"Time to be a hero."
Hello everyone!
I mean what else can you call a movie with Angelina Jolie running around in skin-tight clothing?
I knew you'd agree with me.
Anyway, of course I couldn't just watch the first Lara Croft installment when I started this whole shebang, I had to go through all the movies that were ever done in her name, so that means that the old duology was going to come into play.
And since I've already done the first movie, it's time for the second one tonight.
Lara gears up again in Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life.
As always with my movie blogs and reviews, you can find links to the connected ones at the bottom of the page.
Cradle of Life is a slightly different ballgame than the first Tomb Raider was.
In the first movie, we got introduced to Lara and her family problems with her missing father, the Illuminati, and all that jazz.
In Cradle of Life, however, we step it up a notch.
As in, we head to Greece, first and foremost.
Lara and a family of Greek divers are searching for the Luna Temple, supposedly built by Alexander the Great to stash some of his greatest treasures in while he was at it, you know, conquering the world and all that comes along with it. But there's a whole lot at stake here because a greedy businessman, Reiss, is looking for some sort of ancient weapon that he can sell to the highest bidder - and so naturally his men are following Lara because she'll lead them right to it.
She might not have planned it that way but she DOES actually find this weird-looking orb that has spots on it and glows, though only manages to film about half of it before she and her guys are interrupted (and unfortunately, her guys end up killed).
Lara gets out of the submerged temple alive - by punching the living daylights out of a shark and hitching a ride up to the surface with him - but she's pretty cranky by the time she's back in England and at her family's estate.
Her mood doesn't improve much when British agents pop in for tea and to tell her that Her Majesty would very much appreciate it if she could recover the orb that those hooligans stole from her back in Greece.
Why?
Now, legend has it that when Pandora opened the box (and let's note here that the gods actually made Pandora so that she'd open the box to begin with), all the sorrows and diseases trapped in there escaped into the world as punishment for Mankind. Only a little hope, which had been hidden at the bottom, got out as well before she closed the box again. But in the movie, the box contains some sort of disease so potent that it could be used as a weapon of mass destruction, and Reiss is definitely not supposed to get his hands on it.
Lara agrees to try and get the thing before him, as vengeance for the family he killed back in Greece.
But she has a stipulation.
She wants a man named Terry (played by Gerard Butler).
Now the problem here is that Terry apparently turned on his countrymen and was sentenced for life while he was at it, but Lara arranges a new identity and money for him to start again if he can take her to China to some mercenaries who work for Reiss. He agrees - and there's history there between them - but his idea of taking her to China means getting captured by said mercenaries.
Oops.
Anyway, both of them make it out, no problem, and fly like those flying squirrels to a ship after an altercation with Reiss and his men all over Hong Kong. This is also where Lara leaves Terry, because she's convinced he could have shot and killed Reiss, so she takes the recovered orb and heads out on her own.
What she doesn't know, however, is that Reiss has taken her friends back in the UK, Bryce and Hillary, captive, so the lot of them are now en route to Africa where the Cradle of Life - the hiding place for Pandora's Box, where all life supposedly originated from - is their ultimate destination.
Things don't go according to plan, obviously, as Lara has to cooperate to save her friends, plus walk through this valley filled with shadow wraiths that react to movement like a T-Rex and take men into the shadows with them.
But she figures out where to drop the orb to get to the actual location of Pandora's Box, the Cradle of Life where everything is upside down and the rules are completely different. Lara's rescued from incineration in acid by Terry (who obviously couldn't leave well enough alone) and Reiss ends up in the acid, sans box.
Unfortunately, however, Terry wants the box for himself, so Lara has to shoot him.
She has NO luck in love whatsoever.
Tempted as she is, Lara pushes Pandora's Box back into the centre of the acid and reemerges, taking her friends (mid-wedding ritual) and heading out of Africa to continue her adventures.
And here's to hoping the new remakes of Tomb Raider with Alicia Vikander are as amusing and as edgy as Angelina Jolie's were!
xx
*images and video not mine
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