Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (Netflix series)

[Tom Guycott]

Originally Posted by ClockShot I never understood the "it" factor the Lara Croft character eventually received as time went by. [...] I can understand that in terms of bringing a video game character to something like film or TV, she's easy to do. But let's not forget, she's not the First Lady of ass kicking in video gaming. That title belongs to Samus Aran.

The "first" is usually never the most successful. Hell, the real "first lady of ass kicking in video gaming" is technically Ms. Pac-Man. But running with what you meant and going with Samus, part of the deal there was that it was a SURPRISE that Samus was a girl. Everything that crossed the pond referred to her in a masculine or neutral tense, and seeing she had long hair and tits was a reward for speedrunning. Then you get chicks like Chun-Li and Blaze Fielding that set up a lot of games and games media to strive to set up characters like them, "but sexier".

I would say that it's similar to Ronda Rousey. She gets so much credit for "popularizing" women's MMA, but the prototype for that mold was Gina Carano. Ronda came by when the world was ready for it; Gina, a bit beforehand. Same with Lara Croft.

Lara was very much a product of place and time. She led an action game - a cutting edge (for 1996) action game at that. She checked the boxes for "girls with guns" people, not being an also-ran character with more masculine options availiable, horny dudes, horny chicks, and became one of the earliest examples of a newly budding ubiquitous internet pop-culture zeitgeist. And even there she wasn't first; she dethroned Sunny.