I have been desperately attempting to write something for
the past few weeks and the creative well has dried
up temporarily. Ok, actually the past few years
have seen a dramatic decrease in my hard copy
output. Anyway, I have to keep my mind writing
somehow. The inspiration for this small work was
my favorite computer desktop graphic that I made
myself in the winter of 2000. The graphic is a
montage of images of actor Harrison Ford as the
intrepid Indiana Jones and model Lara Weller as
the famous female tomb raider, Lara Croft. At
the top of the picture is a very large logo combination
that reads Tomb
Raiders. The first word
is written in the familiar Tomb
Raider title font, the second obviously
being comprised of the famous fiery orange letters
of the title logo from the first film in the unforgettable
Indiana Jones series.
Mike French his Tomb
Raiders wallpaper. |
|
I had never really looked at the
two characters in such a side by side comparison
before. They seem to fit within the same universe,
and at a glance they are reflections of each other.
Both search for the treasures of lost civilizations
and sometimes stumble upon the legendary talismans
of Earth's mythical past. They are fearless
in their adventures, relentless in their searches,
and their ability to survive through extremely
deadly situations is unmatched and practically
legendary in itself. They both run from massive
boulders, dodge the many ancient traps that await
them in the temples of ages long vanished, and
engage their wayward competitors" in
amazing chases and escapes.
With all these similarities,
one would think that one is merely the gender
foil of the other, Lara Croft being the female
answer to Indiana Jones. Or, it could be interpreted
that Lara Croft is the daughter of Indiana Jones,
the archaeological adventurer of the 1990s. My
experience with these two characters inadvertently
forces me to dig underneath the surface. What
I find underneath is intriguing and thought provoking
to fans of pop-culture and fans of these characters
alike.
As many know, the adventurer is
not a new character in the human conscience. Even
if we limit ourselves to the media and literature
of the 20th century, forgetting Perseus and Robin
Hood, there are still hundreds of examples of
the adventurer chasing through the popular culture.
Tarzan, Zorro, and James Bond come to mind immediately.
Even with all of these twentieth century examples,
Indy and Lara fall into an even more exclusive
category of character. While the aforementioned
characters are heroes, swashbucklers, and secret
agents, each with their fair share of fantastic
action and adventure, they are markedly removed
from the club of which Indy and Lara have membership.
Lara Croft exploring
a tomb. |
|
With the discovery of King Tut's
tomb by Howard Carter in the 1920s, a new type
of adventurer would soon be born in the minds
of writers. As the exploits of the Tut dig were
exaggerated and embellished, these new adventurers,
the archaeologist and the explorer, took root.
Throughout the rest of the 20th century, the explorer
and the archaeologist were immortalized in the
media, especially the cinema. As early as the
1930s, films like Gunga
Din and Treasure
of the Sierra Madre were chronicling the
fictional exploits of brave explorers and treasure
seekers. This continued into the 1950s with films
like King Solomon's
Mines and Secret
of the Incas with Charlton Heston.
Their stories were very similar.
Rough and ready fighting men, usually in broad
brim hats and khakis, traveled across the globe
in search of ancient treasures and lost civilizations
while running from ambitious bad men that followed
them and the savage natives that usually populated
the ruins of the lost cities and temples. All
of these characters braved into the ancient unknown
searching for fortune and glory. At the pinnacle
of these heroes are Indiana Jones and Lara Croft,
easily the most popular of all fortune seeking
adventurers.
Indiana Jones first hit popular
culture in 1981 in the hit film, Raiders of
the Lost Ark. While there have been many attempts
to saddle him alongside James Bond as a character,
it is painfully obvious that these claims are
misguided. Indiana Jones is a direct descendant
of Alan Quartermain and others who sported the
leather jackets and revolvers while crawling through
Aztec temples and Egyptian tombs. Indy is the
definition of the early 20th century explorer,
living in an age where global discovery had given
way to historical discovery.
Indiana Jones is the quintessential
adventurer, with his leather jacket, felt hat,
army satchel, three- day beard, and bullwhip,
he is the ever-ready adventurer. A professor of
archaeology by day, and a global grave-robber
on his off-time, Indy scours the third world for
the lost treasures of legend while being pursued
by all types of unsavory people who would benefit
from stealing the fruits of his labor. Indy's
exploits skirt the borders of political conflict,
with the Nazis and the Communists alike sometimes
in pursuit of him.
Indiana Jones it seemed could never
be equaled in the mind of the popular culture.
To this day, he never has. The three Indiana Jones
films are the definition of cinematic adventure.
However, one character has been able to equal
his popularity in another corner of the media.
As the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, the legacy
of Nintendo and Sega had successfully
established video games as a mainstay of everyday
life in America and the bulk of Western
Civilization." As the technology expanded
in leaps and bounds, the visuals started to take
on some semblance of realism within the graphics
and the games evolved into more expansive, realistic
situations. In 1995, a company named Eidos
released a revolutionary video game called Tomb
Raider, and it starred a virtual character
named Lara Croft who would quickly surpass both
Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog as the industry's
most popular video game character.
