Roar Uthaug, the Norwegian director set to helm the upcoming Tomb Raider flick has been talking about his plans and intentions for Lara Craft’s big screen reboot, and it’s sounding promising.
While promoting his new disaster movie The Wave, Uthaug spoke to IGN and the conversation turned to Tomb Raider. Somewhat predictably, the reboot will indeed be an origin film – but it’ll take its inspiration from the gritty 2013 Tomb Raider videogame (which itself served as a fresh start for the franchise).
Uthaug praised developer Crystal Dynamics, and the way they managed to tell an engaging story with their own 2013 effort. It’s his hope that they can emulate that for the movie and make Lara a more relatable character.
If you’re still wary about the curse of the videogame movie, it turns out Uthaug is a big fan of the Tomb Raider franchise. He’s been playing the games since the first one back in 1996, and is all in favour of strong female characters. If Lara ends up being more than a pair of boobs with guns, that’s a roaring success in my book.
Uthaug said:
I think we’ll want to make people relate to Lara as a character. I’m hoping to bring some of my Norwegian sensibilities to the franchise. I think we’ll want to make it feel like a modern action movie and to make what’s going on feel like it’s going on for real.
There’s no release date for the rebooted Tomb Raider just yet, and we’re still eagerly awaiting casting news. The previous two Tomb Raider films saw Angelina Jolie as Lara Craft. The first one was probably the best videogame to film adaptation – but that really isn’t saying much.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.