We can all agree that Lara Croft has been through a lot in the Tomb Raider franchise. From fighting tigers, smugglers and even a T-Rex, to falling into some terrible traps, there's a lot that would have taken a toll on her mental health. While she remained mostly unphased in the original series, the 2013 reboot depicted her struggling.
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Tomb Raider's Netflix show leans toward the wider cast, but they can't offer the support she needs
But the recently launched Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft on Netflix actually showed Lara dealing with the effects of what she had been through. Rhianna Pratchett, the writer of the 2013 reboot, was pleased to see the show touch on the subject.
Rhianna Pratchett is glad the Netflix series touched on the subject of PTSD
Speaking to Eurogamer, Pratchett mentioned that she has yet to see Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, but is “glad to hear that the series has touched on Lara's PTSD after her experiences” on the island of Yamatai. She also mentioned that even if they wanted to, “was an area we didn't get to explore in the games”.
It seems like Pratchett and the narrative team had some ideas on how to focus on the subject matter, but in the end they didn't get to do it in the game. “I had the idea that she might have these scenarios from the first game that had gotten a little twisted in her mind,” she said in an interview last year. “You'd be on the London Underground, or a street at night, and then something would happen that was a kind of fusion in her head of real life and what she'd been through on the island. She'd sort of relive traumatic experiences she'd been through against a new background.”
Unfortunately, Crystal Dynamics was against this idea and wanted to focus more on her relationship with her father, which Prattchet wasn't a big fan of.
Netflix's Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft has been received with mixed reviews. While the show itself was pretty mediocre at best, it seems that some people were upset that a woman who performs acrobatic feats and ledges would have a muscular figure.
On the video game side, Tomb Raider has something to celebrate, as lifetime sales for the series hit 100 million earlier this month. Crystal Dynamics revealed that the series reached this huge milestone 28 years after the release of the original game.
Tomb Raider (2013)
A young woman to a hardened survivor. Armed only with raw instincts and the ability to push beyond the limits of human endurance, Lara Croft must struggle to unravel the dark history of a forgotten island in order to escape its relentless grasp.
