Some time ago in the not too distant past, a rumour began
circulating in the dusty corners of the internet surrounding the rebooting of
Indiana Jones. In fact several rumours emerged, all as nonsensical and
childhood-mangling as the last yet somehow still not as ludicrous as the actual
fourth instalment they made where Indy squares off against actual aliens. I
wasn’t sure if it was a serious rumour or just one of those things somebody
puts on a forum post to try and illicit as much of a reaction as they can
before they saunter back to their under-bridge dwellings to revel in the
collective outrage of a thousand keyboard warriors. Said rumour was that they
intended to recast Indiana Jones as a woman.
There is of course, nothing wrong with that to an extent.
Personally I don’t think gender swapping characters is actually a very good way
to get much needed female role models into the collective consciousness because
all that does is trade off the popularity of the original male character and
enrage all the desperate fanboys who will engage in the usual loathsome
trolling we’re now so sadly used to. All in all it just has the opposite effect
to the original intent and I personally think we’d all be much better off
having smartly written, original female characters doing heroic stuff in their own
right. Ghostbusters is a great example of this; that movie was a turgid sack of
fetid shit regardless of the female leads not because of them, but it sparked a
boat load of unnecessary controversy when really it should never have been made
in this first place because watching it gave my eyes several incurable
diseases. Fortunately lady Indiana Jones never got out of the rumour mill, or
at least not in such an obvious guise.
You really have to feel sorry for Lara Croft, because she
should have been a shining beacon of gender equality in the very masculine
world of video games but was for many years reduced to a pair of pneumatic
boobs and the shortest of short shorts. The more recent outings have gone some
way to redress that imbalance certainly and the newest cinematic effort does at
least carry on that trend. As pleasing to the eye as Angelina Jolie is, those
first two Tomb Raider movies are basically toss; is this year’s effort any
better? Well yes and no.
The craftily titled Tomb Raider is incredibly closely
modelled on the visuals of the last game and it does pay its homage well. Alice
Vikander is the spitting image of the painstakingly created group of pixels
that is Lara Croft and doesn’t do a bad job with what is at times a very clunky
script. Honestly, there are moments where you feel like maybe they were a bit
to focused on the whole video game thing and it feels decidedly like one of
the ropey cut scenes you can’t skip past to get on with the actual level.
Dominic West does a fair amount of scenery chewing, especially in an emotional
farewell which is more awkward than heart-wrenching and Walter Goggins is far
too reserved in the bad guy role. We know he’s gone a bit stir crazy on his
island exile because he just sort of tells us and then waves a gun around a
bit, but he’s not really menacing at all. In fact nobody really stands out at
all and everything feels a bit 2D. I am probably not going to stop with gaming
puns, be ye fore warned.
Lara herself is just as guilty of no sort of real development. She’s a rebellious rich kid refusing to sign herself into a massive inheritance and cycle-couriering one minute; problem solving, bow and arrow wielding, ultimate badass the next, but with no sense of how she levelled up. Point in case: in the opening scene we get to watch her get fairly comprehensively owned in an MMA sparring match by an opponent her own size who makes her tap to a fairly standard rear naked choke (that’s a real life sleeper hold for all you WWE fans out there). Two shakes of a lamb's tail later and our Lara is suddenly drowning her enemies in muddy pools and throwing a sweetly choreographed, flying, rolling triangle lock (the Undertaker had one of those during his “I like MMA” phase but it was the sloppiest thing since the invention of noodles) on the bad guy, cinching it tight enough to pop his head like a nicely ripe zit, leave him in a vegetative state and being fed liquidised meals by a carer for the rest of his days. Somehow he gets out of it of course, but you’re left wondering where in the hell she got her Ju-Jitsu from in the interim. Somebody paid for the season pass obviously.
Elsewhere, there is either just far too much inconsistency
or far too little logic. Lara arrives in China only to have her back pack
stolen, the only reason for this being that the inevitable chase leads her
directly to the exact boat she’s looking for, owned by the son of the guy who
took her Father to the island, but seeing as neither of those men returned, how
is it the same boat she has a photo of? Why is the son a raging alcoholic one
minute, then a crack shot with an assault rifle the next? Why is he interested
in helping her at all and why does he feel the need to flirt with her while
they are literally being lead around as slave workers under pain of being shot
to death by rent-a-mercenaries? As much as I’m all for suspending belief for action
movies I counted at least 10 times our heroine would have died in horrendous
and painful ways; smushed on rocks, drowned in waterfalls or poisoned by her
own infected blood in the searing heat and terrible humidity of a tropical
jungle sporting a large and open flesh wound. Not a green mushroom or flashing
star in sight.
Basically, this is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade but
with a girl in the lead. Loads of the plot is eerily familiar, even despite the
slightly odd zombie allusions towards the end. They’ve done what all movies
hoping to be franchises do and left it wide open for a slew of sequels and even
dropped a bit of a Usual Suspects moment on us in an unexpected and fairly unnecessary
twist. Overall, it’s not a bad film. There’s action and stuff but it kind of
felt like a video game without the fun part of actually playing, or
deliberately drowning Lara in the temple just to watch the creepily lifelike
animation. You all did it you sick little puppies.
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