A new Tomb Raider film is on its way to theaters, and from the looks of it, it's unlike anything we've ever seen from the franchise, mixing and matching from the plots and characters of the video games Tomb Raider: A Survivor is Born and its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider. The games -- and likely the film -- revolve around a young Lara Croft (played by Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander), learning to become a capable survivor and an explorer of ancient tombs, albeit a bit of a reckless one.

It's incredibly rare for a video game film adaptation to truly succeed, and considering an an adaption of Tomb Raider has already been done, it makes it all the more important for this reboot to offer audiences and fans of the video games something special and true to Lara Croft's iconic character.

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Already, fans may note that this particular iteration of Lara Croft is quite different than the one they perhaps grew up with. This one is noticeably different from the quick-witted, well-trained, dual-pistol-wielding archaeologist who let nothing, not even ancient Atlantean mutants, stand in the way of undiscovered relics of great power. There was a film adaptation of that Lara Croft, way back in 2001.

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Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was directed by Simon West and stars Iain Glen, Daniel Craign and of course, Angelina Jolie as the titular character as she races to stop the Illuminati from acquiring an ancient and powerful artefact-- the Triangle of Light-- capable of controlling time and space. It had a lot of flaws and was panned critically, but its depiction of Lara was quite faithful to the classic video game series, even if its plot wasn't. Still, there were moments that shone through and kept it fun for moviegoers and video game fans alike.

Quite a few moments in that film managed to capture the qualities we loved about the classic Lara Croft as well as the spirit of the video games. Some scenes were action-packed and some managed to maintain a somewhat goofy sense of mystery, just like the video games, except it was all done without the overly emphatic nods many video game film adaptations are guilty of including. Here are just a few of the scenes we're talking about.

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S.I.M.O.N says...

The first scene of the original film does a great job at introducing us to Lara Croft's world as our heroine runs through an ancient Egyptian tomb, clutching her twin pistols in preparation for something. She's soon set upon by a robotic monster and proceeds to unload every bullet she has into it. We find out soon after that it was programmed to guard a crystal...one that held Lara's mixtape. The whole thing was a training simulation.

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Prior to that knowledge, the whole thing would have seemed quite random with robots guarding ancient tombs. However the scene captured everything we loved seeing in the video games: Lara's dual pistols, the giant monsters that required a thousand shots to defeat, Lara backflipping out of harm's way and of course, ancient tombs. It may not have been a fight we had seen before from those games, but thanks to these minor details, it all felt somehow familiar.

Cambodia

Soon after discovering the secrets her father left behind for her to uncover, Lara travels to Cambodia, to the ruins of an ancient temple, said to house the first half of the Triangle of Light. She finds that she isn't alone in her search and that Manfred Powell, an enigmatic "laywer" and a member of the Illuminati, has arrived ahead of her. Within the temple, careful observation, planning and reluctant cooperation, allow them to solve the temple's riddle, unlocking the first half of the triangle just in time for the second phase of the planetary alignment.  Unlocking it however, comes at a cost. The inhuman statues that surround the temple's interior come to life.

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The armed thugs and magical monsters littered throughout an area make the scene feel like it came straight out of one of the video games, particularly Tomb Raider: Chronicles, in which Lara did have to fight through living gladiator statues and a three-headed monster sculpture. The games were filled with odd enemies like these, which is why it was fun when they appeared in the film and just as thrilling.

The Final Boss Batt-- er...The Final Act

The end of the film takes Lara, Powell and Alex West to Siberia, where they come across one final tomb. Inside, they find a giant model of the solar system and the last half of the triangle. Soon after completing this final puzzle, Lara and Powell turn against one another, as expected, and after a brief moment in which Lara actually controls time, she faces off against Powell as the temple collapses around them.

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It's appropriate that the climax of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider featured a simple duel between two unarmed combatants without supernatural powers. In the games, Lara fought a lot of supernatural creatures and deities, but many of the bosses that preceded them were just human, like Pierre DuPont and Tony, or the infamous skating kid assassin.

The film had a lot to draw from, with five video games behind it, but the filmmakers chose to create a completely new adventure, one that, as we said, adapted the essence of the video game series as opposed to specific details.

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The upcoming reboot has clearly chosen to do the opposite and adapt the events and characters of the new Tomb Raider video game series. That may prove to be limiting, even with its considerably larger budget, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the film can't completely outdo its predecessor, especially since there are quite a lot of fantastic action sequences available for it to translate into live-action.

Alicia Vikander gets rough in 2018's Tomb Raider

The most important thing for Tomb Raider is that it's able to act as a reminder by translating the qualities fans adored in the video games to cinema, not just the great scenes, which would definitely be great to see on the big screen. After all, the video games themselves, like many others nowadays, already offer plenty of cinematic moments of their own, so simply turning that into a live-action film without any of the spirit, would be effectively pointless. That's the mistake most video game film adaptations make. By the looks of it however, the upcoming film seems to be on the right path to success.

Opening March 16, 2018, Tomb Raider stars Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, Daniel Wu as Lu Ren, Walter Goggins as Mathias and Dominic West as Lord Richard Croft.