Did you know? Lara Croft will celebrate her 30th birthday in 2026. First a pixelated star on PlayStation then a movie heroine with Angelina Jolie, she is celebrating a pre-birthday today with her first animated series on Netflix. How has the character evolved since her debut, and how did she go from a bimbo cliché to a post-MeToo adventurer? We asked the representative of Tomb Raider France, one of the main fansites dedicated to this female version of Indiana Jones.
Eighteen years after her first appearance on console, Lara Croft is back. Again. Since her first foray onto the screen in 1996, shortly after the Internet, the character developed at the time by Core Design has continued to be adapted into films, games, comics, and even a skin on Fortnite. This time, a big first: the one that the general public discovered thanks to Angelina Jolie with the 2001 feature film is coming to Netflix with an animated series in eight episodes written by Tasha Huo, already spotted on The Witcher.
More modern adventurer than cleavage-bearing green plant, this 2024 vintage Lara Croft is obviously good for feminism, far from the clichés of the beginnings. And if Netflix's production seems to be mainly aimed at those who were not born at the time of her birth, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is a sequel to the "Survivor" trilogy concluded in 2018 with the game Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Less accomplished than the recent animated adaptation of Terminator, the series once again confirms the success of video games available in episodes to watch in streaming. We obviously think of Castlevania or Resident Evil, and that says a lot about the acute nostalgia that seems to have contaminated all binge-watchers.
To decipher the phenomenon and better understand the sociocultural impact of the 90s heroine with military bodysuits, we have the floor to Luka "Eclypsis", administrator of the Tomb Raider France site, active for about fifteen years and a mine of information for all fans.
Why is Lara Croft so important in pop culture?
What is special about the character of Lara Croft is that she arouses a strong effect from fans, unlike other franchises exploiting video games. Let's take the example of FIFA: it is a mechanic associated with football in general, and no character particularly drives sales. In the case of Tomb Raider, there is this personality and an attraction to Lara Croft, which did a lot for the success of the game.
Personally, I discovered her after her birth in 1996 – I was 2 years old at the time – and it happened paradoxically through cinema with the 2001 film. And that is an interesting fact: very quickly, Lara Croft surpassed her original medium. Tomb Raider as a game was a revolution from the moment it was released thanks to its cinematic mechanics, particularly with the use of 3D. But, beyond that, there is the icon Lara Croft herself.
Did the fact that Angelina Jolie became Lara Croft in the 2001 film helped popularize the character?
In my opinion, no. Her media coverage was already very strong well before that. Simon West's film came about as the culmination of a very aggressive marketing campaign in the 1990s. Angelina Jolie was the obvious embodiment for the general public who were not fans of video games, but I'm not sure she was the source of this lasting affection for the character.
And finally, it may even be the opposite: Tomb Raider contributed a lot to Angelina Jolie's popularity. Even for her personal life, since she was on the set of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider she began to develop this interest in humanitarian causes.
Does the Netflix adaptation really mark the first cartoon dedicated to Lara Croft?
Certainly. There was an animated series in 2007, Re\Visoned: Tomb Raider, conceived as an anthology of short films made on the GameTap gaming platform; a bit like Disney recently with the series Star Wars: Visions. So it wasn't a series, strictly speaking. In this sense, Netflix's Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is therefore the first of its kind, with a logic of episodes - eight in all.
How has the Lara Croft community received this new series?
It’s impossible to generalize on this issue. There are different groups in the Tomb Raider fandom, and it’s once again comparable to the Star Wars universe with fans of the prequel, those of the original trilogy, and those – much rarer – of the latest trilogy. Here, it’s the same: some fans discovered the old school version of Lara Croft at the time of Core Design, and the newcomers in the Crystal Dynamics era from 2006, with a more developed and more modern character.
Today, Crystal Dynamics' goal seems to be to please everyone a little bit. That's why the Netflix series aims to be a link between the Lara Croft of the last trilogy that ended with Shadow in 2018 and that of the classics of 1996.
In the fandom, some are very happy to find the original character again, and others are waiting for this show with a gun on their shoulder; because they have been promised this famous "return to the roots" since 2006 [date of the release of the game Tomb Raider: Legend, editor's note].
In addition to the Netflix series, Prime Video seems to have other projects in the pipeline.
Indeed, there is talk of a film project and a live-action, but also of the production of the next video game, Tomb Raider 12, by Amazon, which is a big first for them on a "triple A" game [expression to describe games with the highest development and promotion budgets, editor's note].
"The Lara Croft of 2024 no longer resembles the one from 1996"
Administrator of the Tomb Raider France site
How are these multiple returns of Lara Croft perceived? Ultimate consecration of her pop status or commercial exploitation with endless variations as with the Batman franchise?
The observation is above all industrial: the current trend consists of bringing old licenses out of the grave to transform them into super franchises capable of simultaneously mixing the historical fandom and the general public.
This is the same principle used for the reboots of Star Wars, Terminator, or Batman, and it also applies to video game adaptations in series; I am thinking in particular of the commercial success of The Last of Us on HBO. And then there is the obvious desire for new entertainment platforms to exploit the world of gaming. It is as if we were suddenly rediscovering the enormous narrative windfall of video games.
You mention the concept of the tomb. It turns out that the pitch for the Netflix anime aims to return to the archaeological origins of the character Lara Croft…
Yes, her globe-trotting and real-world side. Showrunner Tasha Huo has communicated a lot about the fact that she has a degree in history and that this helped her a lot in creating the series. The fan, by definition, does not know what he wants before seeing it and fears novelty.
There is therefore a risk of fetishizing the return to the sources mentioned above. This could mean a series that takes place in tombs with a horror storyline, a version of Indiana Jones, or even a social critique of the world of archaeology… On this basis, we can expect anything and everything.
A female Indiana Jones is also what comes to mind when we think of Lara Croft. Has her status evolved over the decades? We inevitably remember the ultra-sexualized side of the character at the beginning...
Unquestionably. The Lara Croft of 2024 no longer resembles the one from 1996 at all. The complexity historically lies in the fact that the initial development team (Core Design) was dispossessed of the character by the marketing teams (Eidos) who wanted to go in a completely opposite direction. The sexualized, bimbo, and girl power side of Lara Croft is them.
The fans of the game, for their part, do not find themselves in this clichéd version for the most part. But, beyond that, the treatment of Lara Croft has evolved at the same speed as feminist standards, and developers are logically led to question their conception of the character, with a more respectful, more thoughtful image. And then, from a marketing point of view, sexist arguments are not very sellable at the moment!
Is there an “anti-woke” clan among Tomb Raider fans, with comments opposed to progressivism as we have seen for the Rings of Power series?
A lot! There are as many fans from the Core Design or Crystal Dynamics era as there are fans who believe that Lara Croft’s image is destroyed today by her “desexualization”. One of the latest aberrations on this issue is analyses of the Netflix trailer with comments on the character’s too-square jaw, considered too masculine, and that this would be the consequence of “woke” policies. Here again, I don't see how anyone can be against including diversity in 2024.
While waiting for a black-skinned Lara Croft like in Disney's recent adaptation of The Little Mermaid, what can we wish for her 30th birthday planned for 2026?
Personally, I only expect original proposals from developers, with the hope that they will be artistically and financially free enough to create something new. Finding Lara Croft in different countries with her two guns, I don't really care. Many of us hope that Tomb Raider stops trying to follow trends and that the license starts exploring new paths again.
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, on Netflix from October 10.