Let’s discuss the nature and meaning of existence. Not for people. For movies.
First we must address the question of whether cinema as a whole needs to exist. We can all admit that it doesn’t reach the level of “need” occupied by water, air and red wine. And humans got along pretty well for millions of years without movies; however, we didn’t get very far in our existence before we created art. So let’s put movies in the category of things we don’t technically need to live, but which make living a lot easier.
At their best, movies give us something new to see: insight into our lives, the lives of others or the world at large. Ideally, a film startles us out of our quotidian complacency, using a darkened theater to show us things in a new light. Film may not be necessary to life, but it largely gives us a different way to look at it.
Then there’s “Tomb Raider,” the latest attempt to turn the video game series into a film franchise.
This time around, Alicia Vikander plays Lara Croft, who is working as a London bicycle messenger because the filmmakers saw “Premium Rush” and thought that looked cool. Her father (Dominic West) vanished seven years ago while hunting for an evil power, bad things, end of the world, whatever. Lara heads out to do the same because otherwise the movie would be too short. What we end up with is 27 minutes of movie that has a 115-minute run time.
The reliably good Vikander is good here — it’s just hard to plumb the depths of a character when she’s written about as deep as a puddle. Lara doesn’t seem to be particularly smart or adept at anything except archery, and her puzzle-solving skills seem to be furrowing her brow and repeatedly muttering clues she got earlier in the film. She’s not powerful; she’s just lucky.
The screenplay (by relative newbies Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons) reads as though an AI ate a bunch of action movies and spit out lines. When referring to booby traps, one character breathes, “They’re not made to keep people OUT …” and the audience mentally says the rest of the line right along with him: “… they’re meant to keep people IN.” And said booby traps are clearly a result of the writers watching all the Indiana Jones movies and saying, “Those are cool, but what if we really dumbed them down?”
“Tomb Raider” isn’t offensively bad — kudos to director Roar Uthaug for mostly avoiding long, leering shots of Vikander’s body — but it’s just … there. It is a nonentity, an emotionally neutral experience. Watching it is like lackadaisically pedaling on a stationary bike: It’s not particularly stressful, but you’re not going anywhere. “Tomb Raider’s” presence or absence in the universe has no meaning. It is cinematic nihilism.
Some movies make life better, some worse. Both are necessary, because they force us to ponder and evaluate the art form. “Tomb Raider” has no effect on human existence. It’s fine that it’s there, but would anyone notice if it weren’t?
More Reelists from Kristen Page-Kirby
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