A
mere glance at the box cover makes it clear that
Lara Croft was the gaming industry's answer
to Indiana Jones. In the title, the word Raider"
is prominent and the main character graces the
box cover with her back to an ancient wall, pistols
drawn. The game was a virtual Raiders
of the Lost Ark. Now the viewer controlled
the intrepid adventurer through a series of epic,
realistic tombs, temples, ruins, and caves. The
plot was a quintessential Indy film. Lara Croft,
our hero, finds a scion that hints at the existence
of Atlantis and a powerful talisman. In a race
against time with the corrupt Natla Corporation
on her heels, Lara Croft dodges traps, makes daring
leaps over bottomless caverns, solves ancient
mechanical puzzles, engages her pursuers in chases
and shootouts, faces an ancient evil that emanates
from the legendary talisman, and escapes the lost
Atlantean pyramid as it collapses down around
her.
Clearly, Lara Croft was the Indiana
Jones of the video game world. Even Indiana himself
could not compete with her in the video game realm.
The Indiana Jones game, Indiana Jones and the
Infernal Machine, which was modeled after
Tomb Raider in look and feel, could not
compete with the immense popularity of Lara Croft.
To date, she is the only video game character
to have graced the cover of fashion magazines
and to have appeared in car commercials.
Lara Croft is a female Indiana
Jones. But that statement must be augmented to
say that she is the Indiana Jones figure of the
1990s culture. It must be remembered that Indiana
Jones is a character born in the 1980s, when America
was looking backward to an idealized, romanticized
time period. He is the fearless male adventurer.
As the 1990s went into full swing, popular culture
started redefining the female character with countless
heroines in comics and games. Wonder Woman was
given a facelift by DC Comics, Catwoman
was given her own magazine, and new characters
like Witchblade and Lady Death dominated
the comics scene, while characters like Chun-Li,
Mai Shiranui, and Sonya Blade dominated the gaming
world. These new heroines followed a certain pattern.
They were all intelligent, extremely aggressive,
liberated physically and sexually, and all of
them were shown as unnaturally beautiful.
When Eidos introduced Lara
Croft, she was much the same as the rest of these
characters. However, there were marked exceptions
that led to her continued longevity. Not the least
of these exceptions was the idea that she was
inheriting the torch of adventure from Indiana
Jones. Unlike the comic heroines, Lara was not
a character that was passively stared at by readers.
Unlike the other gaming characters, she did not
exist within one limited scenario while making
silly poses of victory. In fact, the entire game
is shown from her back. Rather than watch Lara,
the gamer is forced to be Lara.
Where Lara fell in line with these
other 90s heroine was obvious. She is an extremely
beautiful, independently wealthy, liberated and
aggressive fortune seeker. Unlike the other heroines,
she does not run all over creation in her underwear.
Granted, Lara's outfit is not necessarily
practical for her exploits, but it comes nowhere
close to comparing with the obscenities that so
many of the other heroines of the time sported.
Lara Croft's look is truly a sign of the
times that she was created in. However, it must
be noted to Eidos' credit that her outfit
certainly retains a measure of functionality within
her environment.
The
true adventure hero always has a trademark outfit.
This is part of the genre. Indiana Jones has his
fedora, jacket, boots, and khakis. Lara Croft's
trademark outfit is a 90s evolution of the idea.
While the overall look of her outfit is partially
the result of 1990s media standards, the items
that comprise the outfit itself are identical
to what a modern day camper would use on a trek.
If Indiana Jones' khaki and leather outfit
is in line with the outdoors wear of the 1930s,
which it is, then Lara's khaki shorts, boots,
and spandex are the very definition of 1990s adventure
wear. In fact, I've passed many a Lara
Croft" on hikes in the Adirondacks and the
Appalachian Trail in recent years. Look at Laura
Dern's character in Steven Spielberg's
film, Jurassic Park,
and you will see an evident example of this 90s
clothing trend.
Lara's weaponry and adventure
gear also illustrate the new idea of adventure
and the new times in which Lara adventures. Unlike
Indiana Jones, who sports the revolver, bullwhip,
and military satchel, Lara arms herself with a
pair of nickel-plated automatic pistols and a
sport backpack. Her style is also markedly different
from Dr. Jones. In the age of America's fascination
with martial arts and Asian fighting styles, Lara
performs a number of unbelievable acrobatics in
contrast with Indiana's baser fisticuffs
and raw motor skills.
Lara Croft and Indiana Jones are,
at heart, the same characters. Their specifics
are very different however. While it is understandable
that the mediums of film and video gaming operate
at very narrative levels, which allow film to
probe much more deeply into the intricacies of
characters and games to delve deeper into the
specifics of action, these have contrasting effects
on Indy and Lara. (It should be noted at this
time that any information concerning these characters
will be pulled only from their canon"
sources, these being the three Indiana Jones films
staring Harrison Ford and the four Eidos
games with Lara Croft. Any licensed spin-offs
outside these mediums for either character usually
has contradictory information that was created
by a person other than the original creators.)
