It sums up the entire history of the video game adaptation that every single one of the movies to have become the highest-grossing hit in genre history has never carried much favor with critics, but none of them have held onto that particular crown for as long as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
Paul W.S. Anderson’s cult classic Mortal Kombat snatched the crown as the first console-to-screen project that didn’t flop, before Angelina Jolie’s debut as the iconic adventurer blew it out of the water with a $274 million tally at the box office, which it managed in spite of tepid reactions from critics, paying customers, and fans of the source material alike.
Simon West’s monotonous blockbuster would hold onto the crown for nine years before Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time came along, with Jake Gyllenhaal’s dud reigning for six until Duncan Jones’ Warcraft outstripped it despite not turning a single penny of profit, although it’ll take some doing for any upcoming entry to come within the same stratosphere as The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘s $1.36 billion.
What they all have in common is that not a single one of them has been designated as “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, a recurring coincidence that sums up the medium to a tee. Jolie’s arrival as the first iteration of Lara Croft – which came before the sequel, the reboot, and the impending reboot of the reboot – is hardly a bastion of cinematic excellence, but it’s still one of the biggest hits on Netflix.
Per FlixPatrol, Tomb Raider has explored the platform’s global charts since returning to the library in multiple markets, where it exists as a relic of a bygone time before its heroine was run into the ground.
