“Like Pulling The Plug”: Lara Croft’s Survival Sin In 2018 Tomb Raider Reboot Spotted By Expert

2018’s Tomb Raider gets put under the microscope by a survival expert, and the titular heroine makes one crucial error. Directed by Roar Uthaug, the latest adaptation of the hit video game franchise introduces actor Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft. The film, which earned mixed reviews from critics, chronicles one of Croft’s earliest adventures when she embarks on a mission to rescue her missing father from a remote island.

Now, in a recent video for Insider, survival expert Hazen Audel breaks down one scene from Tomb Raider in which Vikander’s hero sustains a serious injury during a parachute crash landing.

The scene in question features Croft being impaled by a sharp thorn or wooden shard, and the expert reveals that she made a crucial medical mistake when treating the wound. Check out Audel’s full comment and rating below:

“A lot of trees, plants, shrubs are trying to protect themselves from being eaten, so they have thorns, barbs. Being snagged by little thorns and big thorns is sometimes a daily event. You want to leave it in place and try to get medical attention. If you don’t have anybody there to help you and you’re not going to be able to get medical attention for weeks maybe you’re probably going to have to do something about that and get it out of you.

“You got to kind of look at it like pulling the plug and then you can bleed to death coming out of that puncture wound. I think she’d be even in more pain than what is portrayed. I think it would be a stretch to give it a three [out of ten].”

Alicia Vikander Deserved Another Shot At Tomb Raider

What’s Next For Lara Croft?

Lara Croft was first played by Angelina Jolie back in 2001, a role that she would reprise for one sequel in 2003. Neither film was particularly well-received by critics, and the second somewhat underwhelmed at the box office, resulting in Jolie’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 3 never happening. With new talent in front of and behind the camera, 2018’s Tomb Raider was poised to kickstart a new era for the franchise, and a sequel was put into development not long after the film’s release.

In 2022, however, with the MGM rights to the Tomb Raider brand having expired, the sequel was shelved, and Vikander’s tenure as the hero has now seemingly come to an end. Although the 2018 movie wasn’t a runaway hit critically or commercially, it certainly showed promise, and Vikander herself was a major high point. The actor brought a vibrant, more scrappy edge to the character, and the movie was decidedly more gritty than its predecessors, a tone that would have been interesting to explore in a sequel.

What’s more, the Tomb Raider ending sees Croft come into possession of two matching pistols, her iconic weapons from the game, teasing that the sequel would’ve seen the hero really come into her own. Now, however, a new Tomb Raider TV show is reportedly in the works at Amazon from Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and it’s expected that the series will reboot the character once more as part of a larger planned universe of projects.