Reviews Tomb Raider Film Review

..Sprayed in the face with water?

What?

I feel a googling coming on..

Edit: Googling achieved. Ohdeargodwhydoesthatexist.

 

I watched the film on release day with the misses. We thought it had a great build up, but it dropped off near the end. It was pretty much an Indiana Jones film... But we enjoyed it.

 

Did you just review a movie? I almost hit the report button.
I gotta say that 100% the cgi action in these new movies kills the immersion. At least get a real suspended plane wing to stomp on. It feels like she's jumping around in a green padded room in the trailer.
I'm not saying they should crash a Corvette or have a helicopter dropped on them, but not this.

 

+5555654634536735

Most extreme example is probably The Thing 1982 vs the Thing 2011 with the old one looking a million times better.

 

The odd thing is, I can forgive old and/or poor traditional effects (strobing stop motion, visible finger prints on the models (1933 King Kong!) shoddy matte lines, etc) waaay more than I can forgive terrible CGI. Maybe its because I can better understand the work involved with the old school stuff and what it takes to get it to look good as opposed to how good your software package is and how good the programmer is at using it. Oddly enough I can just about watch older CGI effects films like The Last Starfighter and bits of The Wrath of Khan because it was early days and they had to start somewhere. Ditto for TV stuff like Babylon 5 & Space Above and Beyond - although I always though SeaQuest DSV look poor.

Anyhow, I saw this one on the opening weekend and I thought it was okay. IMAX didn't really add much to it but I didn't have to spend any real money on it thanks to a cinema gift card and an unlimited pass.

 

I think it's because CGI has a pretty linear relationship between budget and quality: mo' money, mo' quality. Physical props require a bare minimum amount of money to be spent to actually build anything, and even at the bare-minimum budget the difference between an awful prop and an actually-pretty-good prop is far more down to the maker than to the budget spent on it. Think linear ramp vs. super flat S curve.

I actually enjoyed the 'old' Tomb Raider films, and likewise with the games: mostly because "Lara Croft is a badass pilferer of antiquities because daddy ran off and then some bad men hit her with sticks" isn't really as fun as "Lara Croft is a badass pilferer of antiquities because she enjoys it and trained to be good at it". Not every action movie character needs to be backed up with a ham-fisted tragic backstory, after all.

 

That'll be a very short review... it'll just be "one of the best films of all time".

 

Planning on seeing Tomb Raider this weekend, sadly no 4D cinemas near me so I won't get the enjoyment of being sprayed by water.
Really hope the film contains at least one QTE.

It was one of the first films I ever bought.
Hack the planet!

Shame they never made sequels...

Spoiler

those two horrible films don't count!

 

And anyone who's been bad, gets to review Super Mario Bros. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108255/