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Tomb Raider Game Blamed for Movie's Poor Ticket Sales
ff_cid writes "Reuters reports on the poor box office results of Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life and how Paramount executives are pointing the finger at the mediocre reception of Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness:
"The Cradle of Life," the second film based on games heroine Lara Croft, opened in fourth place at the U.S. box office last weekend with sales of $21.7 million, well below the opening weekend of 2001's "Tomb Raider." "The only thing we can attribute that to is that the gamers were not happy with the latest version of the 'Tomb Raider' video game, which is our core audience," Paramount distribution president Wayne Lewellen said." It couldn't possibly be that because the first movie was such a stellar work of cinematography, no one raced out to see the sequel.
This is no surprise at all. What is surprising is that anybody at all is surpised by this in the first place.
Now; lets see Super Mario Brothers the Movie part 2, and then we'll talk...
Or something, I dunno....
Paul Lenhart writes words!
the first movie sucked. Period.
i paid to see the first, and would never make the mistake of doing so again
Mass media and over-saturization has pretty much killed this series. The First game was great, so was the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, s....
Perhaps this'll teach the media that Over-publicising a show/game will effectively kill it.
Haha nice PA link. I think these execs need to realise there only so many bad summer sequels people will watch.
crappy sales of the game are because of the crappy last film.
seriously though, i didn't even know there was another tomb raider coming.
could they have chosen worse summer for release anyways? with hulk, t3, reloaded and all.
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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
ha! jeesh, they should have watched the first movie again.
/me waits for Tomb Raider Racer
Worst Lara ever!
My 13 yo says TR stopped being fun when they dropped the training level and now you can't kill Lara in her own home.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The game had nothing to do with the stinking ticket sales. Ticket sales sucked because the first movie was abominally BAD. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Looks like the public wasn't in a mood to be a fool.
The first Tomb Raider was the only movie I've ever gotten up and walked out of. I got my money back. It was THAT bad.
The only real surprise here is that the studios actually thought people would pay to see another one.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
We went to see some movies in a local Cinema, and since they dont check customers leaving one cinema and entering another, we watched 4 movies in one day on the same ticket. To fill up the time till we saw T3, we had to watch Tomb Raider 2, but it was indeed a good movie. Enjoyed it more than T3.
Now the whole idea about Tomb Raider brings it down, a busty rich chick with a whole mansion and the MI6 at her disposal. Indiana Jones as an Archaeologist was a bit rediculous, but Lara Croft is pushing it with an ego. That itself discourages the action based audience (all adolescent guys or ones in their 20s). They need to improve the story lines and make it more believable both in the game and the movies in order to sell it. They should keep Angelina Jolie though.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
My girlfriend is a big Lara Croft fan. She talked me into going to see the first movie. And hey, why not? She was happy that I wanted to do something she liked for her sake, and I could (secretly) dribble over Angelina Jolie.
The movie was so awful that, when the credits rolled, I rose from my seat and proclaimed - forgetting who I was with - as loud as I could: "Jesus, that movie SUCKED!".
I didn't get any for three days.
I'm still waiting for the Wachowski Brothers to sue themselves over Enter the Matrix, claiming it tarnished the franchise :)
Some of you may remember Swordfish, a massive pile of shit with John Travolta and a tan/buff/perfect hair 'hacker'. You probably also remember the Halle Barry topless scene in the middle that didn't really seem to serve any purpose, other than 'Damn we need some reason for people to sit through this shit'.
Repeat this brilliant move in TR3 Paramount. Suddenly 45 min into the film Laura feels an intense need to take a banana from a monkey (jungle scene) strip and creatively use that banana. It'll add a couple mil to the opening...
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
First, games are to blame for violence in our schools (see this notable PA), and now they're to blame for crummy movie sales? What's next?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
...as about the only critic who actually likes these films... and he drools over pretty much anything Angelina Jolie is in, so he doesn't even count.
Maybe Paramount should consider that before blaming the video game developers? I suppose it's easier to blame someone else than to admit your movie is crap.
This is hardly surprising--when a big film explodes in H'wood, everyone runs for cover and the blame gets thrown around. One of the advantages of using a game franchise is that when things meltdown you can point at that, rather than the truth that everyone, even the studios, knows: that the first movie blew apes, and the public wasn't buying the dog food a second time.
So don't be shocked--it's just Cover Your Ass time.
I'm sure it'll make an acceptable choice a year from now at the video store, when my friends and I can't decide on anything - because none of us will have probably already seen it.
yea, that's right. they should blame the poor movie ticket sales on the people pirating the movie on DVDs in chinatown. then they should blame people trading the movie online using services like Kazaa and Morpheus. then they should blame the economy. then they should blame Angelina Jolie for getting older and not having the same sex appeal.
all in all, they should blame everyone 'cept themselves and their god-awful movies that just suck.
