to great effect.
Much of Lara's backstory was reimagined - most notably the fact that in these new Crystal
Dynamics games
Lara had not been disowned by her aristocrat parents but had in fact
been very close to her mother (and searches for her).
I'd be the first to admit that the
characters in the Tomb Raider universe are rather lacking in the development department,
but Lara herself has always been
a deep and interesting personality. It's the beauty mixed
with high intelligence and adventurous enthusiasm, topped off with (as far as we know)
absolutely no sexual urges whatsoever. In short, Lara Croft is larger than life and would
probably never function as a balanced human being,
but she is a blindingly alive
fictional
character nontheless.
The icon
Lara has been voiced by four different actresses to date. The most recent, Keeley Hawes, has been the voice
of Lara for the last three installments, and has become a successful tv personality through her roles in the highly
praised MI5 drama Spooks, Ashes to Ashes and the saucy Tipping the Velvet. Lara became the face of her self-named clothes and merchandise label for a stint and has
been modelled by more than nine different women, including Jordan, Nathalie Cook, Rhona Mitra, Nell McAndrew, Lara Weller,
Lucy Clarkson, Jill de Jong, Karima Adebibe and Alison Carroll. Finally, for the 2008 Tomb Raider installment - Tomb Raider: Underworld,
Lara was motion-captured by athlete Heidi Moneymaker. In both of the movies to date - Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003), Lara was played by Angelia Jolie.
The video game world has had its other female characters of course - the Metroid series' Samus Aran, Perfect Dark's Joanna Dark and Hana and Rain of the Fear Effect series to name a few. Ask anyone to name a female gaming superstar however and their likely first choice would be Lara Croft, even if they know nothing of computer games.
Influences
It isn't hard to make the connection - Lara is, in her most basic form, a female Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, this rather one-dimensional view of
her character was the one depicted on the silver screen in the live action Tomb Raider movie and its sequel (more on these later).
First of all, Lara's lineage is well-to-do and she lives in an inherited manor filled with history and secrets. Despite this rich heritage and massive estate, she lives alone with no sidekicks or family and (in the Crystal Dynamics games) the occasional help from mansion staff and her butler, Winston. In some ways, she
is almost the female British equivalent of Bruce Wayne, minus the alter-ego.
Morality
I feel it is also worth mentioning that Lara has killed many animals on her travels (a criticism I neglected to
mention earlier). In her defense, Lara doesn't have a whole lot of luck with beasts. Big cats try
to maul her, gorillas strive to pound her into dust and even extinct reptiles want to chomp her up. Of course you could argue
that the developers put in too many creatures to fill with hot lead (and many of them already facing extinction), but
when in a tomb or lost world there's not always a lot of scope for human enemies. Which brings me onto the next point - human
adversaries.
In her first adventure Lara had to take on several trigger-happy rival adventurers and Natla's goons. Justifiably so, Lara had to despatch these
enemies to survive. Most of the bad guys appear near the end of the adventure. In Tomb Raider 2 and 3 (particularly 2, with its nigh-on infinite sized mafia), Lara fells hundreds of men. Both the second and third game were criticized for this and that in Tomb Raider 3 Lara killed a number of security guards. Despite the brutality the acts should evoke, it never felt like Lara had murdered. Mainly, it has to be said, because these slightly dumb, blocky enemies always attacked first and fighting back was just a means of staying alive, just as in space invaders you must shoot the aliens to progress. Lara's first kill is altered in the remake, Tomb Raider Anniversary in an attempt to show her remorse at having to kill a human being - her rival, Larson. I think this was at least an interesting attempt to show Lara's feelings, if a little clumsily executed. Personally, I far prefer the closing scene from Legend where Lara actually "spares" an old friend, which I will discuss in more detail shortly. Long before Anniversary and Lara's reimagined first kill, something noteworthy occured for Lara's sixth episode, the Angel of Darkness. Lara was framed for murder and had to prove her innocence. When you really consider it, proving her guilt or innocence over a single murder becomes something of a mute point - she has despatched many, many men without a second thought in previous adventures. I realise AoD attempted to take the series somewhere else, but perhaps this was the wrong direction. Lara Croft, no matter which way you look at it, is a killer.
Fast forward to the first Crystal Dynamics game following AoD and Lara is pitted against an old friend. Legend is a spectacular game and a breath of fresh air in a series that was quickly losing direction. What was more, by the last scene you could really empathise with Lara, despite her somewhat otherwordly predicament. The fact that Lara choses to spare Amanda's life, with the words "from this moment, every breath you take is a gift from me" shows that despite having killed she does have compassion, something we had only glimpsed in previous titles. The fact that she retains this compassion while remaining a strong and intelligent woman is great and deserves to be explored more thoroughly on-screen.
Tomb Raider history and locations
The most recent chapters in Lara's life have involved a hybrid Norse mythology. Lara has, in the past, ventured to many different locations across the globe including Egypt, Greece, South America and Japan.
