Posted on 04/01/2018 10:46:02 AM PDT by kanawa
Alicia Vikander talks taking on Lara Croft in Tomb Raider
By Marni Weisz - Editor, Cineplex Magazine on March 16, 2018
Excerpts...
The decision to cast delicate, Oscar-winning Swedish actor Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft in the big-screen
Tomb Raider reboot may have come as a surprise to some.
But there are many upsides to casting someone like Vikander in a run-and-gun, videogame-based adventure movie.
For one, the woman who won Best Supporting Actress... in 2015’s The Danish Girl
spends a lot of time thinking about things like character and backstory.
“The most difficult thing with making these big films is finding as much passion, and I want to find as much depth
in the character, as anything else,” she says on the line from London. “To find the artistry and still make
sure that you combine that with the big spectacle and adventure and ride that it’s supposed to be,
I find really challenging but also an exciting challenge.”
But it was back in Göteborg that Vikander’s mother, stage actor Maria Fahl Vikander, introduced her little girl
to cinema, particularly art-house films. Little Alicia was drawn to other genres as well. “I loved watching adventure movies,” she says.
“I watched Indiana Jones and I loved The Mummy and I’ve always wanted to get into those spectacles and adventures.”
Enter Tomb Raider.
The videogame franchise started all the way back in 1996 when Eidos Interactive released a single-player,
action-adventure title featuring Lara Croft, a treasure hunter travelling the globe in search of mysterious artifacts.
The game broke ground as one of the industry’s first to feature a strong female action hero, a point that was not lost on young Alicia.
“When I was 10 or 11, I think, I didn’t have a PlayStation in my home but my best friend, they had one, and I
looked at the video screen and I remember it was the first time I’d seen a female heroine in a videogame,”
Vikander realizes she has big boots to fill after Angelina Jolie originated the big-screen role
in 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and 2003’s Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
Vikander’s Lara Croft is much different than Jolie’s.
First, she’s younger, since the film is based on the 2013 Tomb Raider videogame reboot that introduced gamers to Croft anew.
“It’s an origins story and much more of a coming of age and her becoming Lara Croft as we know her,” explains Vikander.
“She’s now in a realm which is much closer to our own reality. We meet this young girl who lives like most 20 year olds,
even me when I came to London, you know, sharing a flat with friends in East London.
And then you get more of a backstory to her character, it’s a chance for you to get more depth and get to know that character.”
Croft’s father, archaeologist Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West), disappeared seven years before the start of this movie and is presumed dead.
Lara could take over her father’s company but isn’t interested.
Instead she works as a bike courier in East London and is adrift, emotionally.
Unable to accept her father’s death, Lara finds a message he left before his disappearance that tells her of a hidden tomb
on a mysterious island and a threat to humanity, so she heads out to find the island and save the world.
“She has never been on one of those adventures when the film starts and she doesn’t know that she’s about to enter one,” explains Vikander.
As you would expect, the actor trained nearly non-stop in the months leading up to production.
But physical training is also an important part of Croft’s character development, explains Vikander.
“It’s sort of incorporated in the story that she has hobbies, she trains MMA [mixed martial arts],
she’s a bicycle courier, she’s really a physical being and a strong girl.”
The result, Vikander explains, is that “when she finally ends up on this adventure, and she has to become a survivor,
you will find it plausible that this girl can take on these challenges.”
Back to that part about Vikander being delicate. Despite her petite frame, maybe that’s not fair.
Before she was an actor, Vikander was a ballet dancer, studying dance at the Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stockholm
and New York’s School of American Ballet. And dancers are tough, mentally and physically — strength Vikander tapped into on set.
“Out of the 110 days I had one day when I didn’t work, I was in every scene, so I didn’t really have any gaps in shooting,” she says.
“Normally when you’re not in a scene that’s a chance for them to catch up on stunt rehearsals.
So instead I had to do it as we went after work every day. And, like dancing, with stunts, how gritty and rough it looks
I mean it’s always choreographed, it’s all about safety, that’s why you can push yourself and do quite extreme stuff
because you’ve done it over and over again…. Being able to learn choreography quite fast was really helpful to pick it up.”
So should we be surprised to see Vikander as Lara Croft?
“I would love if I could surprise people,” she says.
“I think in any profession I would say the easiest thing is maybe to go back and do what you’ve done before.
Or something that you think works is easy to do, while going out there and looking for challenges I think, you know, it’s hard.”
She only makes it look easy.
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Went to a Tuesday TR matinee on the 20th.
Opted for the 3D experience but without the vibrating chairs.
It was an enjoyable film, not of the blockbuster category,
but certainly entertaining for a TR fan like myself.
I'm more excited about the Sept. 14th release of the next Tomb Raider game, Shadow of the Tombraider.
~click pic~
Official site... https://www.tombraider.com/en-us
She is beautiful...
Yep, she’s pretty and plucky.
FR thread...http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3650056/posts
I've started recording and streaming lately.
Not very professional at the moment but hope to get more polished with practice and experience.
A few of my playthroughs of Fallout 3 had copyright claims put on them over music content.
A copyright claim means you can't monetize your video.
On one video I muted the sound for the 40 or so seconds the music played
but I didn't like that solution and removed the muting.
I see some streamers have set break times in their recordings when the game stops and it goes to commercial.
Perhaps that is a way to monetize without running into copyright claims.
Any insight or advice would be appreciated.
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