Its funny that when a movie sucked they blame anything they can except for themselves. I bet when the game ET for nintendo sucked they didnt blame the movie, because the game simply sucked. If the movie simply sucked then why blame the game. (imo making movies from games is a bad idea, and most (not all, i love goldeneye and a few others) games from movies suck anyways because they are just selling the mainstream name, just like what they dried to do with the movie. They appealed to the mainstream Tombraider gamers which is not a way to attract people to see the movie. They should make the movie and accept how it did. Nobody sits back and wonders why Johnny Mneumonic wasnt a smash hit, the movie sucked. (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0113481)
Haven't the Tomb Raider games sucked for a while now? The first game was really something back in 1996 when it first came out, with its 3rd-person perspective, but there were at least five sequels to the game before the first movie even came out, with little to no changes to the engine. CORE and Eidos sequelled the game into the ground long before the movies even started to suck.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
The storyline of the first movie involved planets aligning. How cliche is that? I think it was all of them too. I'm no astronomer, but I doubt all the planets in this solar system have ever or will ever align.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
is more shower scenes.
Went to see it this past weekend since it was a friend's birthday weekend and my wife wanted to see it (Yes, she can appreciate a hot woman as well. Yes, I am a lucky bastard).
About the only redeeming feature of the movie was Angelina Jolie's nipples. And since they're in the first 15 minutes, you can feel free to save yourself and leave after that.
I really wasn't expecting much from the movie, but even then I was disappointed. The action scenes were mostly lackluster, no adrenaline, and no tension. There were a couple that weren't bad, but they didn't make up for the rest. The plot, which I expected to be weak and sad, was abysmal and painful. It doesn't hurt much simply because the entire movie is so forgetable.
Yes, I've seen far, far worse movies. But this is a rental at best. The reason the movie ticket sales are so bad is because the movie is so bad... it had nothing to do with the game. But why are we expecting companies/people to actually admit that they're to blame instead of pointing fingers?
That's about all the interest the films have for most people....nuff said.
I'll probably be lynched for this one, but I didn't think the first movie was that bad... OK, let me rephrase that: I didn't think the first two thirds of the first movie was too bad. After finding the clock things took a turn for the worst. The ending completely blew chunks, but name a Hollywood blockbuster movie that has had a great ending that you didn't feel completely cheated out of? (Or get the distinct impression that they were going to completely ruin the movie-going experience you just had with a cheap knock-off sequel)?
Mr. Cranky disagrees with why the movie is doing so badly.
It seems more likely the ticket sales are down because the movie seems to be a piece of shit.
One time we discussed video game movies and I told everyone they are the worst. They only did one right "Mortal Kombat" and the sequel was just sooo sooo bad. Well let me tell you what went wrong with this one my favorite Lara my dear Lara what did they do to you my Lara. Ok one the game is just bad because one they rushed it they rushed it oh why did they rushed it, two because they rushed it the controls are bad and I mean really bad just to make the game come out before the movie. This is a big reason why Tomb Raider didn't do to well in Movies right now. What they should have done is this : GET all the bugs out of the game!!! Then talk to the producers of the movie and make a way for the game and movie to come out at the same time ex:"ENTER THE MATRIX" but no one wants to listen to me when I ranted about that so I'll say this R.I.P Tomb Raider and sorry to Ms. Jolie "still think your hot will buy DVD because of you". Oh one more thing to all you producers out there do not and I repeat DO NOT make a Movie of Grand theft Auto or it will be war. And I Mean WAR
For all of those that had witness let me give you one of my favorite sayings "Ph34r My M4d Skillz"
I'd be more interested in the filmed biography of munkeyspanker21
Perhaps they should have gone with the woman who is the model for Lara Croft, Nell McAndrew. Here's a shot here and here.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
But every Tomb Raider sequel has failed to come even close to capturing the atmosphere of the first one. Four onwards were monumentally terrible, in fact.
So if this suggestion has any basis in fact whatsoever, the first film should have bombed.
Since it didn't, I'd suggest that this failure had an awful lot more to do with how shockingly bad that first film was.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Here's Tycho and Gabe's(of Penny-Arcade) view on this abomination of a movie.e =2001-06-20&res=l
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?dat
With a review like that, how could the sequel fail??!! I just don't get it.
The planets do line themselves up in a roughly straight line from time to time. The last time this happened was the year that the first tomb raider came out, 2001 or it could have been 2000, whatever. The cool thing about that allinment was, all the planets and the moon were lined up in a rough line pointing at earth. Every body and their kook relative thought this was significant somehow, the gravitational disturbances bringing death and destruction by massive earthquakes, the poles were going to flip around, Hale-Bop was going to be pulled to smack into the the earth, a rift in the astral plane would loose demons unto our world, all kinds of crazy shit. Any way the planets will line themselves up again at some calcuable point in the future.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
You have to put it into perspective: the first Tomb Raider games was rather interesting, it was the only PC game that could be seen as an answer to Mario 64.
The subsequent TR games all sucked big time (to be gentle). Sometimes it is not enough to have a babe as the main character to make a good game. This holds true also for the movie.
Really, Tomb Raider is a pop culture phenomenon, due to the babe effect, but it is really non-influent in the gaming world.
Noone ends up caring about Lara. She comes across as snobby and full of herself. In every good movie, viewers end up liking or identifying with the main character.
There is a major directorial and script writing issue with TR, but the character definition is the biggest problem. They have to make us CARE about Lara, and not see her as a priviledged, bratty girl.
