‘Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’ Explores ‘The Four Perils’ of Chinese Mythology
There were two things that Tasha Huo (“The Witcher: Blood Origin”) wanted to accomplish as showrunner of the “Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft” 2D animated series (currently streaming on Netflix). She wanted to make the badass archaeologist/adventurer more vulnerable and explore Chinese mythology.
“She’s always been such a superhero in the video games,” Huo told IndieWire, “but in a TV show, we get to explore more about her emotional place where you want to see her grow out of something difficult. So that was always a starting place for me, finding a low point for her. And how does Lara Croft come out of a low point? It’s going to be more epic by the nature of who she is and the adventure we set her upon.”
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The animated eight-episode series from Legendary Television bridges the timeline between the reboot “Survivor” trilogy of video games and the original games from the ’90s. It finds Lara (voiced by Hayley Atwell) abandoning her friends but being drawn back home, where a mysterious Chinese jade stone is stolen from Croft Manor by a thief. Thus, her globe-trotting, tomb-chasing adventure finally forces her to confront the grief of losing both her father and mentor.
“I didn’t want to ignore that,” Huo continued. “I wanted to address it, but I wanted her to move past it. Who is she now? How can she become that independent, self-aware, self-composed person that we remember her growing into from the ’90s?”
But the theft of the jade stone turns out to be part of a larger mystery tied to Chinese mythology. The adventure takes Lara and her friend Jonah (Earl Baylon from the video game) to China, where they learn about a complementary ruby stone. Together, the stones offer immense supernatural power.
“I’ve been wanting to tell a story within Chinese mythology for a long time,” added Huo, “because that’s my background, and it’s something that I’ve not been able to explore [before]. And it felt like a natural fit for something that Laura would dive deep into.”
Huo drew from “The Four Perils,” beasts representing gluttony, chaos, cruelty, and violence. “It’s more of a larger concept, and in this version, they’re actually contained in something tangible,” Huo said.
Meanwhile, the colorful 2D animation from Powerhouse Animation Studios in Austin, Texas, has a graphic, illustrative style that’s also very cinematic, with noirish lighting, a hand-held camera, and heavy atmospherics.
“The 2D animation is unique and super cool,” Huo added. “We’re doing a lot of things that they tell you not to do in animation. You’re going underwater. There’s a lot of wind, rain, sleet, hail, storm, dust. They travel everywhere, change outfits. So we’re really pushing the bounds in terms of what I think is important.”
The first set piece is a thrilling chase inside an underground tomb in Episode 2 (“A Set of Lies Agreed Upon”), where Lara and Jonah search for missing children and encounter a monstrous, billowy fox spirit, flowing lava, and a passageway to an ancient temple surrounded by ethereal, glowing butterflies.
“It’s not just a big set piece,” Huo said. “There’s a purpose to the fox spirit. It’s actually guiding her in a certain way, and she has to look beyond the monster to really understand. That becomes a big part of Episode 2. The initial image was always that you see a fox and the way it moves, it had to feel like a fox. But then, eventually, it turns into a larger form, and you realize it’s a creature made of different parts, which was really interesting. And it flows like smoke. It’s important that it both keeps that form but also feels dangerous. So it’s great to create these monsters that she faces. It’s been in the IP since day one. So it’s cool to add some things to the canon.”
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