I’ve never played the video game, (I don’t play video games at all really) but she looks very close to the way Lara looks in the 2013 reboot version of the game.
The plot is also taking its inspiration from that game. Brand new Lara, brand new look, brand new story!
Suddenly, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Lara, who—against the odds and armed with only her sharp mind, blind faith and inherently stubborn spirit—must learn to push herself beyond her limits as she journeys into the unknown. If she survives this perilous adventure, it could be the making of her, earning her the name tomb raider.
So an origin story it is. If there are hopes to make this into a franchise- and I have to imagine that there are- then this makes perfect sense. It seems like a good sign that the plot is relatively straightforward, since an overly complicated mythos seems to be where a lot of other video game-to-movie adaptations have gone awry. Obviously it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why any given movie has a hard time finding an audience, but I think recent movies like Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed scared a lot of non-gamers away with a story that seemed difficult to follow.
If you’re at all excited about Tomb Raider, I’d stay away from almost any comments section you can find about this story if I were you, because it’ll kill that good mood immediately. Seriously ladies, if you do one thing with your life, learn to love the way you look no matter what anybody else says, because there will always, always be someone out there who jumps at the chance to tell you that there’s something wrong with your body. Apparently Alicia Vikander is way too skinny, and too short, and doesn’t look muscular enough, and a thousand other ridiculous things. So there’s absolutely no way that she can be powerful, because there’s only one way to be that, and internet commenters have decided that she ain’t it. As if an actress with a different physicality wouldn’t be torn down for entirely different reasons. If fans of the game had their heart set on another actress playing Lara Croft, they’re allowed to be disappointed. That does not mean it’s okay to pick apart a woman’s body to try and “justify” your disappointment.
It turns out that the complaints about being too tiny to be taken seriously were the least infuriating comments, because I can’t even count how many I saw that were some kind of joke about Alicia Vikander’s chest size. Did you know that it’s impossible for Lara Croft to raid tombs without enormous boobs? Having never played the game myself I can’t be sure, but based on such comments I have to imagine that she stands there, says and does nothing, and stares blankly while her breasts do everything. That’s how vital they are. If any gamers out there could confirm this it’d be greatly appreciated.
There were many comparisons to Angelina Jolie’s look as Lara Croft, but OMG you guys even she couldn’t play Lara anymore because she’s missing a few big assets now, right? Right?! LOL! I’m making a snide reference to her double mastectomy! If you thought that was about a woman having to make the extremely difficult decision to undergo a major surgery in order to not get cancer and die then you were sadly mistaken because it was actually about manboys on the internet making tit jokes.
If there’s a silver lining to be found, it’s that there were scores of people calling out gross sexist comments for being exactly that. It’s not as good as those comments not being made in the first place, but it’s something.
To director Roar Uthaug: I know the script is done and you’re already shooting, but if there’s any way you could fill one of those tombs with misogynistic a-holes and let Lara raid their faces with her fist you’d really be doing me a solid. Either way, I’ll have my butt in a theater ready to cheer her on!
Tomb Raider opens March 16, 2018, and you can read the entire Vanity Fair piece on the film here
