Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft - Review

Streaming some Tombs.

Netflix's animated Tomb Raider series is out for all to stream. Yes, I’m surprised too. I knew an animated show was being worked on, but with Tomb Raider pretty much in hibernation ever since 2018, it hasn’t been in anyone's eye, including mine. It was pure coincidence that I stumbled upon this series again while booting up Netflix.

Hopefully, this doesn’t mean the series is dead on arrival. I like Tomb Raider, and I’ve always thought it a shame that the franchise has floundered so much in the modern gaming era. The recent reboot started out strong with the survival-focused Tomb Raider (2013) but ended with a whimper in the form of the unambitious Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Lara Croft is a gaming icon, and yet, she hasn’t been a prominent figure in years. I don’t think this series alone will reverse that, but it could be the start of the franchise taking a small but solid step back into the spotlight.

With all that out of the way, let’s talk about it.

A few years after her ordeal on Yamatai Island, Lara returns from a walkabout in Peru to London for Jonah's upcoming wedding. Deciding to rid herself of all her father’s belongings by auctioning them off, Lara is surprised when one of the artefacts—a green box she and her now-deceased mentor Roth found in Chile years ago—gets stolen by the same mysterious man who approached her earlier.

Determined to uncover the truth behind the box and the thief’s motives, Lara embarks on another globetrotting adventure, all the while dealing with the trauma, anger, and family troubles that have built up over the years.

This Tomb Raiders series is not the next big narrative step for the franchise, far from it. What it does, what I feel is its core 'purpose', is to develop Lara from the more emotional and vulnerable characterization in the Survivor Trilogy into the confident and sassy Lara of the original games. It’s an attempt to unify the most recent version of Lara with the most popular one, much like Crystal Dynamics intends to do with the next game.

We got old friends, we have new friends. Well, for this timeline at least.

Here, that means Lara confronts her past so she can move on from it. Over these 8 episodes, she gets to the root of her trauma and insecurities and faces them. It’s not badly done at all, I think. Yes, this plot point drags a bit. The show pulls some tricks one too many times, making the final push feel somewhat sudden, and it retreads familiar ground from the games, alongside a few clichés to tie it all together.

Still, I don’t mind it because it’s well-written and well-performed. It never became hokey or made me cringe. Even when they pull a trick for the third time, it’s still believable because of the strength of the characters. When a friend digs into Lara, you feel the anger, you feel the pain. These moments just work and while you can nitpick them all you want, they hit home.

Plus, I like Lara as a character. Yes, she can be stuck up sometimes and too much in her own head, but the point of the show is her growth. I like seeing her be more goofy here and, for example, be so done with annoying tourists. I like seeing her be the smart and badass explorer who solves ancient puzzles and jumps out of planes all on the same day.

Now that we're on the subject of characters, I’m pretty happy with our main cast. Jonah is as loveable a sidekick and big papa-bear as he was in the games. Zip is a solid 'man in the chair', a good addition for the next game if they choose to include him. As for our big bad, Devereaux, he’s not too shabby either. He’s a bit clichéd and not the most interesting villain, but he has a strong design and above all else presence. There are also a few nuanced moments that give him a little depth, which I appreciated, even though they don't do much with it by the end.

If you start to think about it, Devereaux’s shortcomings are similar to those of the main plot. It’s fairly cliché when with your magical MacGuffins and ancient shadow cabals, but it’s still a fun journey. There are a few occasional twists that livened things up and kept me engaged aside from the aforementioned character moments and action sequences.

Oh, and it’s good to see that the writers didn’t completely fabricate the mystery. Yes, much of it is disconnected from Chinese mythology, but some elements, like the Fox Spirit Huli Jing, are rooted in it. I always enjoy being introduced to another culture’s mythology in stories like this.

I also appreciate the little moments of setup and callbacks. Some shows over-telegraph details that become important later making it all too obvious. This show doesn´t so things are more surprising when they happen, if you weren´t paying enough attention that is.

Now, about those action sequences. They’re top notch. I will say they reuse the same 'panning camera' shot a lot, but that’s really my only complaint. They’re a lot of fun to watch, often creative, and don’t shy away from a little blood here and there. Some were so good I rewatched them right after finishing the episode. I especially like the infiltration fight in episode 4. It is small-scale but, oh, so effective in its execution.

It's not a very 'grand' action sequence, but when you get to this shot just remember that you're in for my favourite action piece in this show for the underlying character work alone. 

