247. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Title: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider / Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Year: 2001, 2003

Summary:

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001): Lara Croft is in an Egyptian tomb, seeking a diamond. As she approaches it she is attacked by a large robot. She disables it by ripping out its motivational circuits. She takes the diamond, which is revealed to be a memory card labeled "Lara's Party Mix", and inserts it into a laptop computer inside the robot, whereupon it plays music. Now it is revealed that the scene took place in a practice arena in her home, and that her assistant Bryce programmed the robot, SIMON, to challenge her in combat.

It is the day of the first phase of a planetary alignment, culminating in a solar eclipse. In Venice, the Illuminati search for a key to rejoin halves of "the triangle", which must be done by the final phase of the alignment. Manfred Powell, an Illuminati member, makes assurances that they are almost ready, but in reality he has no idea where to find the key. Lara's butler, James "Hilly" Hillary, tries to interest her in several projects but she ignores them. May 15, as Hilly is aware, is the day that Lara's father disappeared many years earlier. She never recovered from his loss.

Later that night, Lara has a dream reminding her what her father said about the alignment and an object linked to it called the Triangle of Light. Waking, she is aware of a clock ticking. Searching for it, she discovers a secret chamber under the staircase with a carriage clock that had spontaneously begun ticking. Bryce probes it and discovers a strange device hidden inside the clock.

Since the device resembles a clock, Lara consults a clock expert friend of her father's, Mr. Wilson. She believes it is connected to the "Triangle of Light", but Wilson disavows knowledge of the clock or the Triangle. Lara encounters Alex West, an American archeologist and friend with unscrupulous methods. They are attracted to each other, but Lara cannot abide his for-profit attitude. That night, Lara is contacted by Wilson, who tells her that he gave her name to Powell in regards of the clock.

The next morning, Lara receives a letter from her father, arranged to arrive after the beginning of the alignment. In her library, she finds a secret letter in a book where he explains that the clock is the key to retrieve two halves of the mystic Triangle of Light, which is revealed to be an object of phenomenal destructive power that granted its wielder power over time and space. He says that it was made from a metal found in a meteor crater made by a meteor that had fallen to earth during a previous alignment. Initially housed in a city built in the meteor crater by those who worshiped the object, misuse of the Triangle's power destroyed the city and so it was split into two halves; one was hidden in a tomb in Cambodia, the other half in the ruined city itself, in modern-day Siberia. Her father urges her to find and destroy both halves before the Illuminati can find it.

In Cambodia, West figures out part of the puzzle on how to retrieve the triangle half, but Lara manages to successfully grab the piece. Before everyone can leave, the liquid metal which came out with the piece brings the statues in the temple to life and attacks the team, killing some members. Lara is left to fight off and destroy a huge six-armed guardian statue similar to Brahma, the Hindu god of creation. She successfully defeats it by weakening it and leaves the temple by diving through a waterfall. She then travels to a Buddhist town where a young monk welcomes her. After a worship service, an aged monk who is the leader there gives Lara some tea and as they converse, he tells her that he knew her father before.

She and Powell arrange to meet in Venice, since each of them has what the other needs to finish the Triangle. Powell proposes a partnership to find the Triangle, and informs Lara that her father was a member of the Illuminati, which she vehemently denies. Though hesitant at first, she, along with Bryce, meets with Powell for the trip to Siberia. Inside the chamber, there is a giant model of the solar system, which activates as the alignment nears completion. Lara retrieves the last half of the Triangle, but when Powell tries to complete it, the halves will not fuse. He realizes that Lara knows the solution to the puzzle, and kills West in order to persuade her to complete the Triangle to save both West's life and her father's. Lara reluctantly complies, and they then struggle for control of the Triangle, with Lara gaining the upper hand.

Lara then finds herself in a strange alternate existence facing her father Richard Croft. He explains that it is a crossing of time and space, and urges her to destroy the Triangle instead of using it to save his life. She leaves her father and returns to the chamber, where time is slowly running backwards from the point where Powell killed West. Croft takes the knife he threw into West's chest and reverses it, then destroys the Triangle, which returns time to its normal flow and directs the knife into Powell's shoulder. The chamber begins to self-destruct, Everyone turns to leave, but Powell tells Croft that he killed her father and retrieved his pocket watch with a picture of Lara's mother inside. Lara and Powell engage in a hand to hand fight with Lara emerging victorious. After Powell is killed, she retrieves the watch and escapes as the chamber crumbles.

