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.

Crap based on crap...

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....

It's cause

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

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.

PA rules

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:

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.
-

Pot meet Kettle - Kettle meet Pot

ha! jeesh, they should have watched the first movie again.

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. /me waits for Tomb Raider Racer

And this is a shock?

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.

The sequel was indeed good.

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.

Re:The sequel was indeed good.

That itself discourages the action based audience (all adolescent guys or ones in their 20s).

How would a busty, sexy woman swinging around like Indiana Jones be unappealing to the action/adventure crowd? We are not that chauvinistic. We wanna see an empowered, intelligent woman.
With a sexy British accent.
And nice knockers.
And legs that would snap you in two.

Be careful out there...

Boys, becareful with dissing the first movie.

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.

Re:Be careful out there...

I have the opposite, my girlfriend hates Angelina Jolie and thus virtually everything she's in.

And if you think three days is bad....you must not live together.

Wasn't me!

Behold the latest trend in licensing! if your licensed product does poorly, blame the people who created the license, not yourself who made the inferior product. First Activision sues Viacom cause Star Trek sucks and now this. Here's an idea, next time don't pick up a license to something you think sucks! The major factor however was that the first film wasn't any good. That's what turned away the mainstream audience from the picture, not the handful of gamers turned away by game reviews.

I'm still waiting for the Wachowski Brothers to sue themselves over Enter the Matrix, claiming it tarnished the franchise :)

This could have been remedied

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...

Games: the 21st century's scapegoat

First, games are to blame for violence in our schools (see this [penny-arcade.com] notable PA), and now they're to blame for crummy movie sales? What's next?

Re:Games: the 21st century's scapegoat

Don't forget that MS Flight simulator was to blame for the 9/11 terrorism too!

What's next is.... well it *won't* be video games blamed for teenage pregnancy... I think.

Ebert bravely stands alone...

...as about the only critic who actually likes [rottentomatoes.com] 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.

Same old story.

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.

Misplaced blame

Yes, as the story says, it couldn't possibly have been that we all brought to mind the original, and thought "what's so great about this that I need to see it straight away?"

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.

blame it on the pirates

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.

ET

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)

Tomb Raider Game?

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 [imdb.com] 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.

Maybe it was because of the first TR movie!

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.

what the movie needs

is more shower scenes.

Bad game? Bah... bad movie!

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?

Boob Raider

That's about all the interest the films have for most people....nuff said.

First movie wasn't that bad...

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

Mr. Cranky [mrcranky.com] disagrees [mrcranky.com] with why the movie is doing so badly.

Will the Real Lara Croft . . .

Perhaps they should have gone with the woman who is the model for Lara Croft, Nell McAndrew. Here's a shot here [geocities.com] and here [geocities.com].

Err, hang on. The game was bad to the film bombed?

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.

Nice illustration of how bad this movie sucked

Here's Tycho and Gabe's(of Penny-Arcade) view on this abomination of a movie.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date =2001-06-20&res=l
With a review like that, how could the sequel fail??!! I just don't get it.

Tomb Raider

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.

The major problem is..

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.

Proof that the movies were horrid

My favorite movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com] 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 [rottentomatoes.com], and now, the second one [rottentomatoes.com].

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. [rottentomatoes.com]

The Death of Video Game/Movie Collaborations

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 [blogspot.com] on the way this story is being reported.

Mr. Cranky says otherwise

"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" [mrcranky.com]

duh..

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.

Penny Arcade again

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 [penny-arcade.com]

These guys deserve a medal.

link

Read what I think in this post [menkeys.net]

It's Piracy

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.

poor tickets sales?

Wouldn't have anything to do with the simple fact that the movie was atrocious? I nodded off during this mess.....

*CORE* audience?

...which is our core audience.

I hear a rimshot.

(Don't bother modding up.)

Inconceivable!

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?

Is this for real?

I know that they'd always have some excuse for a movie not doing well. I mean, heaven forbid they admit that either the franchise is dead, or that the movie just plain sucked.

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.

they're right

they should have never sold a movie license to eidos ;)

Saw it last night

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).

Red Dwarf Suffers For THIS???

So the Red Dwarf [reddwarf.com] movie has been shelved for ANOTHER tombraider movie??

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.

I don't think so

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?