Netflix's new animated Tomb Raider series looks like a rip-roaring, globetrotting adventure, even if it might be overdoing it with the monsters and magic
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A great deluge of slick animated shows based on videogames pours forth from Netflix's gaping content-maw—all I can do is warn you before you are washed away. The latest surge heading your way? Why, it's Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, of course—and it's looking pretty fun in its first proper trailer.
Arriving on the platform on October 10, the show seems to be trying to reconcile Lara's various videogame eras together. So she's a gritty, credible survivalist, but also an over-the-top action hero having improbable adventures. A dusty climbing axe and dual pistols? A girl really can have it all!
Honestly, it looks like it's going to work. You need at least some of the flavour of modernised Lara to make her not seem completely ridiculous to a 2024 audience, but it's also nice to leave a lot of the grimness of the most recent trilogy behind for a more colourful and light-hearted feel—with plenty of high-flying action to show off the animators' craft.
I particularly like how much globetrotting there is. The semi-open-world nature of the last three games has necessitated them staying in one location each, whereas The Legend of Lara Croft seems to be taking us across every continent and maybe a couple of other dimensions to boot.
That is the one thing that does give me pause—it seems to be leaning heavily on magic and the supernatural, with a whole menagerie of different monsters to battle, a couple of ominously glowing macguffins, and some trips into surreal dreamscapes. The Tomb Raider games have always had more than a touch of strangeness, for sure, but this amount of demon-slaying and spellcasting seems more Trevor Belmont than Lara Croft. If I say it feels a bit Jackie Chan Adventures, would anyone reading remember what I'm talking about?
But hey, it's a trailer. It's going to want to show off the biggest, wildest moments, and perhaps the scenes between are a little more grounded. Certainly given the hit rate of Netflix so far for these animated adaptations, it's sensible to give the show the benefit of the doubt—and, frankly, this is closer to the kind of feel I'd love to see in a new game when they eventually get around to one, rather than another muddy misery-fest.