{"id":426060,"date":"2026-01-20T19:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T19:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/426060\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T19:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T19:00:10","slug":"angelina-jolie-or-alicia-vikander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/426060\/","title":{"rendered":"Angelina Jolie or Alicia Vikander?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomb Raider fans breathed a sigh of relief last week when Amazon\/MGM unveiled the first photo of Sophie Turner<\/a> as video game adventurer Lara Croft, illustrating the upcoming streaming show\u2019s fidelity to Lara\u2019s iconic \u201890s look. Or anyway, presumably some of them did. Whoever\u2019s running the socials over at GameStop, presumably unencumbered with keeping retail locations open, registered a vague but pointed<\/a> displeasure, announcing that \u201cthis is not Lara Croft,\u201d full stop. (Actually, it was fashionably unpunctuated, to prove that GameStop, despite being a corporation, is just like you, the extremely online complainer.) Though this is probably just a play for sympathy from some imagined chud demographic, it does opportunistically express the truth that getting some Lara Croft fans to accept a live-action iteration of the character will be an uphill battle. Case in point: this TV reboot follows not huge flops or screw-ups, but Tomb Raider adaptations that were among the biggest and best video game movies ever \u2014- though not within the same movie, at the same time.<\/p>\n

This year actually marks the 25th anniversary of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the 2001 feature film that put the character on the big screen, where she was first embodied by a British-accented Angelina Jolie. The movie was a massive financial success, raking in nearly $300 million worldwide<\/a>. This made it the biggest-grossing video game adaptation ever made<\/a>, a position it held for the rest of the decade. It was also Jolie\u2019s biggest movie ever at the time, firmly establishing her as a box office star. Less prestigious was the way the movie pioneered a form of particularly disposable big-ticket entertainment, more temporary arcade distraction than immersive action-adventure. (Now may be a good time to note that I do not play the Tomb Raider games. But I will watch nearly any movie where an adventurer raids a tomb.)<\/p>\n

There were bad summer movies before Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, of course \u2014 dozens if not hundreds. I wouldn\u2019t even call the 2001 movie especially bad. It\u2019s briskly paced, endearingly ridiculous, and even if it\u2019s not quite as delightful as \u201cIndiana Jones knockoff from the director of Con Air\u201d should be, it\u2019s at least slick-looking junk. (It would probably be greeted as a blessed relief in some more recent summer seasons.) What holds Lara Croft: Tomb Raider back (and feels more predictive of future bad summer movies) is the simulation-level weightlessness of it all; it\u2019s like a demo reel that someone went ahead and filled out into a 100-minute feature. Jolie, to her credit, leans into it, playing Lara as unflappable and a little smug, truly larger than life. (Makes sense: Who wouldn\u2019t be smug about a big payday for playing the hottest, coolest woman in the world?) The PG-13 film is too machine-tooled and sanitized for sex, but more than sexualized enough for Lara to take a shower within the first 10 minutes, a distillation of its teen-boy target market.<\/p>\n

Despite this (or by tapping into that sensibility exceptionally well), Jolie and the Indiana Jones similarities were enough to propel Lara Croft: Tomb Raider beyond the mallrat audience that buoyed Mortal Kombat<\/a>. But the movie itself wasn\u2019t enough to keep that audience pumping quarters into the machine. A sequel, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider \u2014 The Cradle of Life followed two years later to much less impressive numbers. Roger Ebert stayed on board<\/a>, bless him, but for most people, it fell between the cracks. Anyone who enjoyed the trashiness of the original might be put off by this one\u2019s relative class, while anyone yearning for an improvement still wasn\u2019t exactly getting Last Crusade, nevermind Raiders of the Lost Ark.<\/p>\n

