Alicia Vikander (Ex-Machina) has taken a big step up into the role of Lara Croft with the arrival of the Tomb Raider (2018) trailer, which you can watch in full below. It sets the scene for the upcoming movie, which is inspired by the 2013 computer game of the same name, and gives us our first real glimpse of how it’s all shaping up.
There’s a lot of action in the trailer, and Vikander has clearly put in a fair few hours of training in preparation for filming, because she comes across as being a lot more athletic. She may still be a little on the slight side to make all of the moves and stunts entirely believable, but they definitely look impressive. In all fairness, Sylvestre Stallone would have ripped his arms clean off if he did the stunts in Cliffhanger himself, and he was stacked with monster python guns, so we should probably overlook it here too.
Tomb Raider trailer 1:
Tomb Raider is essentially going to be a reboot of the series, putting Angelina Jolie’s previous escapades as Lara Croft well and truly in the past. It starts out with Lara as she struggles with the disappearance of her father, so it’s going to be every bit an origins story, which could see it turning into a series of movies if the 2018 release is a success.
You can see in the trailer that a lot of the emphasis is on Lara solving clues about what happened to her father, leading her to a secret room and a recorded message from Lord Richard Croft, played by Dominic West (The Square). He tells her about a tomb called The Mother Of Death and a plot from Trinity to find it.
The discovery leads her to a mysterious island in the eye of The Devil’s Sea, but as her expedition boat draws near to the island, it gets caught in a vicious storm, which leaves Lara stranded. If that isn’t enough drama, she instantly finds herself at the mercy of a ruthless group of gits that control the island, led by Father Mathias Vogel, played by Walton Goggins (Ant-Man And The Wasp).
It looks like it’s going to culminate in a desperate bid from Lara to find the tomb and close it before it can be used to wreak havoc on the world. Her father’s warning message towards the end of the trailer is pretty foreboding, so clearly there’s going to be a mystical element to the movie.
However, there’s also a bit of an unusual afterthought at the end of the Tomb Raider (2018) trailer, which throws in a little comedy and computer game fun into the mix. It’s a bit of a juxtaposition to everything that comes before it with Nick Frost throwing in a line about the world going mad in what looks like a gun shop. It hints at the possibility of Lara going through a significant transformation on her adventure and the likelihood of more films to come.
In addition to the main trailer, Warner Brothers has also released a short feature on Alicia Vikander’s becoming Lara Croft. It adds to the setup of the film and shows how much effort she’s put into bringing the iconic role to life.
