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.

Comments

It's cause

[u-238]

the first movie sucked. Period.

i paid to see the first, and would never make the mistake of doing so again

Read my same post about LOTR

[Creepy Crawler]

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.

Re:Read my same post about LOTR

[merdark]

Your same post about LOTR??

Don't step on holy ground man. ;)

LOTR is in no way over publicized. LOTR movies are the *only* movies me and my freinds care and can't wait too see. LOTR is not based off some lame video game who's major feature is it's main character's breasts.

Re:Read my same post about LOTR

[iainl]

The flaw with your argument with LOTR was that there has been a mass of Tolkein-geeks lapping up any old rubbish tied into the books for decades already, and it hasn't killed it yet (the text adventures on the 8-bit machines were stunningly horrible, for instance, and I didn't think much of Bakshi's animated version either).

The flaw here, similiarly, is that Eidos had already released four terrible sequels to Tomb Raider before the first film came out. I find it really difficult to believe its the fault of a fifth bad game sequel, rather than the dire first film that is at fault here.

PA rules

[ff_cid]

Haha nice PA link. I think these execs need to realise there only so many bad summer sequels people will watch.

here's another idea:

[gl4ss]

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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And this is a shock?

[DesScorp]

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.

Same old story.

[mikedaisey]

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.

blame it on the pirates

[kootch]

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.

The major problem is..

[maunleon]

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.

Re:Wasn't me!

[Ondo]

Here's an idea, next time don't pick up a license to something you think sucks!

In both cases they're claiming the license started sucking after they picked it up.

duh..

[Suppafly]

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.