‘Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’ Blasts Through Mysticism, Monsters & Mayhem [Review]

Netflix’s animated Tomb Raider series captures the essence of the popular gaming franchise and delivers an action-packed adventure that’s ripe with mysticism and monsters.

Netflix has made a big splash as a streaming service that caused major waves in the television and film industry. One area in which Netflix particularly excels is that they’ve become the number one home for animated video game adaptations. Netflix has developed a diverse roster of series between Castlevania, Onimusha, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Tekken: Bloodline, The Cuphead Show, and even more ambitious offerings like Arcane and Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix. An animated Tomb Raider series makes perfect sense for the streamer, but it’d also be very easy for Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft to get lost in the shuffle.

Netflix’s latest video game adaptation may not be the strongest of the lot, but it’s still an encouraging production that thoroughly understands what makes the Tomb Raider property so special and why it’s endured for nearly three decades. Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft doesn’t reach the same heights as Arcane or Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. However, it’s not a series that audiences will forget about the minute that it’s over or become a title that’s destined to get lost in Netflix’s bottomless quicksand pit of content.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft presents an epic adventure that begins as an honorable quest for a lost artifact that evolves into a grander conspiracy where the entire world is at stake. The Legend of Lara Croft adeptly bridges the gap between 2010s’ Tomb Raider trilogy and the series’ original games. It helps explain how Lara became the legendary video game heroine who blazed trails in the ‘90s. That being said, audiences don’t need any pre-existing Tomb Raider knowledge to enjoy The Legend of Lara Croft. It captures a very wuxia-coded energy with Lara’s missions and escapades. Jackie Chan Adventures repeatedly came to mind throughout these episodes. There’s a very soothing and nostalgic Saturday morning cartoon quality to the series’ standalone episodic entries before it branches into more serialized storytelling as Lara ventures to obtain the Peril Stones, a coveted and cryptic relic.

Tomb Raider is animated by Powerhouse Animation Studios, a Netflix mainstay who is also responsible for Castlevania, Blood of Zeus, and Masters of the Universe, among other titles. Tomb Raider certainly has visual flairs that are reminiscent of these other Netflix series, but it still manages to establish a unique art direction and visual style that feels appropriate for Tomb Raider’s universe. There’s a quality to the series that’s often reminiscent of sprawling watercolor paintings. There is sumptuous animation here that reflects Powerhouse’s evolving skills and sensibilities as an animation studio.

It should come as no surprise that Lara Croft does most of the heavy lifting here — literally — but she doesn’t have to shoulder this brunt alone. Lara is supported by Jonah and tech wiz Zip, both of who serve unique roles and help take some of the pressure off of Lara. Furthermore, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft also works hard to make sure that its central antagonist, Charles Devereaux — a sinister soldier of fortune — is a worthy adversary to Lara. Devereaux consistently challenges Lara throughout the season and he’s someone who can match her talents when it comes to both combat and questing.

A series like Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft could easily falter with a one-note villain — especially when the video games have struggled in this department — but Devereaux has genuine depth that makes him as compelling as he is competent. He’s not just an obstacle to get in Lara’s way. He’s a fascinating counterpoint to what her life could be like if she were to lose her way and moral compass. This is thematically apt since the series’ underlying message is about the ebb and flow of the universe and why balance is essential for survival.

Thankfully, The Legend of Lara Croft does a great job at highlighting Lara’s gear, weapons, and actual tomb raiding abilities while an adventure-based mystery plays out that feels authentic to the games. Stolen relics, missing children, vengeful warlords and mercenaries, and mystical elements are all par for the course here. There’s also some really effective world-hopping storytelling that takes Lara across the globe to Chinese villages, the Paris catacombs, Iran, and a powerful showdown that’s set atop Asia’s Kunlun Mountains. All this traveling could come across as scattershot, disjointed and rushed, but this proves to be a well-paced season of eight episodes that gets the most out of this time.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft effortlessly captures the video game series’ action and adventuring aspects, but it also rises to the occasion with Tomb Raider’s supernatural and spiritual elements. It’s an action series, first and foremost, that’s unlikely to scare anyone. Nevertheless, it does proudly wear its passion for the horror genre on its sleeve. Tomb Raider doesn’t shy away from dark mysticism, magic, and haunting “boss battles” against otherworldly monsters. Ferocious spirits, demonic possession, mystical dreamscapes, and literal goddesses are all fair game in The Legend of Lara Croft. Lara straight-up fights a dinosaur and blasts it in the face with a shotgun.

One of the series’ most entertaining episodes confines Lara to a speeding train where she’s forced to fight against seemingly endless bewitched travelers in a story that feels like Bullet Train meets Night of the Demons. Another entertaining aspect of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is that it’s a rare video game adaptation that actually feels like a video game. It adopts a structure where you can practically feel where the QTE sequences would kick in. It’s something that I’ve never seen before in a video game TV show and there’s clearly just as much love for the video game medium as there is for Tomb Raider itself.

Another surprising — yet appreciated — detail is that it truly embraces Lara’s role as an archaeologist. There’s actual history that surrounds the relics and destinations that Tomb Raider explores and the series celebrates this. This is a show that urges the audience to pause episodes and dig deeper into the real history behind everything. Lara remarks early on in the season that “history doesn’t always tell us the full truth,” and this becomes The Legend of Lara Croft’s guiding mantra. This is also applicable on a meta level, since the series explores the Tomb Raider IP, but it also celebrates the series’ history and its impact, just like the show does with its various relics. Tomb Raider wants you to investigate the franchise and lose yourself in 28 years of story.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft doesn’t reinvent the wheel with animation or video game adaptations. It doesn’t reach any heights that make this mandatory viewing for the fall season, but it’s still an enjoyable, playful ride that’s very good at what it does. The series has a good chance of turning curious newcomers into Tomb Raider fans. It’s also just a solid mystical and supernatural adventure series that operates like a more heightened Indiana Jones. It finds its niche and then hits the target, double pistols a-blazing.

Now all we need is to get Lara Croft fighting the Predator.

‘Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’ is now available to stream on Netflix.