Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (Netflix series)

[M-A-G]

I'm actually shocked it's taken this long for something like this to get greenlit. You figure something similar would've been done in the late nineties. I should be thrilled but it's being done in an anime visual style, which I'm not a fan of, but maybe the storytelling will be good enough to overcome that. Plus, it's Hayley Atwell as Lara. What say you?

[ClockShot]

I never understood the "it" factor the Lara Croft character eventually received as time went by.

Hit scene back in '96 on Sega Saturn before making the jump to PlayStation. A bunch of video games since then. A couple movies starring Angelina Jolie. A reboot film with Alicia Vikander. Now she got an animated series coming on Netflix.

I can understand that in terms of bringing a video game character to something like film or TV, she's easy to do. But let's not forget, she's not the First Lady of ass kicking in video gaming. That title belongs to Samus Aran.

We'll see how this show goes, I guess.

[Lock Jaw]

Originally Posted by ClockShot I never understood the "it" factor the Lara Croft character eventually received as time went by.

More like the "tit" factor, amirite?

[Tom Guycott]

Originally Posted by M-A-G I'm actually shocked it's taken this long for something like this to get greenlit. You figure something similar would've been done in the late nineties. I should be thrilled but it's being done in an anime visual style, which I'm not a fan of, but maybe the storytelling will be good enough to overcome that. Plus, it's Hayley Atwell as Lara. What say you?

To be completely fair, being that it's a product of [current timeframe], it was either going to visually be a) "westernized anime" style or b) "CalArts" style. There would be a lot more detractors if it resembled Adventure Time over Legend of Korra.

It's hard to "get excited" for Netflix shows anymore. They will either totally suck, or totally not suck, but get cancelled on a cliffhanger because they don't feel like paying for it anymore unless the show becomes a runaway critical success like a House of Cards or a Stranger Things... which is only two out of however many shows they greenlit ever since they got up and running with Lilyhammer for in-house production. This cynicisim was only made worse by the recent writer's strike, where it has come to light that some of the more successful shows in recent years that got the axe did so to let them off the hook for potential residuals to pay.

I'd wager it'll be "good". And they'll get about two seasons* worth of episodes out of this. Maybe three.


*another thing about recent shows that an old school television season could, on average, range from the area of 13-22 episodes per. The recent streaming company production trend has cropped that to average around 8-10 per. So, in total, we might get an acutal, old-school seasons worth of this show - about 24 episodes total - then it'll go bye bye unless Lara takes over the world again like she did in the late 90s with a massive merchandising boom. This feat is unlikely, since the things that got her over back then would either be considered "woke" for people who complain about that sort of thing, or are way more easily subsidized by actual pornography.

[Tom Guycott]

Originally Posted by ClockShot I never understood the "it" factor the Lara Croft character eventually received as time went by. [...] I can understand that in terms of bringing a video game character to something like film or TV, she's easy to do. But let's not forget, she's not the First Lady of ass kicking in video gaming. That title belongs to Samus Aran.

The "first" is usually never the most successful. Hell, the real "first lady of ass kicking in video gaming" is technically Ms. Pac-Man. But running with what you meant and going with Samus, part of the deal there was that it was a SURPRISE that Samus was a girl. Everything that crossed the pond referred to her in a masculine or neutral tense, and seeing she had long hair and tits was a reward for speedrunning. Then you get chicks like Chun-Li and Blaze Fielding that set up a lot of games and games media to strive to set up characters like them, "but sexier".

I would say that it's similar to Ronda Rousey. She gets so much credit for "popularizing" women's MMA, but the prototype for that mold was Gina Carano. Ronda came by when the world was ready for it; Gina, a bit beforehand. Same with Lara Croft.

Lara was very much a product of place and time. She led an action game - a cutting edge (for 1996) action game at that. She checked the boxes for "girls with guns" people, not being an also-ran character with more masculine options availiable, horny dudes, horny chicks, and became one of the earliest examples of a newly budding ubiquitous internet pop-culture zeitgeist. And even there she wasn't first; she dethroned Sunny.

[M-A-G]

Originally Posted by ClockShot I never understood the "it" factor the Lara Croft character eventually received as time went by. Hit scene back in '96 on Sega Saturn before making the jump to PlayStation. A bunch of video games since then. A couple movies starring Angelina Jolie. A reboot film with Alicia Vikander. Now she got an animated series coming on Netflix. I can understand that in terms of bringing a video game character to something like film or TV, she's easy to do. But let's not forget, she's not the First Lady of ass kicking in video gaming. That title belongs to Samus Aran. We'll see how this show goes, I guess.

Aside from the obvious pandering to the horny teens, her games were actually immersive and fun to play...for the most part, as I know there was that really ugly period in the early 2000s the fans would prefer to forget. The trilogy of Anniversary, Legend, and Underworld was a great combination to get interest going again and then the reboot series followed it up to really knock it out of the park. Lara herself, the original incarnation, isn't necessarily interesting or that deep a persona, rather what she does is interesting.

Her taking over a large chunk of the public eye over someone like Samus can be blamed on the power of marketing. Plus, outside of Super Metroid, what did Nintendo really have her doing during that time?