Shadow of the Tomb Raider Confirmed, Releasing this September

This is why people say Hollywood is out of ideas. That was our inspiration because this film was based a lot on the 2013 rebooted game.

The premise is a whole lotta who cares leading up to a tomb-raiding third act that plays like all four finales of the “Indiana Jones” movies mushed together.

Oh, it’s not bad, at least not mostly.

Vikander on taking on the mantle of Lara Croft for the current generation and discussing what Lara meant to her growing up in a world where there were so few female heroines. So instead of becoming the new lady of mossy Croft Manor, she delivers take-out tandoori on her bicycle, pedaling with the carefree physicality of youth along the cobbled alleyways of East London. Vikander is a beautifully effective avatar for the American Ninja Warrior version of Lara Croft. It’s got all the bells and whistles of an early aughts adventure flick; there are some truly entertaining, insane fight scenes (some that take place in mid-air!), Jorah from Game of Thrones plays Lara’s nemesis, and Daniel Craig does a laughably bad American accent (that goes toe-to-toe with Jolie’s awful English one).

That’s more or less all we know for now, but we don’t have too much longer to wait to find out more.

Considering that many AAA-rated games are announced years before they’re released, it’s a refreshing approach that should resonate well with fans. Will Lara ever inherit her fortune and who, back home, is actually a Trinity agent? Will Lara and her dad escape the tomb?

But if he’s not dead, then where has he been for seven years?

In the bonus scene that plays before the credits, we see Lara return to the local pawn shop to retrieve an emerald pendant heirloom she sold off, to fund her expedition to find her father. “It has been set up for that a bit, which I’m very excited about, of course that is if the audience want to see a further adventure but, yeah, I agree”, she said. This was followed two tears later with the sequel, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life. Decisions made by Laura – especially a climactic one – often don’t make much sense. Um, why not just flash the knife earlier, guy? And the logo for the upcoming game features an eclipse in the spot of the “o” of Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider approaches solid popcorn flick territory when it stays true to its source material, and the movie deserves props for reinventing the historically problematic character of Lara Croft as a realistic, empowering hero. In this case, Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West) went to an uncharted island in the Pacific looking for the tomb of the legendary “Mother of Death” named Himiko. And the talented Goggins (“The Hateful Eight”), a terrific small screen villain on “The Shield” and “Justified”, doesn’t feel like enough here.

The film suffers the same problem as any videogame adaptation; you’d rather be solving the puzzles (there’s a feeble one involving coloured crystals) than watching actors do it.