The 2018 Tomb Raider movie got us
thinking about Lara Croft
and what the character has meant
to audiences over the years.
The character's history represents a complicated mix of
oversexualization and empowerment
that reveals a lot about our relationship
to strong female heroines.
"I woke up this morning and I just hated everything."
Thanks to her popularity, Lara opened the door
for more female video game characters
and more female action protagonists onscreen.
But the original Lara Croft rose to fame in part
thanks to being objectified
for her exaggerated feminine appearance.
Gaming and Addiction researcher, Dr. Mark Griffiths,
noted that when talking about Lara,
most players mentioned her breasts.
"Don't you think you've seen enough?"
And when the first movie, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,
came out starring Angelina Jolie,
producers tried to replicate the allure
she held for male gamers.
"Are you going to shoot me, Alex?"
So from the very beginning, Lara Croft's function
was to be a sex symbol marketed primarily young men
-- but along the way she became a female trailblazer,
too, almost by accident.
So this brings us to our main question --
is Lara Croft just a male fantasy
or is she a feminist hero,
and is it possible to be both?
"That’s a secret.
If I told you
I’d have to kill you."
Looking back on Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,
you could use this movie as a Hollywood crash course
on how to craft the perfect male fantasy:
a heroine who’s extra sexy and strong
but somehow absolutely non-threatening.
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The first step is making your sexy heroine
be all man inside.
From the opening scene of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
it’s like the film is saying --
Lara will turn your preconceived notions
about women upside down.
Which means that what we’re about to see
is a man’s personality in a woman’s form.
She wears no make-up, plain clothes
and a tight braid.
She is brusque, a woman of few words.
"Time to save the universe again, is it?"
"Absolutely."
Lara is strong, assertive, inquisitive and brave --
all very traditionally “male” qualities.
Lara’s tomboyish ways are a fantasy
for male viewers and players --
she has the body and looks of a woman
they’d desire,
but the interests and behavior of
their best male friend.
"Thank you boys.
Over and out."
Sadly, the message to any female viewer, though is,
to be a badass, be more like a man.
18 years later, Daenerys Targaryen is both badass
and very feminine.
But Lara was sort of de-feminized
so that she’d be more desirable,
and that didn’t make her a very empowering
role model for women.
"The lady should be modest."
"Yes, a lady should be modest."
The second thing that’s really revealing
is the story’s point of view.
If Lara were a heroine we’re supposed
to be identifying with,
we should be seeing things
from her point of view.
Sometimes we do.
But Lara’s opening fight with the robot
is not filmed with her point of view in mind.
The robot pounces on top of her,
while she is on her back,
and pushes down on her --
this shot choreography places Lara
in an overtly sexualized position.
And we see the robot’s point of view --
watching her fight back,
rather than just living her experience
of the fight.
Then in this scene, again,
it’s just blatantly obvious that we are meant
to be seeing Lara in a sexualized way.
Compare that to this shower scene from the same film.
This scene puts you in the experience --
makes you think about how it feels
to have the water hitting your skin.
Whereas Lara’s scene is shot to look like
what you would imagine
if you were fantasizing about Lara Croft
taking a shower.
It has nothing to do with her actual experience
and everything to do with how she looks.
"Always a pleasure."
"Never a cold shower."
The Tomb Raider video games are third-person,
so from the start the experience has been
about always seeing Lara,
and the movie’s maintains this appeal
with its point of view.
Players have complete control over video-game Lara
because that’s the nature of a video game.
She was a badass with a built-in lack of agency.
So video-game Lara can be as accomplished
and awesome as possible,
and still not be intimidating --
which added to her original sex appeal.
But in a movie, this level of control
isn't really possible --
so in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,
filmmakers found other ways to make viewers feel
they had power over Lara.
To understand how the movie does takes power
away from Lara,
let’s look at her backstory --
or lack thereof.
She has no mother and identifies strongly
with her father,
who was an explorer/archaeologist.
She lives in a huge mansion with a hacker
who seems to be like a brother to her --
"Bryce.
Don’t start."
and a butler named Hillary.
"Anything you need?"
"No.
Thank you, Hillary."
"Don't you stay up too late."
This setup makes Lara feel like a child
in an adult’s body.
Her drives and priorities are basically those
of a kid --
adventuring --
"You know I can’t resist a bit of fun."
and pleasing her parent.
"I miss you daddy."
The scene that sets her Lara’s adventure in motion
wouldn’t be out of place at the start
of Harry Potter --
she wakes up because of a mysterious ticking sound
and walks around in her PJ’s
looking for the source of the sound.
So because Lara has the story
and motivations of a kid
"I still have you, daddy."
she elicits a kind of protectiveness in male viewers.
