#The Legend of Lara Croft Netflix Adaptation Prevails Against All Odds

With nearly 30 years of fame across multiple video game titles, movie adaptations, and novels, Lara Croft and her adventures in the Tomb Raider series still stand against the test of time. She is incredibly iconic with her dual pistols, tinted sunglasses, and brashness to beat up bad guys and solve ancient puzzles. Most importantly, the prequel Survivor trilogy — featuring the Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider video games — earned massive praise from both critics and fans alike due to its depiction of a younger, but more compassionate and complexly motivated heroine. For a while, nothing could top this rendition of Lara Croft. 

However, because all the other games and side material are considered canon, a hole remained in her lore. Many fans were left unsatisfied that the Survivor trilogy didn’t address how Lara Croft’s emotional core evolved from this broken, damaged teenager to a confident, kickass artifact hunter. Not to mention, many important side characters from the trilogy had inconclusive endings that were not reflected in the remaining games. 

In comes Netflix’s adaptation, The Legend of Lara Croft, which attempts to bridge that gap. Fans were both exhilarated and hesitant with this announcement since video game adaptations typically have a 50-50 chance of success — and believe me, I had my doubts too. Thankfully, Tasha Huo’s deep understanding of the series and Powerhouse Animation Studio’s experience in adult animation brought all the games’ elements and story beats together to breathe new life into the franchise.

Set a few years after the harrowing events of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft is called back home to deal with the numerous artifacts at the Croft Estate that have since been collecting dust. Disillusioned, exhausted, and reeling from PTSD, she goes reluctantly while being unable to mourn for her loved ones. However, a mysterious intruder breaks into the estate to steal a jade stone she once found in Chile, prompting a worldwide investigation to save the world once again. 

The Peril Stones plot is amazingly written for such a short eight-episode series. Not only is it a riveting experience to explore new characters and places, but the plot parallels Lara’s struggle to find peace and balance within herself. The stones in question are from Chinese cosmology, a result of the Goddess Nuwe bundling all of humanity’s vices and sealing them away into four stones before casting them to the far corners of the earth. The embodiments of these vices take the form of Greed (jade stone), Wrath (red stone), Betrayal (yellow stone), and Power (black stone).

Throughout her journey to recover the stones, Lara is forced to reconcile with her past and sees shades of her vices. In the trilogy games, Lara often has tunnel vision to recover artifacts, emphasizing her natural greed as an artifact hunter instead of properly reflecting on the consequences and the people she endangers. Meanwhile, her wrath manifests regularly throughout the trilogy as she seeks revenge against those who’ve harmed her and her friends, and she is betrayed by someone she trusted in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Finally, the sheer heroism and her raw skills are exemplified by power, something that she can use to simultaneously destroy her enemies, rescue her loved ones, and save the world. All of these vices culminate into a complex image of Lara that is so raw that you can acutely feel her grief, fear, and anger as she races after the series’ villain while trying not to let her feelings swallow her whole.

At every turn, Lara is confronted with old and new faces who all readily forgive her transgressions, but are equally firm that she must seek some kind of help and be vulnerable in asking for that help. Her closest confidante, Jonah Maiva, states this multiple times throughout the Survivor trilogy, but oftentimes, his overbearing nature causes Lara to shore up her defenses and stonewall him. Instead, having a more colorful cast of characters repeat this in different ways helps to wear down Lara’s defenses and bring new perspectives. The repeated quote, “The key to everything is balance,” becomes thematic and resonates throughout this entire series. It acts as a homage to Chinese cosmology and the general cultural philosophy, while being the cathartic mantra to Lara as she reckons with the larger question of, “What kind of hero do you want to be?”

Honestly, it’s just so rewarding to see Lara go through the motions of her healing journey while slowly recovering her confidence. You don’t know how much I hollered and slapped my table in excitement as she slowly reckoned with her own vulnerability for over five episodes straight, and began unveiling her new shades, new suave personality, and signature pistols. The show doesn’t directly state the kind of hero that Lara desires to be, but the context clues and her healing journey make that evident — Lara desires to be an empathetic and courageous hero who works with the people and for the people while recovering artifacts than some edgy, selfish protagonist who’s still stuck in the past. 

However, the plot of The Legend of Lara Croft isn’t without its stellar antagonist, Charles Devereaux, to tie everything together. Richard Armitage’s portrayal of the villain Charles Devereaux is an absolute genius move. It’s a nod to his previous work as the anti-hero Trevor Belmont in Powerhouse’s acclaimed Castlevania, and a parallel to how an anti-hero can turn equally villainous in the wrong place and time. Armitage’s delivery of a jaded, pessimistic, and scheming Devereaux serves as a fantastic foil to Lara Croft, which further hammers home Lara’s growth as a character. Some fans might be a bit disgruntled with Devereaux’s constant griping about the underground cult called “the Light” and his narrow vision for the future, but you have to commend him for his commitment to take down the Light when no one could, and his nefarious schemes. Sometimes, I feel like he’s too real because his intentions are incredibly more sinister and carry a lot of weight than textbook antagonists. He’s probably my second favorite villain out of the entire franchise now, after Dr. Dominguez/Amaru from Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

All the new and old characters are amazingly designed and work well in the story too. However, my favorite redesigned character in The Legend of Lara Croft is the fashionable and sassy Zip, making a triumphant return to the franchise after 20 years of inactivity. His redesign is incredibly modern, with a flair that allows him to naturally blend in with the cast without feeling too outdated. Not only that, but his witty but warm personality helps soften Lara’s edges when Jonah’s overbearing nature can’t reel her in. My favorite parts are when Zip remarks about Lara “getting therapy,” or dubs her reluctant collaboration with Camille Roth in Episode 4 as a “team building exercise.” 