The largest contrast between them
is their relations with other people. We know
that Indiana Jones has a large romantic history
with a number of women that appear throughout
his adventures. Lara Croft's adventures are
completely devoid of a male love interest. Certainly,
there are male figures within the series that
make their passes at her, but she always declines.
In light of this, Lara is by default a colder
character than Indy. This may be the result of
the 1990s attempt to keep Lara politically correct
in attitude if not necessarily in appearance.
Indiana Jones is a professor of
archaeology at Barnett College. Lara Croft is
independently wealthy and ultimately unemployed.
Her occupation is her hobby and she has no apparent
reservations about it. It is very convenient for
the people at Eidos to set her up this
way because it gives them the freedom to explain
away things like her motorcycles, boats, mansion,
and the like. Lara has numerous amounts of gadgetry
at her disposal. Indy has what is on his person,
or what he can steal from the enemy.
Aside from all of these differing
character traits, the most important aspect of
their personas is the same. Their method of fortune
hunting is identical. Make no mistake. Indiana
Jones and Lara Croft are hardly archaeologists
in the field. They are fortune seekers, which
is a nicer way of saying grave robbers. While
it was more common in the 1920s and 1930s to pilfer
a temple of its precious riches and thereby gut
it at the heart, the rest of the 20th century
was spent developing intricate methods of cataloging
and preserving history through very involved and
delicate archaeology. There is no reason for Lara
Croft to employ the same bulldozing methods used
by Indiana Jones. The only reason she does so
is because that idea of exploration is part of
the mythos surrounding these types of characters
and why we are so indelibly drawn to them. Their
ability to break through ancient walls, force
entire temples to collapse around them, get away
with the gemstone or idol, and still remain blameless
and virtuous is quite a feat in itself.
Which brings us to the legendary,
canonized adventures themselves. If you look at
the three Indy films and the four Lara Croft games,
you will find striking parallels between each
one of them. The technical and nit-picky details
are obvious. Both the first Indy film, Raiders
of the Lost Ark, and the first Lara Croft
game, Tomb Raider,
share a common word. Whether or not Eidos
is paying homage to Indiana Jones' first
adventure is debatable, though they certainly
show their love for it in the first level when
we see the Ark of the Covenant in Lara's
home.
Tomb
Raider: The Last
Revelation poster. |
|
As the Indiana Jones movies
progressed, the title was always superceded by
the phrase, Indiana Jones and the
".
The character was now established and his name
used to sell the subsequent films. The same is
true for Lara Croft. After the first game, each
subsequent installment carried the phrase, The
Adventures of Lara Croft" with Tomb
Raider: The Last Revelation being the only
exception. Ironically, The
Last Revelation paralleled the final Indy
film, The Last Crusade,
not only in title, but also in a small amount
of story content. Just as the final Indy film
showed Indiana as a young boy on his first adventure
gaining his hat and scars, The
Last Revelation shows us a young Lara Croft
on her first adventure when she finds her trademark
backpack.
On a narrative level, the films
and the games parallel as well. Raiders
of the Lost Ark and Tomb
Raider both have a very serious edge to
their stories. Indy and Lara search for artifacts
of legend, the Ark and Atlantis respectively.
After running from greedy pursuers who attempt
to use our heroes' skills for their own advantage,
both find their treasures, but lose them just
as quickly when they discover that these artifacts
have unspeakable powers that almost destroy them
as well as their enemies. On a side note, both
Raiders of the Lost Ark
and Tomb Raider
begin in Peru and in both instances our heroes
find themselves pursued by giant boulders.
Lara Croft chased
by a boulder. |
|
Tomb
Raider II and Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom also closely
parallel one another. Both stories center around
very dark circumstances involving ancient, hidden
cults that utilize human sacrifice and worship
Satanic gods. At their center, these deviants
have possession of mysterious, legendary treasures
that Indy and Lara must obtain by braving the
darkest and most dangerous temples in creation,
dodging uncountable traps, and fighting off scores
of homicidal cultists. In the end of these adventures,
Indy and Lara are able to make off with some part
of their quest. Indy obtains a Sankara Stone and
Lara captures the Dragon Dagger.
By the third adventure in the series,
the stories take extreme turns towards the supernatural
more than ever before. Arguably, the alternate
dimension within Tomb Raider II surpasses
anything seen in Tomb Raider III in terms
of supernatural content, but the entire plot of
III centers around an alien meteorite and the
lifeform inside it. Indiana Jones and the Last
Crusade hinges on the Holy Grail, an immortal
knight, and immortality as a reality. Tomb
Raider: The Last Revelation as mentioned earlier,
takes the narrative parallel one step further
and gives us a glimpse of a young Lara Croft just
as Last Crusade shows us Indiana as a young
boy.
It would be foolhardy and stubborn
to insist that Indiana Jones had no influence
on the creation of Lara Croft. Similarly, it would
be rash to think that Lara's modern commercial
success has not influenced the Indy marketing
machine in some ways, the game Infernal Machine
being the most obvious example. In any case, they
are certainly from the same realm of the imagination
and, in my opinion, are the two coolest characters
in mainstream culture today.
Michael French, Lifelong Indy Fan
and Lara Croft Enthusiast.
|