10 Movies From 2018 That Were Completely Pointless
2. Tomb Raider
This year's Tomb Raider reboot is more proof, as if we needed it, that studio filmmaking in Hollywood is completely cyclical.
In 2001, when the video game series was hugely popular, we got a big-budget Tomb Raider movie starring recent Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie. In 2018, when the rebooted video game series was hugely popular, we got a big-budget Tomb Raider reboot starring recent Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander.
Much like her predecessor, Vikander does her best with the role of Lara Croft, but is ultimately let down by the movie that surrounds her. Dull, uninvolving, formulaic, tiresome; really, any middle-of-the road adjective could be used to describe Tomb Raider. It isn't an awful movie, just an inoffensively bland one that becomes the latest in a long line of projects that have failed to break the video game movie curse.
Tomb Raider's box office haul of $273.5m was enough to break even after marketing costs, but it didn't turn a profit either. That pretty much sums up the project in microcosm; it didn't make money, but it didn't lose money either. Essentially, there would be little difference if they hadn't even bothered making it at all.