As usual, Powerhouse delivers spectacular adult-styled animation that hits just the right spot for Tomb Raider fans. The Legend of Lara Croft offers rich and diverse background art that completely immerses you in the real and fictional worlds. Nothing feels too “anime” or stereotypical, which shows the team’s due diligence in their research. Paired with the background art are animation sequences that range from hilarious facial expressions to practical gun and melee fights, and even feature rope-whip-like physics. You can see Powerhouse’s signature whip animations shine in Episode 1 when Lara fights against the mysterious intruder — it’s nearly 1:1 to the Trevor versus Alucard scene in the Castlevania pilot episodes! 

The main thing I would like to highlight is how seamless the music direction is for theme and mood shifts. At times, when Lara considers doing some daring feat like sweeping across cliffsides or clambering up a precarious tower, the music shifts into her heroic theme filled with brass and percussion. And yet, like any human, Lara will screw up her landing, and the music abruptly stops for comedic timing when she flops on the ground and makes a face. It never fails to make me chuckle because it reminds me of how many times I’ve played as Lara and fallen to my death when I missed the timing to scale a wall or failed to detect a deadly trap.

Speaking of traps and wall scaling, there is SO MUCH nostalgia watching The Legend of Lara Croft. Right at the beginning of Episode 1, Lara is running through the forests of Chile while evading arrow bolts, makes miraculous jumps across cliffs, and swims her way through sunken ruins with an alligator about to kill her. For a moment, I forgot I was watching a TV series and was itching to reach for my controller, just to feel that jolt of adrenaline as Lara performed those perilous feats.

The callbacks from the Survivor games are also done tastefully, mostly through the use of flashbacks from Tomb Raider (2013), where Lara’s friend Sam is screaming to be saved, or the tragic death of Conrad Roth where the crew of the Endurance surround his body and begin to blame Lara. They are almost 1:1 to the cutscenes from the games, which just heightens the experience for the fans altogether. I am also grateful that there are numerous cameos, such as a grown-up King Etzli and his surrogate father Uchu attending Jonah’s wedding in Episode 8, which was something they had promised to do at the end of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. There is also significantly less emphasis on Trinity and the events from Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I felt was a good exclusion considering how weak and weirdly disconnected it felt from the other two games. 

While the Peril Stones plot is impressively thorough in maintaining historical accuracy and taking Lara on a global adventure, no video game adaptation ever wins gold without some flaws. In particular, the location of the Greed Stone raises some eyebrows. Within the eight episodes, it is evident that all the Peril Stones were sealed away in far corners of Chinese cosmology boundaries and understandings, such as Northern China and Mongolia (Power Stone), Southern China (Wrath Stone), and Iran via the Silk Route (Betrayal Stone). However, the Greed Stone ended up in the jungles of Chile, where a younger Lara Croft expressed skepticism that the artifact looked more Chinese than indigenous from South America. I realize that this is a plot hole meant to integrate Lara Croft into a story she wasn’t supposed to be involved with, but they never properly explained it in the Netflix series. 

Another issue people might have is the lack of Samantha Nishimura in the Netflix series, or “Sam” from Tomb Raider (2013). As Lara’s closest friend and companion, Sam manages to escape the events of Yamatai with Lara and Jonah, but her whereabouts become unknown in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Supplementary material focuses on Sam still being haunted by the events of Tomb Raider (2013) and paints her as the damsel in distress, which is still somewhat relevant by the end credits of The Legend of Lara Croft when Lara discovers Sam has been kidnapped once again. I hope you can hear the sarcasm in my voice because I’m not exactly thrilled with this kind of ending either, especially after all the complex build-up around female characters like Lara and Camille in the Netflix series. At the very least, Sam is still incredibly important to Lara and the franchise at large, and she will be the focus of a possible renewed The Legend of Tomb Raider. If that becomes a reality, I just hope the series continues to empower Lara and also Sam, who desperately needs it.

Fans of Tomb Raider should absolutely rejoice because of this stellar addition to the franchise. The Legend of Lara Croft not only ties together all the games into a cohesive narrative, but also provides a mature outlook for a character that the audience may connect with and understand. You can feel the love Tasha and Powerhouse poured into this to ensure that it also meets the high standards of their fans through the animations, the music, the flashbacks, and character reintroductions. There will always be things to nitpick at for video game adaptations, but I cannot recommend this enough to anyone who misses the old and new Lara Croft. The Legend of Lara Croft is not a suitable entry point into the series for newcomers, but remains a love letter and a staunch promise that Lara’s story will be fully told from start to finish.