LARA FOOLS T-REX IN SEAT

Check out a new Lara commercial in MPEG format on the official Tomb Raider site. Lara meets Mr. T-Rex again, but this time the set is a bit different! Unfortunately, demo is still nowhere to be found (and The Croft Times has not been updated for at least three weeks) so the best thing you can do is to press Alt + LeftArrow and jump to Gamesmania to read their demo review.

October 6, 1998

TOMB RAIDER: THE MOVIE - FIRST DRAFT REVIEWED

I have a fixed spot on the Internet where I go to fetch the most recent news about upcoming movie titles and this source proved to be a truly reliable one. Now they brought word of another let-down – if you read my previous article in The Croft Times about Paramount’s plan to put Anna Nicole Smith, ex-Playboy beauty and thespian-wanna-be in the role of Lara and about their already confirmed blunder to hire Brent V. Friedman as script writer, you could have been prepared for the worst.

Well, it appears that the worst is yet to come. Mr. Friedman did his best to live up to his hard-earned reputation (if your monitor does not already ooze vitriol then I will go to Tibet and become a monk). He submitted his first draft which I strongly hope will be the last (at least the last one from HIM) that gives us a really strong headache as Mr. Friedman seems to have no idea at all about who Lara Croft is and what Tomb Raider is about.

According to the source who was lucky (well, actually, not so lucky) enough to peruse the 108-page draft the starting scene alone would be passable though we get a glitch in the story immediately as in the movie script Lara travels with her parents on that ominous flight over Tibet and when the crash occurs, Lara’s parents are killed off hand. With a long echoing “gulp” we would close our eyes, take a deep breath and go on in the hope that the rest of the script may present some point of interest, delight and astonishment but what we receive instead is a fouled-up mess, something awry, with a Lara Croft character who is neither Lara Croft nor a character.

Blunder two: after the plane crash Lara is adopted by a monk called Karak. Splendid! One more nail in the coffin of the Tomb Raider movie! What will the story come to if it deviates from Lara’s life story right at the start? Rest assured, things will only get worse: in a lame attempt to sneak some explanation for Lara’s exceptional skills through the back door, Friedman turns this makeshift daddy into a butler (Ouch! Don’t we all know that this job is already filled? Shall I cry out the name, Jeeves?) and a trainer who invents a welcome-ambush for Lara when she returns to her mansion. At this point I almost smashed my monitor.

Main plot (main blunder): Lara is off to find the city of El Dorado somewhere in South America. Why? What drives her to go off on dangerous quests in search of ancient and mysterious artifacts and cities? Who knows? Well, Brent Friedman surely does not know. So Lara simply slams the gate of her mansion and we are on our way, along with a gang of Australian baddies whose goals are as obscure as the tomb of Tihocan without a magnesium flare. From here not only Lara treads in the footsteps of Doctor Jones but the movie does the same thing in a way that is strikingly similar to the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with a chase in the jungle and traps scattered inside a subterranean temple. And there is he, the good old sidekick, one of the local peasants, who follows Lara and ploughs the ground with his jaw as Lara defeats the various traps.

And that’s where we come to the next blunder: when Lara defeats the traps and the baddies she turns into a female James Bond who relies on her technical gadgets (which are produced by three college nerds) instead of her skills, instinct, strength and intelligence. In the game I think the most advanced technical device she used was the detonator in Venice and actually she did not really need it, but Brent Friedman dismisses all human grandeur with a wave of his hands.

Eventually, after a lot of mindless scenes involving boats, planes, more boats, more planes and more temples, the Austalians’ scheme is revealed. We are now desperate and happy to cry out a loud ‘Wow, the plot thickens!”, but there is no plot, and the only thing that thickens is Friedman’s perspiration on the script pages as he attempts to write a cataclysmic ending. The Australians want to blow up a nuclear device (why, for what purpose – these questions remain unanswered) but Lara saves the day and goes back to England. Period. The end.

