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The ending of the Original Era offers a little bit more than 3, injecting Lara with more personality and expecting her to carry a more substantial narrative than she had so far in the series. Which Lara is this? The one where she dies at the end. ‘00s movies have a history of doing that to their female leads, be they Jessica Alba in Fantastic Four or Megan Fox in Transformers, and Jolie’s sequel Lara is another pushed into that trap.
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Her accent is somehow worse, and after getting some decent nuance in her performance the first time around, it’s like she’s been told her only motivation is sex appeal. I mean, that bit where she shoots paper targets in trees while on horseback wasn’t part of the movie, right? Jolie obviously filmed that for a completely different film, then the two directors bumped into each other in a hallway like high schoolers in a rom-com meet cute, and the reels got mixed up. The most frustrating thing is she wasn’t half bad at the character the first time around, but she’s all bad here. That this finishes above Chronicles and Shadow says a lot more about those than it does about Jolie’s second try at being Lara. The title is stupid and the movie is stupid. Which Lara is this? The second Angelina Jolie one.
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