From a high, we go to a low. To the series’ biggest and most disappointing weakness: its ending. The problem is that Episode 8 feels tacked on and unnecessary. Nearly every plot point reaches its conclusion in Episode 7, except for one. That’s what Episode 8 focuses on, but it’s not enough to fill half an hour, so they stretch it out. A show should never build towards a climax only to throw in a detour afterward. You should end just after your best moment, not throw in something random afterwards. In this case, fan service doesn’t change that nor does it make this ending anything more than an unsatisfying note to go out on.

That’s not even mentioning the issues with Episode 7 itself. The final fight would make a pretty cool boss battle in a video game, but there’s a difference between a great video game fight and a great TV fight. Some stuff is more fun when you play it than when you simply watch it. I think, largely because of this and some pacing issues, the second half of the season is the weaker half.

All right, enough about that. Time to talk about the weird continuity in The Legend of Lara Croft. Not the internal continuity—it’s not like they get dates or events wrong within the show—but the continuity between the show and the games. This series takes place in the same timeline as the recent Tomb Raider reboot, the Survivor Trilogy. If you played those games, that’s unmistakable. The events of Tomb Raider (2013)—the trials, tribulations, and horrors Lara went through on Yamatai—are mentioned in almost every episode. Characters introduced to the Tomb Raider series in those titles, like Conrad Roth and Jonah, play prominent roles.

Those familiar with the games will quickly notice, though, that things don’t quite line up as early as the opening minutes. The way teenage Lara is presented in that sequence feels off—she’s too confident and capable to resemble the inexperienced and naïve young woman we met at the start of the 2013 reboot, for whom the Yamatai expedition was her first adventure.

While some discrepancies, like Zip's introduction from the Legend timeline, can be waved away as events that happened between Shadow of the Tomb Raider and this show, others are harder to excuse. They seem to be outright retcons to make the things the writer wanted to happen in this show happen regardless of what the games implied. In a show that otherwise does its best to respect the games, its world, and its characters, these inconsistencies stand out.

Before moving on to the animation, I want to touch on how this series could be a window into the next big Tomb Raider game. That title has been in the works for years, but all we know is that Crystal Dynamics is aiming to, again, 'unify the timelines'. I think the way continuity is handled in this show, the presence of Zip, and the way Lara is being developed to resemble classic Lara, suggest how the next game will deliver on that promise.

Now, let’s talk about that animation. When I first saw the promotional stills and caught a glimpse of some footage, I wasn’t impressed. It reminded me of the animation in the third and fourth seasons of Young Justice. The character models there never looked quite right in those, and the animation itself often felt stiff and awkward.

Thankfully, those worries disappeared when I saw the show in action. The models don’t look awkward at all, and the animation is nice and smooth. With creative visuals and camerawork during both action and nightmare sequences and shifts to other animation styles when appropriate, I have nothing bad to say about the animation quality. None at all.

Another reservation of mine was the voice cast. As mentioned, this series continues the Survivor Trilogy, so I feared the mix of new and returning voice actors would be jarring. That Hayley Atwell’s Lara Croft and Earl Baylon’s Jonah wouldn’t sound right next to each other. Thankfully, the strong performances from everyone involved, and the fact that it’s been a while since I played the games and heard the original cast and thus don’t remember them all that well probably helps here too. It never sounded off to me.

There’s even a surprise oddity in the voice cast that I just have to mention. Conrad Roth has been recast with Nolan North for his handful of lines. Yes, that Nolan North. Lara’s mentor is now voiced by the same actor who plays Uncharted’s Nathan Drake. A fun bit of meta-trivia, and let’s be real, the closest we’ll ever get to a Tomb Raider/Uncharted crossover.

Conclusion

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is a well-made and enjoyable outing for Lara Croft that sadly never reaches the heights of other recent animated video game adaptations. Hard work doesn’t always lead to greatness, and in this case, pacing issues, a lacklustre finale, and the absence of any real standout moments weigh the otherwise good showdown. It’s not a show you should drop everything to watch, but if you give it a shot, I don’t think you’ll regret your time with it.

I enjoyed it, and I’m eager to see what that second season will bring. Given Netflix’s tendency to order around 20 episodes for their animated projects and split them into two, I think it’s plausible that Season 2 was already well underway before this season fully wraped up. If that season is at least a bit stronger, I’d say we’ll have a worthwhile 16-episode Tomb Raider series on our hands. Only time will tell.