There were a few other details that the source ‘Agent 4125’ disclosed but I won’t bother you with them. By now most of you want to run and grab a pen to write a letter to Paramount, but before you do that let me suggest a simple and straightforward method to tell them your opinion. I admit this is not my idea, but seems workable enough to try it. I would warn you against writing something rude. Be polite. Describe it clearly why you think the myth of Tomb Raider is mistreated in this script. Paramount Pictures expect your comments about their movies at 5555@paramount.com . If you are polite and not rude, they may listen. If you have the faintest concern that your letter might be considered rude, do not send it.

Hopefully, Paramount will realize that they bought a franchise which limits their movement. They cannot do certain things without ruining a myth and alienating the Tomb Raider community. If there is a certain way to success, why should they go astray?

    - Romulus

October 12, 1998

AUSSIE LARA???

Here we are again!! One of my favourite sources surprised me with another addition to the overall Tomb Raider casting rumour vortex (Credit goes to 'Red' and CA). This time the information is truly far-fetched as it comes from Austrialia. A local women's magazine, New Idea published a full article about Nell McAndrew, the official Lara Croft model, but the story did not stop here. Somehow, either by some magic or by the author's personal preference, a young and attractive Australian model's name was thrown into the turmoil aka Tomb Raider casting - she is Annalise Braakensiek, a blonde bombshell.  It took me only a couple of minutes to locate dozens of web-sites referring to Ms. Braakensiek - most of them were adult sites and offered images where Ms. Braakensiek was a bit scantily clad - but eventually I stumbled upon  her official web-site. There I found some background information about her, and I can say she IS a traveller. But could she play Lara?

This is the point where the pain returns. From beyond  the article comes the foul smell of blind categorization, the sign of what Lara Croft became in the eye of the non-gaming public (and saidly, in the eye of certain Lara Croft fans). For the media she degraded into a gun-toting, curvaceous, aristocratic but empty headed beauty, and we can blame it all on Eidos as they pushed her deeper and deeper into the mud where she was hugged by Friedmans and B-movie makers - the reason why many of us have misgivings when we think about 1999.

Sorry, Australia. It's not about Annalise. She is one of the top models on this planet, someone whom we can admire and dream of, but certainly not in the role of Lara. Annalise... Anna Nicole Smith... who will be the next? And will Paramount ever realize that they are on the best way to produce another stinker? As my favourite actor said in the most famed movie of the past twenty years: 'I have a very bad feeling about this'.

A few days ago I read a disturbing article written by Jeffrey Wells on Mr. Showbiz:. Basically it said that we are those who open the floodgates before the tide of bad movies. We are those who know that a certain movie stinks and still we go and pay to see the crap, and then we say... ,

"I didn't care much for the story or the characters but the car chase sequences rocked." (That would be Ronin.) ..."It was dreadful but the hot babe actress looks good in leather." (The Avengers.) ..."I kind of hated it but the effects were awesome." (What Dreams May Come.) ..."It was basically Batman in Mexico but what the hell, it's a summer movie." (The Mask of Zorro.) Workaday Hollywood depends—thrives—on the public's willingness to say "but" and give mediocre movies a pass. "But" isn't why so many movies stink, but it is why Hollywood doesn't sweat them harder. Imagine if people were as laissez-faire about socializing with hired killers as they are about paying to see lousy films: "Met this guy last weekend who sticks ice picks into people's necks for a living," your friend remarks. "He's psychotic and everything, but he has this great house and I really liked the cologne he was wearing . . ."

(Quoted from Oct-9-1998 issue of Mr. Showbiz. Click here for the full article - it will open in a new browser window).

In nutshell - I doubt that Annalise Braakensiek will be considered for the role of Lara. It is a "rumour of rumours", as the scooper said. I gave you this bit of information here as a sign of an annoying trend. Hollywood jumped aboard the Titanic and now they think they are indestructible. But we see the top of the iceberg. The only problem is that we are travelling on the same ship.

- Romulus