A Woman’s Agency in Tomb Raider (2013)

• Source: Eidos Interactive

Tomb Raider
Publisher: Eidos Interactive/Crystal Dynamics
Genre: Action with RPG elements
Buy on Steam

Abuse and assault are terrifying to live through, and difficult to survive. They leave a seed of violence, of anger, a desire for violent retribution that can never be satisfied. The rebooted Tomb Raider series explores this by showing the beginning of the story of Lara Croft. She’s still a rich, educated, white woman, if she was a man she’d be a British Bruce Wayne. She has dead parents, daddy issues to boot, a need to prove herself to the world and laboring under the microaggressions of the archeologist she’s working with.

And then, as it must, it all goes to Hell. The young woman whose life would be the subject of a late-December prestige drama gets dropped into a survival-horror movie. A ship breaks in half in a storm, she nearly drowns, and soon after she’s taken prisoner to be dangled, alone, next to other strung-up corpses. The eventual mysticism that’s the hallmark of the Tomb Raider series is intriguing, but it’s the growth, or possibly descent of Lara that’s the real achievement of the series, especially for the lore-hounds who seek out every collectible and read every journal.

Agency can be a difficult challenge in video games, as agency is concerned primarily with the story of the protagonist being their own choices and decisions, for better or worse. There are some indications of agency in Lara Croft, in that it was her decision for the Endurance to go to Dragon Island, but it can be said that most of everything Lara does afterward is reactive to the events around her. This isn’t to say it weakens her character, as she initially finds herself in a scenario where little can be done. In the beginning, “survive” is her only goal, but she makes more conscious choices as the game goes on.

A critique of the series, particularly the first chapter, is the quickness at which Lara is desensitized to violence. At first, after flight dominates her instincts, and pure survival and the will to live take over, the only real challenge in the first open area is finding a bow and hunting a deer for food. Upon making her shot, and finding the deer whimpering in pain as it bleeds out, she whispers, “Sorry…” as she puts it out of its misery. She’s a young woman scared out of her mind, but she manages to hold onto that compassion, or as much as she can, when hunting an animal.

It’s understandable that after hunting the deer and finally getting someone on the radio, her first instinct is to ask them to come and get her. She’s terrified, after all, and most people would rather wait for rescue than chance the unknown. Even when she does find some of her friends, the de facto leader, Reyes, has already taken charge, and Lara is relieved to let someone else make the decisions. It’s only when she’s left with the group’s primadonna archeologist that she resumes making decisions and problem-solving on her own, because as before Reyes found her, no one else is going to help her.

A common adage in regard to taking a life is that “the first one’s always the hardest”. In the scene linked, at about the 1:04:03, Lara has been captured, wrists bound behind her back. Surrounded by both her crewmates and her captors, all men. One of them, who captured her earlier, throws her against a tree and acts in a way that implies that since Lara is one of the first women that’s been on the island in years, she’s likely going to be sexually assaulted. It’s a brief shot, to set up what happens later when Lara attempts to escape.

When the man finds her a minute later, he taunts her with “I always find them…”, implying Lara isn’t the first woman he’s done this to. At first, Lara knees him in the groin to attempt escape, but it isn’t as effective as it’s portrayed in the movies. When he presses on her again, she escalates by biting off a chunk of his ear. It’s in line with women’s self-defense: there are no rules, there’s no such thing as fighting dirty, escape is the only option, so do whatever you need to in order to get away. It’s in that moment that Lara realizes that she’s either going to be raped, killed, or both. What follows is a struggle for a gun, and shooting the potential rapist in the head (after shooting him in the groin, while looking away).

She’s clearly shocked, and repulsed, and there’s no “Sorry…” this time. She falls to her knees, crying, both from the traumatic near-death/rape experience and taking a human life. Before she lets it sink in, though, she runs as the cultists are still searching, particularly for her. It’s in the following sequence, where she finds a clip for the gun, where once again, it’s self-defense, but she kills two more men, the aiming reticle visibly shaking to simulate the difficulty, anxiety, and panic of drawing a gun on a human being, and still firing anyway. After that, though, the shakiness is gone.

A character claiming control over their story after taking a life is a known trope, but Lara’s journey to independence isn’t immediate. She would rather defer to an authority figure, or only goes off on missions at first because someone else told her to do it. It isn’t until later in the game that the story’s direction is a result of Lara’s choices and plans, when her friends begin to see her as an equal rather than a burden. She defies orders to follow her own beliefs, comes up with solutions and attempts to solve them herself, and even the final battle is her own planning, her decision to keep moving forward. Her growth continues throughout the rest of the series, as the places she goes to, the leads she investigates are a result of her choices and research, with characters following her instead of the other way around. She becomes more of a leader, even if she's only leading herself.

In Tomb Raider, though, it has to be established who Lara was at the very beginning, that she was a young woman whose surrogate father figure took her to the shooting range because her own father was never interested, who liked rock climbing, and going on archeological digs to connect to her family heritage, but definitely not a action hero. It’s important to see that growth in a character, for her to take control of her story.

Otherwise she’d just be an faux-acrobat with large breasts and booty shorts.