Telling Lara’s Story: An Analysis of the <i>Tomb Raider</i> Reboot Trilogy Video Games and 2018 Film as Narratives

The Tomb Raider franchise has, since its inception in 1996, branched to various media platforms, and Lara Croft has now thoroughly become a transmedial entity. While Lara Croft’s narrative and various biographical details are left vague from Tomb Raider I to Tomb Raider Underworld, she is given a solid origin story in the 2013 franchise reboot, simply titled Tomb Raider. Following the release of the second game in the reboot trilogy, Rise of the Tomb Raider in 2015, a film based on Lara’s traumatic origins explored in Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider was released in 2018. In this chapter, the author argues that while film is considered a primarily narrative or representational medium and video gaming a ludic or simulational one, Lara’s origin story is, ironically, better told by the two video games than the film.