More than two decades after her pixelated image broke the minds of gamers everywhere, Lara Croft is returning. Showrunner Tasha Huo details Netflix’s ‘Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’ and reveals why Hayley Atwell is a ‘real-life’ Lara Croft.
A video game icon is about to set off on another globetrotting adventure. More than 25 years after her initial appearance, Lara Croft is strapping on her holsters once more to uncover ancient mysteries, forgotten tombs, and primaeval puzzles. The Netflix animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft picks up right after the events of the much-loved Survivor video game trilogy by Crystal Dynamics – Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider – which reconstructed Lara Croft’s origins.
Executive produced and written by Tasha Huo – the writer behind the anticipated Red Sonja reboot – the series picks up with a jaded Croft (voiced by Hayley Atwell) having abandoned her friends to embark on dangerous solo adventures. When a powerful artefact is stolen from Croft Manor, she finds herself forced to confront the demons of her past in order to discover what her future holds.
Man of Many joined a roundtable discussion, courtesy of Netflix, where showrunner Tasha Huo emphasised that the show is made by and for Tomb Raider fans. “The feedback that I’ve been hearing a lot is from fans who can tell that there is fandom behind the show. That’s credit to the team for sure, because they love Lara Croft as much as everyone else.”
The show follows a trend of adult animated series arriving on Netflix, merging revered franchises with animation aimed at adults who grew up playing video games like Castlevania and watching movies like Terminator. Animation is also helping unlock storytelling that would otherwise be difficult to produce.
“I think creatively, (animation) allows you to go as big as the Tomb Raider games go with nowhere near the budget it would require if it was a live-action show,” says Huo. “Something I love about the [Tomb Raider] video games is that you have no idea where you’re going to go next, even within an individual game. It doesn’t always just take place in the same location or country. I really wanted to honour that idea and take her to all these really incredible places.”
Filling Croft’s combat boots is actress Hayley Atwell, who brings the perfect tone and voice to the title heroine. “Hayley is Lara Croft in real life. I loved her already in Agent Carter, when she was Peggy [in the Marvel Cinematic Universe]. Seeing the levity she brought to that show with the drama that she’s capable of…also she was incredible in the action. She’s everything that this middle phase of Lara is already. Plus, when you meet Hayley as a person – she’s actually an action hero. We’ve seen her in Mission: Impossible. She does a lot of her own stunts. It’s crazy.”
Huo also commended the visual team at Powerhouse Animation for helping to bring this iteration of Lara Croft to life, sharing how much fun it was to send a script and get back animatics that were even better than envisioned. “There was just a shorthand with everyone who worked on the project from Powerhouse, because not only did they play the games when they were kids, but like me, it became part of their bloodstream in a way.”
Just as the Tomb Raider games used real history and mythology to inform the story, Huo shared how a love of history influenced the series and helped ground the writing in something real and tangible. “
The process of writing started with a lot of research. It became very important for me, as a history nerd and as a Lara Croft nerd.” Huo’s hope is that fans will recognise the realism embedded in the heart of the Tomb Raider franchise and Google aspects of the series to learn where the show separates fact from fiction. “My curiosity is ferocious, just as Lara’s is. Everything you see will be based on something that is real, which is bonkers.”
As the conversation got going, I had the chance to ask Tasha a few questions of my own.
MoM: I have fond and frustrating memories of starting over and over again at the snowy Peruvian tomb in the original game. Prior to this project, what were your memories of playing the franchise?
I played those ’90s games too! But Tomb Raider: Legend is actually the one that sticks out as the most memorable for me when I was younger.
MoM: This season is all about finding balance, how did you approach discovering that balance behind the scenes in the writing, the animation, and overall tone of the show?
That’s a great question. The Lara that we met in the Survivor series – there was a lot of disruption in that Lara. She was willing to usher in the apocalypse because of all the things she was dealing with personally. Knowing we were going to take that [version of] Lara and do a show about her, it really became about, ‘What do you do with a woman like that?’
It was very nice to meet her at a low point, because she is this kind of super heroic figure. It was important for me that the show started with her not being in that space, because that’s not where she is at the end of those games. To find and power her way through, to become the strong person we know her as, was really important for her arc.
For me, it’s less about finding something external for Lara – it’s changing what’s going on inside for her. That’s really what it came down to, her learning to become [the Lara that we know.] And here’s another part of it, Chad, I know we have to push her into becoming that confident person of the classic era. How do you get there? It’s not a direct line.
A big part of that is she does have to do a lot of self work and discover that confidence within. It was a no-brainer that the thing she actually had to fight the most, the sort of biggest villain, was really what was going on inside, as cheesy as that sounds.
MoM: The series really allows the storytelling to guide the adventure; it feels very immersive. How did you bring that sense of gameplay and the very effective nature of video game cutscenes into the writing?
First of all, bless you for saying that, because I wasn’t sure if that would ever come across. That’s always the danger of video game adaptations: you’re not playing it, it’s not first-person, and you’re not Lara Croft. Instead, you’re watching Lara Croft do things, which is incredibly hard [to translate to screen.]
I think the way to bring audiences into that similar sensation is to really invest them in character, to find that relatable point for character. That was my hope with Lara. That you’re so in her head, as she’s experiencing the world, that it’s as close to playing her as you can get.
We also paid a lot of homage – not even homage, we fully went there – in the action sequences. We were really trying to bring all of the elements into the action; all the set pieces that I really remember loving from those early games and her unique moveset. Hopefully, in that regard, it’s bringing up those familiar feelings of having played the game.
From Legendary Television, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is executive produced and written by Huo (The Witcher: Blood Origin, Red Sonja). Executive producers include dj2 Entertainment founder and CEO Dmitri M. Johnson (Sonic the Hedgehog, Life Is Strange), along with Timothy I. Stevenson; Jacob Robinson (Skull Island) under his company Tractor Pants; Dallas Dickinson and Noah Hughes for Crystal Dynamics; and Howard Bliss and Jen Chambers. Powerhouse Animation is the animation studio, with Brad Graeber serving as executive producer. You can catch the eight-episode series now on Netflix.