The Tomb Raider world is largly ficticious when it comes to its history. True, real locations make their appearances - Abu Simbol in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and the Great Wall in Tomb Raider 2, but obviously their portrayals are often very different from the real thing. For instance, when I visited the pyramids I don't recall giant bugs or mummies, only a slightly grubby
fat man in the tomb chamber requesting that we pay him if I wanted to leave. Besides recognizable locations, several real-world artefacts have appeared in the games. While you're unlikely to ever pass a history exam by playing Tomb Raider, it is this series (and Indiana Jones) that has given me a
respect for history, and the reason I sweated my arse off on numerous occasions at archeological sites during my youth. I'm betting too, that Lara's time spent in Angkor Watt in the first Tomb Raider movie, (and also featured as a training lesson in the Last Revelation), sold a few plane tickets back in 2001.
I present to you then that Tomb Raider and the enthusiasm of Lara Croft can also be good for tourism and history. A lot of kids and adults overlook the wonders of world history, but if they can break down those initial misconceptions by playing a spot of Tomb Raider, then they will realise that our planet's history has been just as (and if not more) interesting, bloody and down-right confusing than anything a computer game or contemporary cinema has to offer. This may all sound far-fetched, but fiction can pique people's interest in all sorts of things they wouldn't usually investigate. Just think what a better class of Tomb Raider movie could do for both female cinema roles and to evoke a genuine interest in history for modern audiences.
Lara Croft - the sex symbol
Lara Croft is sexy. There, I've said it. You can dress it up however you like, but part of her success has to be down to that she runs around in hot
pants and a tight top while shooting things. However, that alone is unlikely to sell an entire franchise-worths of games spanning over a decade. Especially since,
off the success of Tomb Raider, several less successful game series' tried to sell products with alluring female leads.
Why is Tomb Raider such a success then? Well, besides the highly atmospheric worlds created in Tomb Raider and Lara Croft being an interesting character,
she promises something exotic and cosmopolitan without ever actually delivering (which we should be thankful for).
Lara Croft's sexuality was both over and under played out in her two movies. The delivery of a
particular line - "Hello boys" following an earthquake in Santorini as she makes her first appearance on a
jetski in Cradle of Life immediately springs to mind. Unlike the games (but more akin to the comics) she had some boyfriends too, but relationships in the films were too wishy-washy to be inspiring.
Lara has had innuendos in the games, or at the very least suggestive lines. The difference
is she's never acted on them. She knows she is an object of desire, but her
love affair has always been with relics, not men and she far surpasses the role of any object. I'm betting it'd take some man to take Lara away from tombs and ancient civilizations
and sweep her off her feet.
Maybe, just maybe, it is time she found herself a mate, but then the whole dynamic of Lara's solo adventuring may be in jeopardy. Do Tomb Raider fans really
want to have to rescue Lara's one true love from Natla V3? I don't see that happening.
Evolution of Lara
The character of Lara Croft has - if you think about it, undergone three major phases or evolutions so far. First of all, we had Tomb Raiders 1 to 5. Same game engine, similar games. Next came AoD, which attempted to take Tomb Raider somewhere darker - a reboot ala Batman Begins/Casino Royale. This did not work quite as planned, although
AoD is effectively a much darker game than Underworld (and perhaps less of a Tomb Raider for it). I do believe Tomb Raider, at some point, will grow far darker, if only for a spell. There's always been something simplistic and wonderful about the brightness of the scenery and the idea of adventure with Tomb Raider however, so perhaps darker is not always better. Following AoD (and onto the third phase) we were given the Crystal Dynamics chapters which bring us up to date. I like this - it reminds me of the Batman saga. Characters that are refined and reinterpreted, details that are chopped and changed. A story and characters that become timeless and almost self-sustaining as a result. Expanding some of her backstory and ditching other bits was a bold but successful move. With any luck, then, the people behind the next Tomb Raider cinema outing will be able to forget about the two slightly flat Jolie films and give us something special in their stead.
Radio 4's Front Row the other night raised a good issue - that many of today's on-screen females are subdued. There are some good actresses but not enough strong and believable roles for them to get their teeth into. This in contrast to the abundance of femme fatale characters of the 40s and 50s where women on the silver screen were strong and firey (e.g. Gun Crazy), despite having less rights than modern day women. It would be nice then for Lara Croft in her second cinema incarnation to fill these boots. Sure she's an action woman at heart, but surely she can be so much more besides. With the right script and the right actress she could really mean something. OK, so as Front Row discussed, we have strong female characters on television - look at Damages, Prime Suspect etc, but not so much in cinema anymore. Perhaps it is a longshot that a computer game based movie could turn things around, but just remember, it only takes one to do so. Look at the Batman and James Bond franchises and with stellar actor Christian Bale interested in playing the video game legend Solid Snake in a Metal Gear Solid movie, we could soon see a turn around in quality for video game cinema.
Conclusions
I believe it is for these reasons that we do still need Lara Croft - perhaps more now than ever. While Street Fighter and Mortal Combat had their own live-action romps on the big screen back during the 90s, no other game franchise besides Tomb Raider has been given a second chance like this. Renewed talk of a new Lara movie outing is thanks, I shouldn't wonder, to the popularity of the recent Crystal Dynamics outings. Please, let's make this next one something worth remembering.
- E.Evans, March 18th, 2009
Links
My Tomb Raider Anniversary review
My Tomb Raider Underworld review
