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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.
the first movie sucked. Period.
i paid to see the first, and would never make the mistake of doing so again
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
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.
I suppose it's easier to blame someone else than to admit your movie is crap.
Ladies and gentlemen of the press... Thank you for coming. As you may know, LCTR:TCOL (catchy name, don't you know think?) didn't perform as well as expected its first weekend. We producers were confused at first, but then we realized the film is a big steaming pile of monkey shit, and have only ourselves to blame. Questions?
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.