Netflix Deserves Credit For Successfully Adapting One Of The Best Games Of The Century

Published Oct 21, 2026, 2:00 AM EDT

Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

Netflix has an adventure series that adapts one of the best video game franchises of the century, and it deserves credit for creating this exciting show ahead of the franchise's next project. Video game adaptations, be they movies or TV shows, have not always turned out great. In fact, for a long time, many of these types of projects ended up failing.

Even when you got major stars, as was the case with the Assassin's Creed movie starring Michael Fassbender, it was not confirmed that the project would be a hit. Thankfully, in recent years, video game movies and TV shows have started to be more consistent in terms of hits. For instance, some of the best TV shows in recent memory are video game adaptations.

That includes projects like Prime Video's Fallout, HBO's The Last of Us, and more. Netflix is not sitting out of that game. Looking at Netflix's best TV shows, one of those standing near the very top of the list is Arcane, an animated fantasy masterpiece. The medium is perfect for video game adaptations, and Netflix has used it for another franchise beyond its League of Legends adaptation.

Choose the movie with the higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

That TV show in question is Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Over the years, there have been multiple Tomb Raider adaptations. Some of them were better than others. That said, when it comes to Netflix's two-season animated series, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is much better than some might lead you to believe.

Netflix's Tomb Raider Series Is A Complex & Energetic Adaptation

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft was created to serve as a direct sequel to the Survivor trilogy. That video game franchise included 2013's Tomb Raider, 2015's Rise of the Tomb Raider, and 2018's Shadow of the Tomb Raider. These are the three latest Tomb Raider games to be released, not counting any remasters. The Netflix adventure series connects to the games in a masterful way, serving as the bridge between the Survivor trilogy and the original 1996 Tomb Raider game. As such, it is the perfect project for fans of the franchise who want to be up-to-date in Tomb Raider lore.

Additionally, Netflix's Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft comes with a star-studded voice cast. Perfectly cast as Lara Croft is Marvel Cinematic Universe Peggy Carter actress Hayley Atwell. The star is someone who could have just as easily played Lara Croft in live-action without missing a beat. In animated form, Atwell infuses the iconic video game character with her usual charisma, snark, and grit. Joining Atwell is a cast that features known live-action actors, such as The Boys' Karen Fukuhara and The Mandalorian's Ming-Na Wen, as well iconic voice actors like Nolan North, Marisha Ray, Matt Mercer, and more.

While it is true that Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft ended up being somewhat divisive among the video game franchise's fanbase, looking at all the Lara Croft appearances in live-action and animation, the Netflix adventure series is easily one of the best. In fact, I would only put it below Alicia Vikander's 2018 Tomb Raider reboot when taking into account all the adaptation of the video game franchise outside its original medium. In only two seasons and 16 episodes, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft managed to deliver quite a few exciting adventures.

More than just recreating the intensity of the games, the puzzles, the lore, and so on, what makes Netflix's Tomb Raider series so enjoyable is the character work. Lara is perhaps at her most complex yet in Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, with Atwell playing a version of the character that is not a fully infallible action hero and who wrestles with her past, including the hard events she endured in the Survivor trilogy. Before Prime Video's upcoming live-action Tomb Raider series starring Sophie Turner arrives, Netflix's Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft deserves credit for its emotionally complex adaptation.