One of the most successful movie franchises based on a video game returns to the big screen this year, with Tomb Raider scheduled to hit theaters March 16. The film casts Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander as franchise heroine Lara Croft, and now we have a pair of clips from the film that offer a sample of what we can expect from Lara’s latest adventure.
Directed by Roar Uthaug (The Wave) from a script by Transformers: The Last Knight screenwriter Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Tomb Raider spins a new origin story for the character’s rebooted live-action film series. Along with Vikander in the lead role, the film’s cast also includes Dominic West (The Affair) as Lara’s father, Daniel Wu (Into the Badlands) as the captain of a ship transporting Lara, and Emmy-nominated Justified and The Hateful Eight actor Walton Goggins as the film’s unidentified primary villain.
A pair of clips from the film were released in early March 2018, during the lead-up to the film’s premiere. The first clip made its debut on Twitter via Fandango.
Alicia Vikander is fresh off the boat in this #TombRaider escape clip. pic.twitter.com/5dUHXHuMuc
— Fandango (@Fandango) March 2, 2018
That was followed by a second clip released by Warner Bros. Pictures a few days later.
The official synopsis of the movie indicates that she doesn’t start off as a globe-hopping treasure hunter — quite the contrary, in fact.
“Lara Croft is the fiercely independent daughter of an eccentric adventurer who vanished when she was scarcely a teen,” reads the synopsis. “Now a young woman of 21 without any real focus or purpose, Lara navigates the chaotic streets of trendy East London as a bike courier, barely making the rent, and takes college courses, rarely making it to class. Determined to forge her own path, she refuses to take the reins of her father’s global empire just as staunchly as she rejects the idea that he’s truly gone. Advised to face the facts and move forward after seven years without him, even Lara can’t understand what drives her to finally solve the puzzle of his mysterious death.”
Filming on Tomb Raider ended in June, and audiences received their first look at the reboot of the popular movie franchise with the premiere of the first official Tomb Raider trailer in September 2017. A second trailer was released in January 2018.
Warner Bros. Pictures teased the premiere of the first Tomb Raider trailer on Facebook with a brief preview of footage from the film featuring Vikander as Lara. As anyone familiar with the movies — or the games that inspired them — might expect, the footage primarily consisted of Vikander running, jumping, and sliding her way through, over, and under a variety of obstacles, some more deadly than others.
Two films based on Lara Croft’s adventures preceded the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot: 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and 2003’s Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. Both films cast Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft and collectively earned $432 million at the worldwide box office, making the series one of the highest-grossing film franchises based on a video game property.
Updated March 7: Added the first clips from the film.
