I was ready to walk away from Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft after the first episode. Not because Netflix’s latest animated video-game adaptation is that bad, mind you. But its 35-minute premiere – which introduces us to Lara and many of the characters we’ve come to know from the more recent Tomb Raider games developed by Crystal Dynamics – just wasn’t all that compelling. And the seven episodes that follow never get any better. The story didn’t grab me right away (and only gets more laughably dumb), the animation is both generic and minimalist, most of the attempts at humor fall flat, and the writers don’t give the cast all that much to work with. It’s OK – there’s lots of globetrotting and some fun action – but if there’s a season 2, I don’t think I’ll be tuning in.
The Legend of Lara Croft doesn’t so much establish Lara’s legend so much as her emotional burden. As we meet her here (played as well as anyone ever has by Hayley Atwell, aka the MCU’s Peggy Carter), she’s already been on many an archaeological adventure with her friends, but remains headstrong in her pursuit of ancient artifacts and keeps her best pals at an emotional arm’s length. She never truly lets them in to see the real Lara, who’s tortured by not just her father’s pre-series death but also that of her surrogate father and mentor, Roth, who dies in Lara’s arms in a flashback sequence – and whose death she blames on herself.
We also meet Jonah (Earl Baylon, reprising his role from the games), her right hand out in the field and voice of reason; Zip (Allen Maldonado), her tech guru who’s the guiding voice in her ear and her eye in the sky; Sam Nishimura (Karen Fukuhara), her estranged best friend; and Camilla Roth (Zoe Boyle), her, um, other estranged best friend. Before long, the villain enters the picture: Charles Devereaux, a what-if-Lara-had-gone-bad caricature. He’s voiced by Richard Armitage, aka Trevor Belmont from Netflix’s stellar Castlevania series – so it’s a bit strange hearing him as an antagonist here. Obsessed with avenging his own father’s death, Devereaux seeks a collection of mythological stones that promise great power as the means to exact his revenge upon those who took his father from him. But his quest quickly devolves into comic-book-esque levels of camp, which seemed at silly odds with the supernatural-infused yet otherwise fairly serious tone of this show.
Lara’s eight-episode pursuit of Devereaux and the stones does what you’d expect from Tomb Raider and takes us to many locations around the world, from the Croft Manor that Lara doesn’t seem to want to move into to a nearby British museum, as well as farther-off places like China, Paris, Pasargadae, Mongolia, and more. Eagle-eyed Tomb Raider game fans might even recognize one or two of them, which is an appreciated nod to the source material of this show. Each episode takes us somewhere new, which helps the series avoid monotony from a visual perspective. And yes, tombs are raided, and adventures are had. There’s decent action and the occasional stab at humor, much of which misses (one notable exception: in episode six, when Lara hilariously tries to get past a family of tourists at a theme park).
But the aforementioned animation isn’t up to the task of making any of it look all that interesting. Lots of the backgrounds are still art, which would be forgiven if Tomb Raider leaned harder into a ‘70s or ‘80s animation aesthetic. Instead, the look of the show is one that seems cheap and rushed, with a few obvious 3D animated shots that look out of place compared to everything around them. Furthermore, aside from Jonah, Lara’s friends aren’t given much to do, nor much chance to break out of their generic sidekick roles.
The worst offense, though, is the story. The plot quickly becomes so nonsensical that I probably wouldn’t have minded it as a kid watching Tomb Raider on Saturday mornings, but I’m not – and this is most certainly not an animated series for kids, on account of the copious, shrugged-off, onscreen murders that earned this show a TV-14 rating. In fairness, a nonsensical plot is a criticism that could also be levied at many of the Tomb Raider games from all eras – maybe it’s no coincidence that my favorite is 2015’s Rise of the Tomb Raider, which keeps things as grounded as the franchise ever has. Perhaps fittingly, the inevitable faceoff with the big bad plays out like it was cribbed from a video game boss battle. But not a good one.