At the mansion, Hilly and Bryce are shocked to see Lara wearing a dress. She goes into the garden to her father's memorial, then returns inside, where Bryce has a reprogrammed SIMON, ready to challenge Lara once again. Hilly reveals a silver tray holding Lara's pistols, which she takes with a smile.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003): The film begins on Santorini island, Greece, during a wedding when it is interrupted by an earthquake. The earthquake uncovers the Luna Temple, built by Alexander the Great to house his most prized treasures. Among these treasures is a glowing orb with a pattern resembling a code etched into it. Lara finds this orb, as well as a strange medallion; but both are stolen by the crime lord Chen Lo. Lara only just manages to escape as a subsequent earthquake causes the Luna Temple to collapse, while her two companions are killed by Chen's men. Lara is tasked by MI6 to find Pandora's Box, an object from ancient legends that supposedly contains a deadly plague, before Nobel Prize-winning scientist turned bio-terrorist Jonathan Reiss can get his hands on it. The key to finding the box, which is hidden in the mysterious Cradle of Life, is a magical luminous sphere that serves as a map, the one stolen by Chen Lo in Santorini, who plans to sell the sphere to Reiss. To help her track down Chen Lo and the ball, Lara recruits an old lover, Terry Sheridan, a former mercenary and Royal Marine, who was in prison in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Among the action sequences that take place during this time are Lara and Terry's entry into China, a fight scene in suburban Shanghai, and a leap off the then-under-construction International Finance Centre skyscraper in Hong Kong, using special winged flight-suits that Terry had arranged for, landing on a ship out in the Kowloon Bay after taking the Orb from Reiss. It is revealed that the medallion Lara also recovered from Chen Lo shows how to unlock the information in the Orb; a certain arrangement of musical sounds. Meanwhile, Lara and Terry begin to fall in love again; but Lara starts to back away from him knowing that she could easily kill him if he betrays her. She seduces him one morning, then leaves him handcuffed to a bedpost, saying "I'm not leaving because I can't kill you; I'm leaving because I could."

Lara finds her way to a floating houseboat where a Chinese family is watching SpongeBob SquarePants when Lara asks to use their satellite to communicate with Bryce. After some technical difficulties, Bryce sends Lara the file and she uses the sounds make the The Orb reveal the location of the Cradle of Life, which is revealed to be somewhere near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, thanks to an ancient hologram produced by the Orb. Lara sends this info to Bryce back at Croft Manor. After the transmission, it is revealed that Reiss and his men had infiltrated Croft Manor and captured Bryce and James "Hilly" Hillary.

Lara meets up with Kosa, an African friend who serves as her translator as they obtain the information from a local tribe about the Cradle of Life. Kosa translates for the tribe's chieftain stating that the Cradle of Life is in a crater protected by the "Shadow Guardians" (humanoid creatures which kill immediately when they sense a movement and vanish into wet patches on dead trees). As the expedition sets out, Lara, Kosa, and the tribesmen with them are ambushed by Reiss' soldiers. More tribesmen are killed by Reiss' soldiers with some of the soldiers being killed by Lara in the fight. The fight ends with Lara surrendering to overwhelming odds as Reiss' helicopter started to land. Reiss and Sean threaten to kill Bryce, Hillary, and Kosa unless Lara leads him and his soldiers to the Cradle of Life. Upon arrival at the crater, they encounter the Shadow Guardians with the wet patching on the dead trees being the blood of their victims. Sean and most of Reiss' soldiers are killed by the creatures. When Lara drops the Orb into the hole that opens the entrance to the Cradle of Life, the Shadow Guardians fall to pieces and both Lara and Reiss are drawn into the Cradle of Life, a labyrinthine cavern made of some strange crystalline substance, racked by bolts of energy where "'sky and earth are one, direction meaningless." Inside there is a pool of highly corrosive black acid (linking back to one of the myths about Pandora's Box) which holds the box and where the laws of physics do not apply, as Lara and Reiss are able to walk (upside down) along the ceiling of the cave. Terry arrives, frees Reiss' captives, and catches up to Lara.

Following a climactic fistfight between Lara and Reiss, Reiss is knocked into the acid pool by Lara after he is distracted by Terry, killing and dissolving him. When the couple tries to leave, Terry attempts to take the box as compensation for finding it. But Lara staunchly refuses to let him, knowing the danger if the box were ever open. Despite her love for him, this results in Lara being forced to fatally shoot him in self-defense just after Terry draws his own gun preparing to shoot Lara. Lara is tempted to open the box herself, but realizes that some artifacts are not meant to be found. Placing the box back in the acid pool, she leaves, giving the medallion to the chieftain.

Lara and Kosa leave the village along with Bryce and Hillary (who were unknowingly being prepared for a tribal wedding ceremony). The film ends with Lara driving the jeep away from the setting sun.