Elegy for the American Imagination

Sophie Turner as Lara Croft

Amazon Prime Video has released first-look promo art for their announced Lara Croft: Tomb Raider TV series. Irish actress Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones) has the lead, and appears remarkably like the video game character, though her measurements look more realistic. Turmer becomes the third live-action performer to depict Lara Croft, after Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander. Amazon also becomes the third studio to control the adaptation rights.

I’m sure Amazon’s production will be fine. The mere fact that previous adaptations have received lukewarm reviews and middling revenues, before descending into development hell for the sequels, proves nothing. And audiences’ overwhelming indifference to video game adaptations like Super Mario Brothers, Resident Evil, and Street Fighter tells us nothing worth knowing about yet another adaptation’s likelihood of commercial success. I’ll keep an open mind.

But seriously, who wants another Lara Croft adaptation? What market niche demanded we try this again? Streaming TV services require truly massive audiences to ensure manageable amortized budgets, so Amazon certainly expects enough viewers to show interest. Their willingness to invest in a thirty-year-old franchise, which hasn’t released a new game in eight years, says they want something audiences can snuggle into, like a favorite blanky.

My friends know where I’m going with this, because I’ve said it so frequently. This is another reiteration of Hollywood’s persistent fear of innovation. Tomb Raider joins Frank Herbert’s Dune, Stephen King’s Carrie, and Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man as franchises which have been adapted three times, not counting sequels. Second adaptations are looming for the Twilight and Harry Potter novels. TV networks keep resurrecting shows like Battlestar Galactica and Hawaii Five-O.

Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft

This partly reflects changes in the media landscape. Sarah Kendzior writes that, as networked computer technology makes it possible for writers and designers to work from anywhere, the Big Five studios have become unreceptive to portfolios from applicants who don’t have a Los Angeles-area return address. Giblin and Doctorow describe how consolidation between studios, agencies, and distributors turn creativity into a package deal, not an artistic exploration.

But recent events have convinced me something deeper is afoot. Those who control the levers of power have so much riding on their decisions that they dare not attempt anything imaginative or risky, because they have too much to lose. The creatives controlling Hollywood, Broadway, and Nashville are highly visible, because we expect their inventive stories to charm our intellect. But the same moribund imagination plagues our politics and economics.

Democratic politicians run on promises to resurrect past economic promise. From President Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In,” to President Biden’s promise of a post-Taco Republican “Epiphany,” to the very existence of  Hilary Clinton, Democrats keep yearning for a storied past, probably in the 1990s. Meanwhile, President Taco’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, locates greatness in a lost era, like King Arthur or Pecos Bill.

Violence is always a failure of imagination. The violence we’ve witnessed this month in Venezuela and Minneapolis reflects a power structure terminally allergic to compromise and innovation. Just as Hollywood can’t imagine new blockbusters, forcing them to revisit Star Wars and Batman, our leaders can’t imagine governance without burning cities like General Sherman. Faced with disagreement, the administration’s deputies can only imagine gunfire on unarmed minivan moms.

Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft

Eidos Interactive released the first Tomb Raider game in 1996, the same year President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal protection to same-sex marriage, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which placed work requirements on federal poverty protection. There is no causal relationship between these, of course. But Lara Croft’s return definitely calls back to another time when America’s government attacked the defenseless.

Put another way, Lara Croft, Lucasfilm, and the Department of Homeland Security all promise their audiences that they don’t have to think. They allow Americans to subsume themselves into a property they’ve always enjoyed, whether it’s a game, a movie, or a lily-white national complexion. But to maintain that promise, the execution must become increasingly extravagant: more explosions, bigger confrontations, louder guns.

Business, media, and government leaders can’t imagine new approaches—at least without jeopardizing their chokehold on power. They offer the same loud, but ultimately disappointing, options we’ve purchased before. Challenging the monopoly is too costly for working creatives, no matter how imaginative, to even try. So we repeat the same dull, unimaginative techniques, hoping the outcome will somehow be different.

Somebody must be first to break the cycle. But without guaranteed returns, the establishment will remain too scared to try.