Actress Alicia Vikander is ready to step into Angelina Jolie’s shoes and play Lara Croft 15 years after Jolie’s last Tomb Raider movie, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, was released.
In the first trailer for Warner Bros.’ new Tomb Raider movie, which was uploaded to Instagram by actor Daniel Wu and seen below, Vikander proves this isn’t last generation’s Lara Croft. Vikander’s portrayal of the character is based on Square Enix’s newer iteration of the heroine protagonist. Everything from Vikander’s outfit to the new setting she explores in the movie are based on the respective 2013 and 2015 games, Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Warner Bros.’ movie will also focus on a younger version of the character, who decides to leave her life as a broke college student in East London behind to seek adventure in a “fabled tomb” just off the coast of Japan. The full synopsis of the film can be read below.
Lara Croft is the fiercely independent daughter of an eccentric adventurer who vanished when she was scarcely a teen. 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.
Going explicitly against his final wishes, she leaves everything she knows behind in search of her dad’s last-known destination: a fabled tomb on a mythical island that might be somewhere off the coast of Japan. But her mission will not be an easy one; just reaching the island will be extremely treacherous. 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.
Vikander stars alongside Wu, Dominic West (The Wire), Walton Goggins (The Hateful Eight) and Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient).
Tomb Raider will be released on March 16, 2018.
Update: The trailer has been removed from Instagram. Warner Bros. has confirmed that it will be on YouTube later tonight. Polygon will update the story with the trailer once it’s on YouTube.
