Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft appears to be massive failure as the show failed to chart on Netflix’s Top 10 list the week it debuted on the streaming service.
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (L to R) Earl Baylon as Jonah Maiava and Hayley Atwell as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
The show failed to generate even 1.8 million views, which was the amount of views that Prison Break: Season 1 generated for the week of October 7 – October 13, 2024. Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft debuted on Netflix on October 10th.
Netflix’s Top 10 English language TV shows for the week of October 7 -13, 2024
Not only did the show not chart in its first week, but it failed to chart in its second week as well.
Of note, the animated series Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance: Season 1 did chart with 2.4 million views, which was good enough for 7th place.
Netflix’s Top 10 English language TV shows for the week of October 14 -20, 2024
READ: ‘Tomb Raider’ Fans Torch Netflix’s Latest Teaser Trailer For ‘Tomb Raider The Legend Of Lara Croft’
It is not surprising that the show did not chart given initial reactions to the show’s first trailer, which was released back in August, were overwhelmingly negative. As of writing that first trailer has over 17,000 dislikes to just 10,000 likes.
A screenshot of Netflix’s Tomb Raider the Legend of Lara Croft teaser trailer via Netflix YouTube
Numerous comments at the time trashed the show. One person wrote, “I see Lara is still falling repeatedly.”
Another stated, “Oh boy they left the comment section open again. haha.”
“Someone needs to teach Netflix what the definition of a teaser trailer is,” posted another.
One person questioned why Lara Croft’s iconic pistols were not present in the trailer, “‘”Where….Are….Her….Guns ???’”
A screenshot of comments on Netflix’s Tomb Raider the Legend of Lara Croft Official Teaser video
After the trailer got trashed, showrunner Tasha Huo made things even worse by admitting that she wrote the show for “little girls.”
She was asked by IGN’s Katie Reul if making the series animated allowed for it to be seen by younger audiences. Huo responded, “Yeah, the hope was always that everyone could watch it. If you played this game and you have young kids, you could sit and watch it and enjoy this world with them. It’s sort of a gateway drug to playing the video games if you’re younger, but also I definitely wrote it for us, for adults, for people who played the games their whole lives and really enjoyed it. And so the themes are very adult.”
“There’s still a lot of violence, but the animation, you’re right, does allow for it to not feel as graphic, and so it does create a bigger space for more people to enjoy, which hopefully they do,” she added.
Huo then concluded, “I’m writing it for little girls as much as I’m writing it for big girls.”
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Hayley Atwell as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
On top of this, Huo also claimed that Lara Croft was a “cold figure” because she had previously been written by men.
She said, ” think it was fun to be able to have one scene where she does an incredible feat of strength or agility or what have you — the Lara thing — and then another scene where she’s hugging a friend and is emotional with them. I think that’s something we definitely wanted to explore in terms of Lara’s womanhood.”
“Because historically she’s been written by men, so she has been kind of this cold figure, and I know she’s not like that. So that was the exciting part to see sort of behind the veil of how she is in her everyday life,” she shared.
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (L to R) Zoe Boyle as Camilla Roth and Hayley Atwell as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
Huo attempted to do some damage control given the negative reaction to not only the trailer, but her comments as well. She spoke to Entertainment Weekly telling the outlet, “There’s a desperate concern that the show is going to be too modern and not be enough of the Lara we know and love.”
“I just want the fans to know that this is the show that we’ve all been waiting for as fans. It feeds into all the stuff we love from the original games. This is a show made by fans, from top to bottom,” she declared.
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Hayley Atwell as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
While she attempted to do damage control, those who watched the show saw their fears concerned. The show has an awful 5.3 out of 10 rating on IMDb with a plurality of all reviews (27.3%) being 1 out of 10.
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft IMDb reviews
YouTube critic Critical Drinker also lampooned the show. He said, “Aside from the god awful Resident Evil series that I’m still having therapy for I don’t think I’ve seen any show misuse its source material in such spectacular fashion before. Tomb Raider is a f***ing embarrassment that shames the very name of Lara Croft, sacrifices character and story integrity to work in the tedious and cringy tropes of modern writing, wastes its talented voice cast on clunky dialogue, and rams it all home with s***ty animation that looks about 20 years out of date.”
“In short, it’s a boring and pandering mess that proves once again why Lara Croft absolutely cannot be adapted for modern audiences,” he added.
The show’s poor performance bodes ill for the future of Tomb Raider as well given Huo revealed back in October 2021 that the show was part of Crystal Dynamics’ efforts to unify the timelines of Tomb Raider.
She said, “The team at Crystal Dynamics is hard at work unifying the timelines of Tomb Raider and we are so excited to be a part of that effort.”
She later added, “I always wondered how Lara Croft became such an epic and brilliant hero. She’s so cool, so calm under pressure, also pretty witty. So to that end, the Tomb Raider anime series from Legendary Television and Netflix will provide fans like you and me around the world with some of the first steps towards unifying the Tomb Raider timelines as we transition beyond the Survivor trilogy and start to follow Lara’s journey leading up to the first steps of that first Tomb Raider game.”
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2023
READ: Lara Croft’s Biggest “Disappointment” Gets Second-Life With ‘Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered’
Huo added, “Now, part of that awesome task is about bringing together pieces from the different Tomb Raider eras including some of Lara’s friends and allies. That is why I am so thrilled to introduce you to two additional actors who will be joining us on this wild ride: Earl Baylon, who will be reprising his role as Jonah Maiava from the Survivor trilogy, and Allen Maldonado, who will be voicing the character of Zip from Tomb Raider Chronicles, Legend, and Underworld.”
She concluded, “Trust me when I say this is an exciting road ahead of us and I cannot wait for you to join us!”
In fact, she doubled down on this in her interview with IGN saying, “I had the whole canon in my head, because we were coming from the Survivor series, so you had to honor who [Lara Croft] was — that person that she was in those games — but move her into the person she was in the games where we all started playing — those early 90s games where she’s just a very different person. And so it was really exciting to write to Lara becoming that person.”
“‘How does someone who is like Lara from the Survivor series transform into that person? What goes on to drive her to become that person?’ [Those were] was just the best questions to have to deal with, and it was really exciting to work in more humor, which is what I really loved about her early days,” Huo said. “Getting to kind of combine those two canons has been really fun.”
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2023
What do you make of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft failing to chart on Netflix’s Top 10 list for the week it debuted?
