![]() My take: There’s nothing wrong with Vikander choosing to do a Tomb Raider movie. There’s been some debate, however, as to whether Vikander is too good for a movie like this. It’s their faint stab at a Christian Bale in Batman Begins kind of thing, and it works well enough.Īla Brie Larson in Kong: Skull Island and Julianne Moore in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Vikander’s another recent Oscar winning-actress who immediately cashed out and jumped into big-budget studio franchise filmmaking, with Tomb Raider actually being her third stab at this (after Man from U.N.C.L.E. But she obviously has different ideas and doomed boat to catch. She could move back into the Croft family mansion at any time, and the family fortune is her’s to take as soon as she legally signs documents admitting her father, missing for 7 years, is dead. Plus, beyond the repetitive exposition, this opening section of the film is actually quite engaging, with Vikander immediately popping as a likable lead with an admirable degree of independence and determination while living a life of poverty as a bike courier. It screams of a post-test screening studio note: The kids aren’t following the plot! But, really, I’ve seen far more egregious examples of this kind of thing in The Mummy and, of course, Suicide Squad. Then almost exactly the same dialogue and footage is replayed not 15 minutes later when Lara finds a video will from Richard explaining his disappearance. First, the film opens with a voice-over from him and montage explaining the ancient curse of Himiko, a mythical Queen of the Yamatai said to have dominion over life and death. Not dissimilar to Suicide Squad’s infamous multiple prologues problem, we actually learn everything about Richard’s quest two different times. As with his prior film The Wave, Norwegian director Roar Uthaug shows he is very good at handling aquatic action scenes. She’s simply a girl looking for a dad who abandoned her in search of a supernatural means to bring back her dead mother, and in the process, she ends up shipwrecked on a mysterious island. In contrast to the earlier films or video games you might be familiar with, she is not a Nathan Drake-esque treasure hunter. The story, as originally written by Rhianna Pratchett and Susan O’Connor for the 2013 video game and now credited to Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons for the film, sees Lara Croft as a young heiress to an ill-defined fortune on a trip to find her presumed-dead dad (Dominic West’s Richard Croft). ![]() For gamers, it’s the same old visuals with none of the old interaction for non-gamers, it’s more or less just a ho-hum action movie. It begs the question: who is this movie for? Video game fans will find little new here beyond a unique-to-the-movie Batman Begins-esque framing device whereas non-video game fans might be left wondering why there are so many oddly paced action beats and astonishingly little actual story to speak of. But other than a prologue featuring Lara as a bike courier this is an often shot-for-shot remake of the video game (and its sequel) with little real creative spark of its own. After all, the fact that this film even exists is a minor victory given the state of female-led action and the 7-year development period the project went through. Sure, there’s the matter of possibly wanting to support female-led action films or simply supporting the Tomb Raider franchise if you consider yourself a fan. Tomb Raider should arrive in cinemas next March.Īs ever, this is just a taster of what's in the print magazine – for the full coverage of Tomb Raider, plus features on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Murder On The Orient Express, The Punisher, and much, much more, pick up a copy of Empire's October 2017 issue, on sale now.If you have played the 2013 Lara Croft origin story video game Tomb Raider, there is almost no reason to see the new Alicia Vikander film of the same name. Norweigan filmmaker Roar Uthaug is directing the reboot, which will also have Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, and Dominic West joining Vikander in the cast. “‘How can we demonstrate them in the story, but make her feel like a young woman in 2018?’” This is emphatically a prequel, finding Croft working as a cycle courier in London, and it’s not some priceless lost artefact that sets her off on her journey, but a quest to find her missing father. “We asked, ‘What are the famous traits of this person?’” recalls Vikander in the new issue. Scrub the Angelina Jolie versions from your memory – this Lara Croft promises to be a very different beast. As the image shows, everything about this iteration of the character is hoping to ring the changes.
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