After a year and a half, we once again saw another ambitious game-adapted movie on the big screen. But unfortunately, "Tomb Raider: Battle of the Origins" did not get rid of its predecessors, only a few positions ahead.
Can these positions achieve a qualitative change in the adaptation of the game to the movie? The answer is obvious at a glance. I have already pointed out the reasons for the various problems in the game adaptation of the movie. I have previously pointed out the reasons in articles such as "Assassin's Creed: Everything is Virtual, Everything is Possible" and "Warcraft: Feelings are a double-edged sword. In short, it is the interactive forms adopted by different media that make it difficult to adapt and transform the subject matter, and it is even more difficult to find a balance between a smaller player group and a larger-scale movie audience.
So has "Tomb Raider: War of the Origins" found the real key to solving this problem?
not at all. But the good news is that at least Sony is aware of this problem.
As one of the few game adaptation film series that has achieved commercial success, Angelina Jolie's version of "Tomb Raider" is an iconic work that has entered the mainstream in the subculture circle. Nearly 15 years have passed since the last "Tomb Raider". For Hollywood, it is also quite ample time to see what mistakes were made at that time and start to build a new series. By abandoning Angelina Jolie’s previous superhero + sexy idol image, he chose Alicia Vikander instead, actively catered to the current mainstream atmosphere, and adopted the same restart strategy as the game series, allowing the female protagonist to renew Becoming humane and fragile also took the first step in the right direction.
But at the same time, CG special effects are still an important threshold for action movies of the same type. The best action scene of "Tomb Raider: War of the Origins" is the bike chase scene at the beginning of the movie, full of speed and excitement, because it is different from the rest of the movie: it looks real.
Obviously, Norwegian director Roal Usog, who has often accompanied CG in his career, has not discovered the important characteristics of the "second revival" of Hollywood action films in recent years. The last decade was full of fancy CG "pseudo" action scenes. In this decade, I tried to use more detailed visual effects to hide the bad arrangement and scene scheduling. And this also leads to the biggest key word of "Tomb Raider: War of the Origins": self-contradiction.
The film wants to create a more real and hurtful Laura Crawford, but most of the time it fills the time with cartoonized simple villains and cartoonish CG scenes without suspense: quadruples the body in a while Yu her men fought hand-to-hand, and later climbed the cliff when he was bleeding, not to mention defeating a large number of automated firearms with only bows and arrows. These action scenes do have a high degree of acquaintance with the game, but once again, the same scenes have different purposes and functions in different media: in the game, the cinematic scenes are highly involved and Organic adjustments and rewards after repeated behaviors, while in the movie, similar iconic scenes have no corresponding effect. Coupled with overwhelmingly fast editing, the audience will only find time to question the rationality and authenticity of these action scenes, and to discover how the story lacks persuasiveness and impetus.
The director Roal Usog, who is also from Northern Europe like Alicia Vikander, won unanimous praise for his tense to suffocating suspense in the 2015 disaster movie "The Waves", and also tried his best in "Ancient Tomb Raider: War of the Origins tried to reproduce the same tense atmosphere. The structure of the film and most of the key action scenes are obviously borrowed from the game "Tomb Raider 9" and its sequel "Tomb Raider: Rise", but compared to Alicia Vikander's husband, Michael Fass Another game adaptation movie "Assassin's Creed" starring Binder has obviously made great progress. If we ignore a large number of CG scenes that reduce the credibility of the story for a while, we will find that "Tomb Raider: Battle of the Origins" in the story tries to get rid of the "second two" worldview, and does not make the action scene dominate, and even become the core of the narrative. . This is mainly due to the director and action arrangement, emphasizing solving the problem, rather than punching and kicking to get rid of the tension in front of you-this has a certain similarity with the gameplay of "Tomb Raider".
But in terms of the story, "Tomb Raider: Battle of the Origins" did not do better than the earlier "Game of the Brave: Battle of the Jungle". The old-fashioned script is full of boring and awkward plot settings: Laura does not want to find the tomb, but only wants to find his father; the villain Matthias Vogel does not want to find the tomb, but only wants to go home; even Laura’s father, Li Chad Crawford didn't want to find the tomb either, but didn't want others to find the tomb. If everyone in the film is looking for the ancient tomb, but no one really cares about the ancient tomb, it becomes a terrible McGovern. It is difficult for the audience to be curious about the adventure story, but only out of interest in Alicia Vikander's low-fat tendon, and care about Laura Crawford's personal safety. This is also one of the main reasons why movies are full of dangerous CG scenes.
This is actually incapable of solving the problems in the script, it just temporarily distracts the audience's attention. The effect will gradually decrease with the development of the film.
As for the relationship between the characters in the film, it was locked in the absence of the father's image early. Almost every main character was restrained by Daddy Issue, trying to make up for the lack of chemical reaction between the characters. As a result, under the thrilling scenes that seem to be crowded with phenomena that are not the case, the new version of Laura Crawford, most of the time, is more like a strong female warrior in order to be strong, and forget it, and there is no time. To dig out the role positioning at the beginning. Laura’s MMA-style combat expertise complements the bow and arrow, and the battle with mercenaries is not ugly, but these contents can’t make up for the film’s overall improper handling of Laura. The game "Tomb Raider 9" restarted in 2013 has made a lot of efforts to change Lara's image, but the movie itself is a huge step backward, because it does not understand, or what Lara has achieved in the game The effect is well adapted into film language. In the game, we saw how Laura Crawford gradually changed from an inexperienced archaeologist to the heroic and decisive adventurer we are familiar with, but "Tomb Raider: The Source" On the other hand, "War of Qi" is just the opposite. It is more like an exciting video game than the game itself.
Despite this, "Tomb Raider: Battle of the Origins" is still a beautifully produced and ambitious action movie. Putting it in the coordinate system of the game adaptation movie, it is far from the worst (such as a large number of Uvi Bauer production), and it will not be the best ("Silent Hill" is still the best in my eyes Movie adaptation of the game).
Judging from the final effect of the movie, the new version of "Tomb Raider" can be regarded as a passing action movie. Although a large number of fundamental problems make it difficult to achieve qualitative improvement, there are some good action scenes and tomb designs. The movie drew a lot of inspiration from the 2013 game restart, but disappointingly, it did not choose to make Laura the interesting and impressive character in the game.
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