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Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - Story
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 tomb raider special
4 Tomb Raider: Lara Croft (2001)
4 Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
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 Oscar winner Angelina Jolie reinvents the modern action hero in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider."Lara Croft was born into wealth and groomed at the most elite schools. She travels to dangerous and mysterious locales around the globe in search of rare, lost crypts and long-forgotten empires. She speaks numerous languages, is highly trained for combat and answers to no one, obeying only a desire for adventure.
But now she must face her greatest challenge yet: to find two halves of an ancient artifact buried in space and time. To possess it means ultimate power for its possessor. But to get there, she must first take on a powerful and dangerous secret society. The fate of mankind rests in the hands of one - Lara Croft, a twenty-first century heroine inspired by the most popular interactive video character in history.
From the phenomenally popular interactive Tomb Raider game, springs a new kind of action hero: Lara Croft.
Traveling, taking prize-winning photographs, mastering foreign languages and visiting archaeological sites are perfectly apropos for a rich and pampered heiress ... and very good camouflage for Lara Croft's real passions: raiding tombs, besting bad guys and throwing herself into one extreme adventure after another. Lara's current mission takes her to worlds of mystery and magic: the ancient Tomb of the Dancing Light in Cambodia, and then to Siberia's Temple of Ten Thousand Shadows.
Tomb Raider was already a phenomenon when Paramount Pictures first considered the idea of making it into a feature film. Lara Croft was a megastar of cyberspace: a fantasy figure to every teenage boy and an icon to every teenage girl.
Enter producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin who developed the project. For Gordon and Levin, there was really only one contender for the role of Lara Croft: Oscar winning actress Angelina Jolie.
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"The challenge for us was to take a video game, turn it into a movie and find the perfect actor for the role of Lara. I can't imagine the film even being possible without Angelina," says Levin. "I think that she is probably the best actress of her generation. She represents a lot of qualities you would hope to capture in the character of Lara: intelligence, fearlessness, playfulness and a wicked sense of humor."
The producers were likewise confident in director Simon West's ability to create a totally new film experience without losing sight of the phenomenally popular and complex game that inspired it. "Simon believed we should embrace aspects of the game - it is very contemporary and modern - but flesh out the character of Lara Croft in many ways," says Levin.
It was Angelina Jolie first, last and always with West, who says that without her, he would not have done the picture. "It was obvious to me that Angelina Jolie was the only actress who could play Lara Croft,"' said West.
Angelina's performances to date have all consistently shown brains, guts and wit," continues West. "Those are exactly the attributes Lara needed. Lara is more than an action cartoon cut-out. Her character has depth and complexity. Plus, Angelina is so beautiful and physically right for the role that I knew she would satisfy the demands of the game's fans and their preconceived ideas of what Lara looks like. It was an opinion shared by the producers and by Eidos. We were all ecstatic when Angelina accepted the challenge."Lara is strong and extremely attractive, appealing to men and boys," continues West, "but because she's tough, forthright and knows her own mind, she is also an icon to women and girls. She is a perfect role model, totally inspirational."
Says Angelina Jolie, "Lara Croft is a great role model. This has been the hardest job of my life. It has really tested me."
"It has been both fun and hard work to jump into her world and her skin a bit," continues Jolie. "Lara is very, very much a girl. She's extremely tough, but she's also a bit naughty, which I love. She's really good at what she does. It's not that she's as good as a guy; it's that even if she were competing with a guy, she might win -not because she's a girl, but because she's a better fighter. She's full of fun and fire. She doesn't apologize for herself, ever. She isn't angry. She's playful. She is certainly enjoying everything about this. And I think that's different for a hero."
Jolie also describes her character's emotional journey and points out that it encompasses a discovery of her past. "It's a thought I think we all have, a wish for some message about where we should be in life, something empowering us to do something," she says. "Her father has given her those. Throughout the film she becomes closer to him. When you follow in the footsteps of someone, you're seeing where they were. So she unravels a mystery about life and about what happened to her father. That's a special thing."
West sees elements of James Bond, Indiana Jones and the characters Humphrey Bogart played in the character of Lara Croft and in her world. "We have mysticism, foreign locations, action, intrigue, drama. And because this is the first film, we were not constrained. Our playing field was wide open."
Working with the established culture that has blossomed around the Tomb Raider phenomenon was challenging, but also part of the fun. "Since the games have such a far reach and huge audience, we didn't want to retread ground the games have already covered," says producer Levin. "We wanted to offer up a new experience: new elements, new locations, a new storyline."
West adds that they enriched some of the game's supernatural elements. "There are weird phenomena in this world," he says. "Underground, in the tombs, the gloves are off and almost anything can happen. It's also a very visceral film that tells a very fundamental story about loyalty, betrayal, physical prowess and heroism."
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