And however strong she is,
the movie is on some level making her
a “damsel in distress” to recreate
that protective feeling in viewers.
Also critics have noted that video-game Lara
was especially attractive to players in part
because of her sparse backstory --
So viewers can imagine her inner life
as whatever they prefer.
Lara also has no romantic story line,
at least not at first.
She doesn’t seem interested in any man
besides her dad.
"Your father said you will never give up."
"My father?
You knew my father?"
Her dormant sexual agency makes Lara more approachable
and less threatening.
Her unawakened sexuality is hinted at
in the symbolism of her adventures.
"Egypt again.
It's nothing but pyramids and sand."
"I know.
Gets everywhere, in the cracks."
She's on a mission to protect a tomb
from men who want to invade it.
Furthermore, she’s on this mission
because her father told her to
protect the tomb’s secret from the men.
"The world will be in great danger.
Devious, dangerous men who seek
the triangle's awesome and terrible powers.
This you must prevent at all costs."
And then we get this scene in the cave-like tomb itself
which is also pretty telling
and then if you had any doubts that this was symbolic,
there’s this genius line
"The log must pierce the urn."
and then of course, this happens.
If this scene isn’t a hamfisted metaphor
for a sexual awakening, then what is?
After the log and urn scene, Lara seems
to become more in touch with her sexuality.
She starts developing a very understated
romantic rapport
with Daniel Craig’s character, Alex West.
Near the end of the movie, she saves his life.
But there's still next to no explicit romance --
they never even kiss,
unless you count the sexy CPR Lara performs.
So keeping Lara relatively chaste is an
invitation of sorts to male viewers --
it makes it easy for the audience to imagine themselves
filling that empty place and being her partner.
"Alright.
Let's go."
The second movie, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - Cradle of Life
performed poorly,
earning 157 million compared to
the first film’s 275 million.
The film was actually received more positively
by critics,
who cited better character development for Lara.
But as we’ve seen character development wasn’t
necessarily what audiences wanted from Lara.
The first Tomb Raider leaves off when Lara
has gone through a symbolic sexual awakening
and discovered her femininity.
She even wears a dress.
"Oh my God."
She bosses all the men in the movie around
and seems more aware of her sexual attractiveness.
We even see her ex-boyfriend, which might have
disappointed all Lara’s would-be boyfriends
in the audience.
So giving Lara even this small amount of sexual agency
and character development evidently ruined the fantasy
and negatively affected the film’s success.
So it's pretty clear that Lara in the original movie
and game was an ultimate male fantasy --
but despite that, she should still be considered
an important character in the feminist canon.
It’s hard to see her like that now,
but in 90s and early 200s
Lara was a step in the right direction
for action movies.
She was a very popular female hero
in two huge, male-dominated industries.
And we should even give Angelina Jolie props because --
as much as the movie seems ridiculously
sexualized to us today --
the actress actually fought against
replicating video-game Lara’s unrealistic proportions,
because she did not want to set this kind of ideal
for young girls.
In 2013, the 10th Tomb Raider game
rebooted Lara’s character as a more realistic,
3-dimensional, relatable character,
fit for our times.
"A famous explorer once said that
the extraordinary is in what we do,
not who we are."
And in the 2018 Tomb Raider movie,
Alicia Vikander has the same mysterious,
vaguely foreign allure Jolie had,
but her appearance is less overtly sexual
and more realistic.
The set-up is pretty similar:
Lara is still the rough and tumble explorer.
"It'll be an adventure!"
"Death is not an adventure."
And her story doesn’t hinge on a romantic plot.
So in that sense the movie is still appealing
to those audience that kind of prefers it
when she’s single.
But in the context of 2018, not emphasizing romance
is generally viewed as positive.
Lara’s also still obsessed with her father.
"I thought I saw Dad today.
I think I'm going mad."
"Lara, your father's gone."
But there’s a key difference in the new version.
Now she's set on getting answers about her dad
and the whole film is set up
to be a backstory for Croft.
As we saw, the previous lack of a backstory
was intentionally depriving her of agency
and a fully formed adult persona.
So the fact that we’re getting an origin story
is in itself the righting of a major wrong
in the character’s history.
"And it was important to us that
Lara felt like a real girl,
a real human being."
So over the last 22 years
and throughout all her iterations,
what does Lara Croft represent for our culture?
Jolie’s Croft was obviously a sex object
for all the reasons we’ve discussed,
but she was still a trailblazer --
if only because she was both a female
and a strong action hero.
She was even a kind of feminist Trojan horse:
she masqueraded as pure male fantasy,
but the success of her female-led story
opened the door for others who came after her.
"I'm just that kind of Croft."
I'm Debra.
I'm Susannah.
We're the creators of ScreenPrism.
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