Over the holidays I saw the new Tomb Raider movie, I went in with very low expectations and it's mere mediocrity exceeded these expectations leaving me with a surprisingly positive experience. Video game movies never seem to work, this combined with my own personal connection to the series all coloured my outlook before going into the film. See I grew up with the original games, and even now I still think they are really good - better than all the times they have tried to reboot the series. The Angelina Jolie movies are in my mind some of the worst things ever put to the silver screen, especially the second one which seems hard to beat in terms of how pure trash it is. The new games have taken a much more cinematic approach and while I am not a fan of this in video game form, I did think it work much better for a movie. Seeing them going with this new style and aesthetic with the new film seemed to be a good sign, even now after seeing the film I still feel that the game from 2013 somehow manages to have a better story and execution, but I found myself shutting down my brain and really enjoying the film.
Having said that, now I have to analyse it and see what worked and what didn't:
What surprised me the most about Tomb Raider was Tomb Raider herself. Going in I was expecting the generic female empowerment type character, the bad-ass woman who can do no wrong and that's not at all what I got. She isn't a particularly well fleshed out character or anything and her motivations aren't that convincing, but it's refreshing to see a vulnerable heroin for once. The fact that Lara Croft doesn't win every fight she's in and the fact that she can take a beating makes it much easier to care about her. I very quickly forgot I was watching a female empowerment thing, a barrier which usually stays up for the duration of a film. It made it incredibly easy to root for her and pay attention to the adventure at hand.
Characters who take a beating and get back up are much more likable than those who never lose. Take note: if you're writing a strong female character make her human.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Having said that, now I have to analyse it and see what worked and what didn't:
What surprised me the most about Tomb Raider was Tomb Raider herself. Going in I was expecting the generic female empowerment type character, the bad-ass woman who can do no wrong and that's not at all what I got. She isn't a particularly well fleshed out character or anything and her motivations aren't that convincing, but it's refreshing to see a vulnerable heroin for once. The fact that Lara Croft doesn't win every fight she's in and the fact that she can take a beating makes it much easier to care about her. I very quickly forgot I was watching a female empowerment thing, a barrier which usually stays up for the duration of a film. It made it incredibly easy to root for her and pay attention to the adventure at hand.
Characters who take a beating and get back up are much more likable than those who never lose. Take note: if you're writing a strong female character make her human.
My Idea
I did have an idea for a movie while I was watching this, it's an evolution upon something I had thought before but also very much a bi-product of my experience with this film. I like watching movies that either aren't that good or that are plain bad, because it's easy to see areas of improvement and I find myself thinking of alternate routes the story could have taken or different ways in which it could be done as I watch the scenes unfold. This often leads to new ideas that I think can work on their own.
The idea I built upon:
A while back I saw Saw for the first time (another film I intend to do a review on) and it was my first real exposure of that genre (namely torture porn). Now that film in and of itself didn't really fit that description and was very tame in what it showed, but because of it I looked a bit more into its sequels and the rest of the genre and understood the appeal that that type of movie holds. Around the same time the first Indiana Jones movie was put on Netflix and the traps and situations the character find himself in seemed similar to the torture porn situations (like the snake pit). It's a stretch but I imagined a hybrid of these two genres where an adventure movie is represented, maybe not more realistically, but more violently. The booby trips and puzzles and stuff can be played off more like a thriller than a campy b-movie. This would also obviously require a larger cast so that some could be killed off, so maybe an adventure flick with multiple characters who find themselves in these tense situations. The section in Tomb Raider where Lara has to find the right colours as the floor falls out from under everyone is very similar in structure to a Saw trap for example.
The new idea:
I remember after playing Uncharted for the first time, I had to go to work and was sweeping the floors and wondering if someone could actually transform their life in a way that they became an adventure type like Nathan Drake or Indiana Jones. That life seems so much more exciting than what most people actually achieve in their lives, of course in real life things would work out much differently and be more dangerous, but that doesn't mean its not possible, you'd probably just have to leave your ethics at the door. This thought came back to me as I was watching Tomb Raider and throughout the movie I tried to imagine what each scene would look like if it was real life, for example the guards on the island would be much worse to Lara if it was real life.
These two base concepts led into the formation of a new idea, but I didn't have time to write it down
:(
_________________________________________________________________________________
I did have an idea for a movie while I was watching this, it's an evolution upon something I had thought before but also very much a bi-product of my experience with this film. I like watching movies that either aren't that good or that are plain bad, because it's easy to see areas of improvement and I find myself thinking of alternate routes the story could have taken or different ways in which it could be done as I watch the scenes unfold. This often leads to new ideas that I think can work on their own.
The idea I built upon:
A while back I saw Saw for the first time (another film I intend to do a review on) and it was my first real exposure of that genre (namely torture porn). Now that film in and of itself didn't really fit that description and was very tame in what it showed, but because of it I looked a bit more into its sequels and the rest of the genre and understood the appeal that that type of movie holds. Around the same time the first Indiana Jones movie was put on Netflix and the traps and situations the character find himself in seemed similar to the torture porn situations (like the snake pit). It's a stretch but I imagined a hybrid of these two genres where an adventure movie is represented, maybe not more realistically, but more violently. The booby trips and puzzles and stuff can be played off more like a thriller than a campy b-movie. This would also obviously require a larger cast so that some could be killed off, so maybe an adventure flick with multiple characters who find themselves in these tense situations. The section in Tomb Raider where Lara has to find the right colours as the floor falls out from under everyone is very similar in structure to a Saw trap for example.
The new idea:
I remember after playing Uncharted for the first time, I had to go to work and was sweeping the floors and wondering if someone could actually transform their life in a way that they became an adventure type like Nathan Drake or Indiana Jones. That life seems so much more exciting than what most people actually achieve in their lives, of course in real life things would work out much differently and be more dangerous, but that doesn't mean its not possible, you'd probably just have to leave your ethics at the door. This thought came back to me as I was watching Tomb Raider and throughout the movie I tried to imagine what each scene would look like if it was real life, for example the guards on the island would be much worse to Lara if it was real life.
These two base concepts led into the formation of a new idea, but I didn't have time to write it down
:(
_________________________________________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment