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Tomb Raider Game Blamed for Movie's Poor Ticket Sales 114

Posted by CowboyNeal from the most-improbable-now-plausible dept.
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.
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Tomb Raider Game Blamed for Movie's Poor Ticket Sales More

Tomb Raider Game Blamed for Movie's Poor Ticket Sales

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  • 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 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by u-238 ( 515248 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:20AM (#6558278) Homepage
    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.
    • 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.

    • Media cares not, because by then they've taken their pocket full of cash and happily left the steaming corpse of a once proud franchise behind.

      Not that "one proud franchise" really applies to Tomb Raider, you see my point. They just want the next quick rush of income, kill off the current hot subject, and to move onto their next venture.
    • 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

  • PA rules (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ff_cid ( 693264 )
    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:26AM (#6558331) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:4, Funny)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:26AM (#6558338) Journal
    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:29AM (#6558360) Journal
    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.
    • Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me

      Or as good ol' GWB puts it:

      There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once -- shame on -- shame on you. You fool me, you can't get fooled again.

      www.dubyaspeak.com [dubyaspeak.com]
      • It was worse then that.

        He said ...shame on you. Fool me twice <awkward pause, thinking>, well you see, you can't fool me twice, you already fooled me...

        I saw this and felt so sad for my country.
    • the only movie I've ever gotten up and walked out of.

      I take it you were not unfortunate enough to be taken to see Ace Ventura Pet Detective: When Nature Calls then?

      I think the main surprise is that they are attacking the source of the licence from which they made their money in the first place. If I was Eidos, I sure as hell wouldn't want them to be able to make another film after hearing that.

  • The sequel was indeed good. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:31AM (#6558369) Homepage
    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. (Score:5, Funny)

      by DrWho520 ( 655973 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:38PM (#6560561) Journal
      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.
      • Note that Angelina's "nice knockers" were padded heavily in the first movie (and I'm assuming the same in the second, even though they show headlights at high beam in the TV ad...Must be fake nipples?)

        See: http://www.eonline.com/Celebs/Qa/Jolie2001/

        I've been impressed with Jolie's acting in other movies (Girl Interrupted, Bone Collector) but the TR series is certainly no drama. I'll skip the sequel just like I've skipped the original, there's far better movies out there to spend my $/time on.

  • Be careful out there... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fleafan ( 547786 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:31AM (#6558370)
    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.

  • Wasn't me! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Acts of Attrition ( 635948 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:35AM (#6558410)
    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 :)

    • Re:Wasn't me! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ondo ( 187980 )
      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.

  • This could have been remedied (Score:5, Interesting)

    by leifm ( 641850 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:35AM (#6558411)
    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...
    • not to burst your bubble, but anyone looking to see LC naked has already searched and found stuff on kazaa. try it, its not horrible, i think whoever the girl is is better looking than angelina jolee, who to me is jsut 'that girl' from hackers.
    • I remember when that shitfest 'Swordfish' came out a year or two back. All my friends went to see it and thought it was incredibly cool. They couldn't understand why I didn't want to see it; I told them that I didn't like spitting at the screen in theatres.

      Sometime later it was on HBO and I sat down and watched it. Jesus. Christ. What a terrible movie! I doubt that I would have been as overly offended by it if I was not a computer-centric person, but wow. "Gotta show some tits to get the kids in!" never ra

  • Games: the 21st century's scapegoat (Score:5, Funny)

    by Winterblink ( 575267 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:39AM (#6558439) Homepage
    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?
  • ...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.
    • His record as the perfect critic continues to hold, I just have to do the opposite of what he says and I haven't been let down yet.

    • 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 believe there is a saying that goes something like this:
      Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan.
      I think Tomb Raider is on it's way to the orphanage.

  • Same old story. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mikedaisey ( 413058 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:42AM (#6558471) Homepage

    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.
  • 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 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kootch ( 81702 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:46AM (#6558511) Homepage
    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 (Score:1)

    by FluffyG ( 692458 )
    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 Tombraide
    • 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...
      • 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.

  • Tomb Raider Game? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tbmaddux ( 145207 ) * on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @09:53AM (#6558563) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • 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.
    • 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 aro
    • If you have a bunch of points in a (roughly) circular orbit around a central object that are in the same plane (except pluto), they all will line up at some point in time (even pluto). It may take a million billion jillion years but it'll happen eventually.

      Get a few friends to run around a central object at different speeds using different distances from that central object and observe when they line up... Not only will it happen, but your friends might get dizzy and fall down, and you'll get a cheap laugh
  • is more shower scenes.

  • Bad game? Bah... bad movie! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @10:13AM (#6558758) Homepage
    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?
    • Sadly, given that the breasts are most assuredly not hers, the nipples as well are complete fabrications. Somehow, the thought of Angelina Jolie's body having hot, non-breathable latex wrapped around it with little bits of rubber to simulate artificial nipples doesn't quite appeal to me.
  • 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 c
    • And if I might repond to myself, Chris Barrie (Rimmer) made the film for me too. :)
    • 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)?

      Terminator 1 - Kick-ass movie, kick-ass ending, and it even has a NON-cheap knock-off awesome sequel (I didn't see T3)
      LOTR: 'nuff said
      Sixth Sense: I mean, come on... that ending was sick! (oh wait, it's cool to now say that this movie sucked, or that you s
    • "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?"

      The Matrix, Star Trek 2 & 6
    • SPOILER - TR1

      Or how about the whole "why not just destroy ONE piece of the damn thing ?" part that made the second half of the film redundant. And the big bungie gunfight scene was bo-ring and lame.
    • Yeah, I enjoyed the first 1/2 of TR 1 as well... You had to know they would throw in a jumping puzzle though. That's when I heard the groaning in the audience. I almost half expected to see the words "2 lives left" in the upper right hand corner of the film screen... :)

  • Mr. Cranky (Score:3, Informative)

    by tycage ( 96002 ) <tycage@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @10:18AM (#6558806) Homepage
    Mr. Cranky [mrcranky.com] disagrees [mrcranky.com] with why the movie is doing so badly.
    • What's even funnier is the Ebert & Roper review at http://tvplex.go.com/buenavista/ebertandroeper/tod ay.html

      Ebert actually liked it (and the first one he says). Roper thought it was junk and said Ebert must be smitten by Angelina Jolie.

  • 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].

    • Actually, forget that. Before Nell McAndrew got the job as "some model dressed up as Lara at press gigs", it originally went to Rhona Mitra. I always just assumed she was merely a pretty face, but she handled acting perfectly well in "Sweet Home Alabama", so I say give her a chance.

      And she's English too, and does the accent ok without looking like she's thinking too hard to maintain it.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maunleon ( 172815 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @11:40AM (#6559665)
    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 [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 q
  • 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.

  • duh.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Suppafly ( 179830 ) <slashdot@s[ ]afly.net ['upp' in gap]> on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @12:09PM (#6560156)
    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.

  • 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.

  • It's Piracy (Score:5, Funny)

    by angle_slam ( 623817 ) on Tuesday July 29, 2003 @02:07PM (#6561872)
    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.....
  • ...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 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 should have never sold a movie license to eidos ;)
  • 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).
  • 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

  • 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?

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