The new, gritty Lara But it's also Lara Croft as anyone could have guessed you'd be seeing her soon enough. Reboots are in fashion, and there's a formula to follow. Take your main character and smear him or her in grit. Expose the dark, gritty origins behind an iconic story. Replace supernatural magic/technology with knives, ropes, blunt instruments, and other appropriately gritty weaponry. Use the word "gritty" as much as possible. Filter everything through a brownish black lens. Toss in some psychological turmoil, maybe some Muay Thai (the grittiest of martial arts) and you're good to go.
Take Devil May Cry, which announced a reboot of its own earlier this year. Similar to Lara Croft, Dante loses his brilliant white mane and wisecrackin' levity in exchange for dark locks and teen angst. For some it was welcome news, considering the last installment involved an operatic interchange between the main character and a mad scientist chicken knight.
When Grand Theft Auto reinvented itself with GTA IV, it took us back to Liberty City, only this time it was less whimsical – filled with trash and consequences. The cars handled more realistically and Niko Bellic was as dark and troubled as the city he tore through on his quest for vengeance. Serious grit.
Even Mickey, who starred in Epic Mickey, his first video game for over a decade, wasn't immune to reemerging dark and troubled. Mario has avoided that fate, but There Will Be Brawl gives us a hint of what that might look like.
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Twilight Princess and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, while not strictly the same, worked along similar lines. Take something familiar, make it darker, make it realer. It's as if nobody wants to say: "Classic Game Franchise: Now more colorful, and generally more friendly!" Legend of Zelda tried that with Wind Waker, and longtime fans balked.“
The most iconic dark and gritty reboots don't come from the world of video games, but they follow the formula. Batman Begins and Casino Royale both took franchises that had grown bloated and ridiculous (remember the ice palace, the space laser, and glacial windsurfing sequences in Die Another Day?) and stripped them down to some essentially uncomfortable questions about their main characters. Who are these men that fight, risk their lives, and in the case of James Bond, kill? Who bothers being a hero?
When the first Tomb Raider was released in 1996, the world was a very different place. The tech boom was just beginning, and the economy was picking up. The U.S. sat high in the world as an unchallenged superpower. The N64 was the most powerful machine on the market, and Jar Jar Binks was but a glimmer in George Lucas' eye.
Today, optimism exists in rare, precious corners. The millennium began with 9/11 and continued on through Hurricane Katrina and the beginnings of two long, painful wars. The ice castles of Die Another Day broke in a financial crisis that shook the basic foundation of free market capitalism. Natural disasters now follow quickly on each others' heels in what optimists hope is just a brief moment of hell, but others suspect is a new norm brought on by anthropogenic climate change.
The successes humanity can count are themselves dangerous and carry uncertain consequences, like the killing of Osama Bin Laden or the democratic revolts in the Middle East.
It makes for a world where presenting a clean and simple hero narrative seems disingenuous: by this point, we know better. Even the superhero reboots that have filled the past decade have found their most compelling characters in brooding men that struggle with their identity as hero, like Wolverine, Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark.
Like the new Lara Croft and Dante will, they ended up heroes nonetheless. Hero narratives are even more important in troubled times – we have to know that there is indeed a final boss, and that he can be beaten. But to be relevant today, it seems that writers can't help but confront the notion that those heroes walk a nastier road to that final boss than we had all hoped.
Of course, Metal Gear Solid: Rising seems to be re-imagining the series as an insane slasher and occasional watermelon-slicing simulation, so there is some latitude.
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Dave Thier is a freelance journalist whose work has also appeared in The Atlantic, AOL News, The New Republic, Wired and The Daily.
