Tomb Raider will return in a sequel to 2018’s origin movie. What’s more, is that Alicia Vikander will be reprising her role as the treasure hunting, ass-kicking, duel-pistol toting Lara Croft.
Alongside Vikander, it’s been confirmed that British director Ben Wheatley will be pulling the strings behind the camera this time around. Wheatley’s previous credits include comedy Free Fire and dystopian drama-horror High-Rise. Nope, me either.
As reported by Deadline, the movie has been slated for a March 19th 2021 release date, but we have no details on any story-beats just yet.
Alicia Vikander’s first Tomb Raider movie followed a similar path to the re-imagining of the franchise in the 2013 game, also cunningly titled Tomb Raider. I think we can all agree they’ve had an absolute field-day naming these things.
The 2018 movie, directed by Roar Uthaug, saw a young Lara attempting to save her estate and discover the secret of her father’s disappearance. You’d expect the sequel to pick up where that movie left off; with Lara escaping the clutches of the evil Trinity, and going off on her next adventure.
Saying that, there’s a part of me that really wants them to jack it all in and focus on the plot of Tomb Raider 2 the game, with Lara gunning down Tigers and blitzing around some Tibetan foothills. Also there’s a wheezing old butler and something about a dragon.
Perfection.
What’s curious, is that the 2018 movie wasn’t exactly a critical darling, only managing to muster up a relatively damp score of 52% on Rotten Tomatoes. Fans weren’t exactly over the moon about it either, which kind of begs the question… Why?
Well, the new Tomb Raider games were a trilogy so there’s a good chance the movies will be a trilogy come hell or high water, because y’know money.
As a fan of the series I’m not particularly blown away by the announcement, but I will stay hopefully optimistic that they’ll have learnt from the missteps of the original, and that the new director will be an ace in the hole for Lara and pals.
Also bring back Angelina Jolie for a weird, forced cameo for the fans. Do it you cowards.
Mark is the Gaming Editor for UNILAD. Having grown up a gaming addict, he’s been deeply entrenched in culture and spends time away from work playing as much as possible. Mark studied music at University and found a love for journalism through going to local gigs and writing about them for local and national publications.