Women get burned out because she's portraied in such a perfect light. Men get burned out because they see no vulerabilities. The movies have no climax since there are no low parts.
Someone needs to take Movie Making 101. If any movie needed a little formula infusion, this is it. The director should read what makes a hero(ine). The current Lara is not it. Throw something challenging at Lara... read the formula book.. fish out of water, reluctant heroine, whatever. Make us care.
Right now.. it's an MTV glam video.
My favorite movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes collects and normalizes reviews from many different critics to a 100 point scale. Go check out what they had to say about the first movie, and now, the second one.
Out of context quote #01: "At least a bit more comprehensible than its predecessor -- say, a second-rate Indiana Jones rip-off instead of a third-rate Indiana Jones rip-off."
Out of context quote #10: "At least now we have a clue about what's in Pandora's Box: It's movies like this."
Out of context quote #11: "While there's compelling evidence that Angelina Jolie is a real person, you'd never guess it watching Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life."
Oh, by the way, here's a link to some background on the site.
Michael C. Hollinger
I'm surprised how many sites are using this one piece of news to declare that "the romance is over" between hollywood and silicon valley. Here's my take on the way this story is being reported.
"It seems to me that given Lara's inability to follow simple logic, you'd be better off giving Lara something simple to do in "Lara Croft 3," like baking a pie"
The first movie was hyped for like a year before it came out, back when the tomb raider franchise was worth something. Even though the second movie is a little better than the first, no one plays tomb raider anymore.. when you plan a movie around an aging video game franchise, you can't except it to do so hot.
Look at me! I'm going to make a big rant like I know what I talking about!
ET came out for the Atari 2600.
You sound pretty young kid. There were games before the NES you know...
nuff' said
Recall the spat between Activision and Viacom over the Star Trek francise, and how Gabe and Tycho were there for us, then, too:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2003/20030704l. gif
These guys deserve a medal.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Read what I think in this post
I thought that the reason the movie did badly is because of rampant Piracy? That's also the reason Pirates of the Caribbean is doing so well: of course pirates are going to see a Pirate movie.
Wouldn't have anything to do with the simple fact that the movie was atrocious? I nodded off during this mess.....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
I mean, if there were a Croft nude scene, I'd think about shelling out the $7.
Actually, I guess I'd wait for the Xvid.
Tits are tits.
...which is our core audience.
I hear a rimshot.
(Don't bother modding up.)
I find it down right hilarious that the only reason executives could come up with for the poor sales is the influence of the newest video game's sales. What kind of stellar research group did they have working on that one?
I suggest we all just take a moment from our busy days and let out a big collective laugh at the movie industry. Really, they deserve it.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Look at me! maybe my first console was nes... maybe i was just talking about the nes ET... maybe you think that someone is always talking about the first ever made and that you will prove someone wrong...
My point was that ET for nes sucked horribly and i was using it as a point... thanks for the clarification which didnt change anything.
they should have never sold a movie license to eidos ;)
Free as in mason.
WHAT KIND OF FUCKTARD LINKS TO A GEOCITIES SITE ON SLASHDOT??? THOSE GODDAMN GEOCITIES SERVERS CAN'T HANDLE MORE THAN 5 HITS AN HOUR! YOU TEASE US WITH PICTURES OF LARA'S REAL-LIFE COUNTERPART AND THEN YOU PUT THEM ON GEOCITIES SO THEY GET SLASHDOTTED WITHIN 5 SECONDS! I HATE YOU!
Gee... I wonder if their crummy box office sales has anything to do with the fact that the Tomb Raider franchise is based purely on sex appeal.
Another moron linking to penny-arcade.
This makes is so much easier to fill up my foes list, since everyone who links to that crap never posts anything worth reading.
It's penny-arcade, no way am I going to bother reading the useless review by the fat assed morons that run that abomination of a web "comic."
there was no NES ET game. there was an atari game, and after many many years, a Game Boy Advance ET game.
maybe you were talking about the NES ET. and maybe you smoked about a kilo of crack beforehand.
And I hope you'll be fuckin' dead a year from now. It will be around 'tis merry time of the year that I also plan to fuck your girl and then throw her away like the dirty bitch she is.
All I can say is this: It was the most amateur piece of work I have seen in a long time. The CG looked rushed, the story (much like the first movie) was mediocre at best. I think the key was that we didn't get any near nipple shots of Angelina Jolie (or however the hell she spells her name).
DRINK DUFF (responsibly) DRINK DUFF (responsibly) DRINK DUFF
Why do the producers insist that we would rather watch a crappy sequel to an attrocious movie based on a series of inward spiralling games, instead of an original, interesting, well written and hilariously funny screenplay???
Sure, we got scammed by the first movie - but most of us aren't stupid enough to get caught twice... the same way.... well at least not for the same game/movie... well probably not... I guess some will...
I guess you never know - maybe they paid someone to write a plot this time....
Q.
Insert Signature Here
They had her flash her tits at least once during the movie.
There is no way that the movie studio should be blaming the video game makers. If the audience was pleased with the first Tomb Raider than I'm sure they would have seen the second. Is it always someone else's fault?