Lara Croft is the daughter of an archaeologist, Lord Richard Croft, who went missing seven years ago. Lara is unsure if her father is alive or dead. Lara lives life to the extreme by practicing Mixed Martial Arts and bike riding. Lara discovers her father's secret office inside the Croft family Mausoleum, full of his research. She looks at a video recording of her father explaining to her what else he did in life and that he was trying to get to the grave of Himiko, the mythical Queen of Yamatai who was known for killing people with just a touch, before someone else could and unleash the disease she was carrying. Lara travels through seas to get to the island her father was going to. When she gets there she discovers that an evil organization called Trinity is trying to find the tomb of Himiko, but they have had no luck. Lara has her father’s notes which tell where the tomb is hidden on the island.
Blaine: Alicia Vikander got a call from her agent telling her that a new “Lara Croft” movie was being developed and they were interested in her playing Lara herself. Alicia was confused at first because there have already been two movies starring Angelina Jolie and her question was why make another. Then she was informed that the company that made the game did a reboot in 2013 and that’s what the new film was going to be based off of. Alicia then looked up the game online and read some stuff about it. It sounded interesting to Alicia, so she met with director Roar Uthaug (The Wave) and they discussed how they could make this “Tomb Raider” fresh and new. Alicia grew up loving Lara Croft. She was eight when she was first introduced to the character. She was at a friend’s house and they were playing the Lara Croft video game. Alicia played the anniversary version during her mid-teen years and she had seen the movies with Angelina Jolie. Angelina Jolie made her an icon and Alicia thought it was nice to see a female action hero on screen.
Alicia Vikander visited Crystal Dynamics, the video game company and she got to see all these different versions of Lara Croft through the 22 years she has been around. What Alicia realized was that Lara Croft has inspired young girls and boys for years. Alicia also realized that this reboot would be a perfect opportunity to inspire a younger audience. Alicia knew if she was to play Lara Croft she was going to have to gain some muscle weight. Three months before shooting began, Alicia would work out everyday and build herself up with muscle because she wanted Lara to be a strong and physical girl. Alicia would also eat 5 times a day. In the end, Alicia gained 12 pounds of muscle and it was fun for her to do all those exercises.
Alicia Vikander said that as an actor you find a new challenge for each movie you are apart of, but “Tomb Raider” was unlike anything she has done before because it required a lot of physical stuff. Alicia admires Lara for being the type of woman who loves to do martial arts, bike rides, knowing how to use a bow and arrow and train herself to be strong. Roar Uthaug wanted a lot of the stuff like the stunts to be real. Alicia Vikander was doing her own stunts a lot of the time they were shooting. One of the toughest things for Alicia Vikander to do was all those scenes in the water. Her body hurt after being pulled from wires and the water was cold. After 12 days in that cold water she didn’t want to do it anymore, but she didn’t complain about it. Another thing that made Alicia feel uncomfortable was when they shot the scene where Lara is doing kickboxing with another woman. It was her first time doing kickboxing and just having the crew look at her while she was doing it made her feel uncomfortable. She just had to pretend they weren’t there. Alicia got hit in the face while shooting that scene because Roar wanted the punch to look real and it didn’t look real enough after the first few takes. Finally the girl Alicia was fighting against really hit her and Alicia went down on the ground. It was a little painful for Alicia. Alicia would get a few bruises and injuries from all the stunts and physical stuff she did, but nothing too serious because the stunt team made sure that no harm came to her.
It was very exciting for Alicia to be apart of an adventure film. She wanted her Lara Croft to be cool, a strong human being and to show the emotion she feels for her father. Lara is experiencing new things when she goes on this journey. She is being shot at, trying to survive and killing bad guys. It’s an origin story so you get to see how she becomes a bad ass. She’s putting everything she has trained for to good use. As I was watching the film, I was rooting for Lara to succeed at everything she was doing. In the beginning you see her as someone who loves to compete and place bets. She rides through the city and these boys have to catch her. It reminded me of those races in the “Fast & Furious” movies only it’s on bikes instead of cars.
You assume that Mathias Vogel, the bad guy of the film, killed Lara’s father, Richard, because it feels like that. But there is a twist because the father has been alive the whole time and he has been stuck on that island for the past seven years. But you know he is not going to be around for long and that he is going to die at some point because that’s how it is. And then Mathias' henchmen touch the corpse of Himiko and get infected and one of them infects Richard. At least Richard and Lara get to spend some quality time together as father and daughter. Seeing Lara being reunited with her father is something I thought I would never see.
One of the things Alicia and Roar discussed early on was Lara not using a gun. The character usually uses two hand guns as weapons and Angelina Jolie’s version always used them, but again “Tomb Raider” is an origin story. You don’t see Lara get the two hand guns until the end of the film. Lara uses a bow and arrow in this version to take out the bad guys. The ending shows that there could be another “Tomb Raider” movie and a new mission for Lara Croft now that she suspects Ana Miller, Richard’s business partner and Lara’s guardian after her dad went missing, being in charge of Trinity.
My rating on “Tomb Raider” is four out of five stars
