While there's a long tradition of video game spin-offs from films, the traffic in the other direction has been less profitable. In the run-up to the new Lara Croft movie, Steve Pratt looks at the action heroine who rewrote the rules.

This was the moment that no one, especially not action girl Lara Croft, could have predicted. The curvaceous beauty with fighting skills as impressive as her figure was beaten by a pair of youngsters in the fight for top honours at the US box office.

The junior agents in Spy Kids 3D: Game Over shot to the top of the movie charts in the opening week, leaving the second Lara Croft Tomb Raider movie lagging behind in a poor fourth place.

The multi-million dollar action adventure, based on one of the world's top-selling computer games, was thrashed by a low budget film set inside an imaginary video game.

The makers of Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle Of Life, which goes on release in cinemas in this country next week, will be hoping for better results in European cinemas.

Lara's lacklustre box office performance Stateside shouldn't be taken as an indication that the attraction of transferring games from the computer to the big screen is waning. It's barely begun, although the success rate is not impressive.

The games people play in the privacy of their own homes aren't necessarily what they want to enjoy in the company of other cinemagoers. Players are often disappointed by the big screen interpretation, while those who haven't played the game wonder what all the fuss was about.

That won't stop Hollywood trying to exploit the video games industry. Studios will turn anything into a film, even a Disneyland theme park ride, as they have with the summer's biggest hit Pirates Of The Caribbean - which is now a video game too.

The cinema and video game industries feed off each other. Blockbuster movies including The Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, X-Men, Hulk, The Mummy, Shrek and Men In Black have become games. And bestselling games have become movies as the cinema hits of the summer become the must-have gifts for Christmas.

Film-makers know that video games manufacturers can provide them with valuable brand names that then can be readily marketed. Latest figures show the games market growing faster than ever before. In the UK, spending on the leisure software market last year was double the size of the British video rental market and 1.4 times more than cinema box office spending.

"These figures clearly demonstrate the commercial strengths of an industry rich in creativity and entertainment value," says Roger Bennett, director general of the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA).

Translating all this creativity and entertainment from a silicone chip to the silver screen has mainly eluded film-makers. Ironically, it was the first Lara Croft movie with a worldwide gross of $300m that was generally acknowledged to have broken the mould and shown that video game transfers could work.

This was ticket money, not reviews talking. Critics didn't think much of the first Lara Croft screen adventure. "Trivial nonsense, a worthless farago of stupefying boredom," suggested one reviewer. Another was even more damning, claiming that the film "has the distinction of being a major motion picture that's far less imaginative, and quite a bit more stupid, than the interactive game it's based on".

Most did agree, however, that statuesque Angelina Jolie made a pretty good virtual sex siren made flesh and blood as Lara. "She does seem like the creation of a masculine cyber-fantasy," in the words of one fan.

Before Tomb Raider, video game adaptations such as Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, Wing Commander and Double Dragon had failed to find favour with either critics or audiences.

Video games with their non-stop action, cartoon strip characters and lack of strong narrative - attempting to get from one level of the game to another hardly counts as plot development - resulted in film versions that were rambling and uninvolving, adding up to little more than mindless, violent entertainment.

Only the 1995 martial arts game-turned-movie Mortal Kombat came close to pulling it off and reproducing "some of the visceral excitement of the original".

Newcastle-born Paul Anderson directed that picture, and then another successful video game adaptation, Resident Evil, last year. The success of that made American studios eager to buy rights to new hit game titles.

Some fans complained that the movie wasn't as gruesome as the game. But Anderson, clearly aware of the cinematic limitations of games, points out that the film was only inspired by the Resident Evil game and was more of a prequel than a straight adaptation.

Anderson and his producing partner Jeremy Bolt are keen, through their company Impact Pictures, to show that games can work as movies. They have several more adaptations in development, as well as a sequel to Resident Evil currently in production.

"One thing Paul learned from making Mortal Kombat is that you've got to be fairly loyal to the game, but you've got to give fans something more," says Bolt.

Both Lara Croft and Resident Evil, with their strong, sexy heroines, helped establish that women can lead action movies. Hollywood producers have long resisted this, believing only macho men like Schwarzenegger and Stallone are box office friendly and that young male audiences would be scared off by female action leads. But the first Lara Croft film's opening US weekend of $47m was the highest for a film with a female star.

The failure of the second Lara Croft adventure in the US is all the more surprising considering that the makers have taken the trouble to attempt to put right the weaknesses of the first by introducing a strong story, flesh and blood characters, meaty drama and a sense of jeopardy.

This is only a minor setback. Film-makers will continue to use games as inspiration. Sometimes they'll even collaborate with the games industry.

The Wachowski brothers helped write the script for Enter The Matrix, which has original clips with stars from the movie.

The game that was intended to complement Matrix Reloaded, released in cinemas earlier this year. Playing the game would help solve some of the mysteries in the movie.

What it couldn't do was explain the perfect formula for turning a hit game into an equally popular picture.

* Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life (12A) has advance screenings in cinemas on Thursday and goes on general release on Friday.