\"Lara
\n Image: Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably a testament to the global Tomb Raider brand that Tomb Raider<\/a>, a 2018 reboot of the film series, made virtually the same amount of money worldwide<\/a> as the 2001 film, despite no Jolie and a much smaller North American performance. Of course, 17 years of inflation makes this success more marginal, and after some early sequel movement \u2014 at one point director Ben Wheatley<\/a> was on board! \u2014 the pandemic<\/a> seemingly killed the project for good. Then the prospect of a TV show was announced, and here we are, reading GameStop\u2019s dumb complaints implying that no one gets it right. If any online hordes say Sophie Turner \u201cis not\u201d Lara Croft, it\u2019s safe to assume they feel the same way about Alicia Vikander<\/a>. (The less said about the root of some of those<\/a> objections, the better.)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s overlooked in all of this is how much fun that 2018 movie is \u2014 easily one of the best (and least chintzy!) game-to-movie translations. I understand, via sources including Polygon\u2019s original review<\/a>, that for some fans of the video game series the movie plays like a mish-mash of recent game elements, rendered without much additional inspiration. For someone who just enjoys action-adventure movies, though, Tomb Raider is a refreshingly straightforward one, without the dual fakeness of ropey CG and limp banter that sank that Uncharted movie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Lara
\n Image: Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Tomb Raider doesn\u2019t have some CG, some green screen, and other contemporary blockbuster trappings. Its entire final act \u2014 the part where the characters actually raid a tomb at length \u2014 looks like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with the brightness turned way down. But properly raiding Spielberg eludes plenty of other filmmakers, and director Roar Uthaug takes inspiration from the master in other areas, too. In the middle of the movie, when Lara sneaks around an enemy\u2019s jungle camp, Uthaug assembles the scene in a series of single shots that are Spielbergian in their graceful utility. Another scene with Lara repeatedly dangling from the ruins of a rusted-out airplane wedged at the top of a waterfall feels a bit like the literal cliffhanger from The Lost World.<\/p>\n

Before she\u2019s dangling off of things, the movie\u2019s Lara is a scrappy Londoner, dragging her feet on collecting a massive inheritance from her presumed-dead father Richad (Dominic West) out of thin hope that he\u2019ll materialize. Just before signing paperwork to declare him legally dead, she gets ahold of a possible clue to his whereabouts: He may have traveled to a Pacific island in search of a tomb holding Himiko, a queen said to have dominion over life and death. On the island, Lara finds the stir-crazy Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), exiled to this remote island on the same quest.<\/p>\n

\"Dominic
\n Image: Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

This Lara isn\u2019t an unstoppable superhero badass. Vikander absorbs her aloofness into stubborn resilience, and the movie establishes her athleticism with an early London-set bike chase and a foot chase on some Hong Kong docks. Vikander\u2019s physical performance early on (doubtless fused with a stunt double) is convincing enough that the film can later have Lara make some (literal) leaps into more fantastical feats. Similarly, those chase scenes set a standard that the movie will either use real locations or make a good-faith attempt to fake them. Obviously there isn\u2019t a real rusted-out plane perched on the edge of a waterfall, but enough of the movie looks real-ish to afford some audience buy-in.<\/p>\n

Tomb Raider is still an origin story and wannabe franchise-starter that waits until the very end to award Lara her signature dual pistols. This is (presumably) a problem for pre-existing fans, though, not for someone in the market for a muscular, un-quippy adventure movie with a lead actress good enough to let the material breathe. (Wielding a bow and arrow is actually a lot cooler than two-fisting guns, anyway.) The 2001 Tomb Raider is a blockbuster engineered to bring a video game to life, and revels in a highly synthetic form of fun. Even if Amazon\u2019s new series avoids that trap, it\u2019s clearly making a play for some kind of visual fidelity. The 2018 Tomb Raider seems unbothered, and is all the better for it. This is not Lara Croft. It\u2019s a good movie with her name in it.<\/p>\n

Tomb Raider (2018) is currently streaming on Tubi. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) is currently streaming on Pluto TV. Go ahead, see which one is better!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tomb Raider fans breathed a sigh of relief last week when Amazon\/MGM unveiled the first photo of Sophie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-426060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}