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Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Directed by	Simon West
Produced by	Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin
Written by	Mike Werb, Patrick Massett
Starring	Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight, Daniel Craig
Music by	Graeme Revell
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	June 15, 2001
Running time	100 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$115,000,000
Gross revenue	$274,703,340
Followed by	Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is a film adaptation of the popular Tomb Raider video game series featuring the character Lara Croft. It was released during the summer of 2001. Lara in the screen role was played by Angelina Jolie.

A sequel, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, was released in 2003.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Main cast 3 Financing 4 Trivia 5 Box office 6 References 7 External links

The film opens with Lara Croft in what appears to be an Egyptian tomb. In the opening moments, it is apparent that she is seeking what appears to be a diamond on a display at one end of the chamber. As she approaches, however, she is suddenly attacked by a large robot intent on killing her. After an intense chase and battle with the robot, she manages to disable it by ripping out key motivational circuits, whereupon it deactivates. She then goes to retrieve the diamond, but as she does so the robot reboots and begins again, but she yells "Stop!" and the robot immediately ceases its attack. She then takes the diamond, which is actually a memory card labeled 'Lara's Party Mix,' and inserts it into the robot, whereupon it starts playing music. She then drags the robot out of the chamber and into an adjoining one to meet her associate, Bryce. The entire situation took place in a practice arena in Lara's own home and Bryce programmed the robot, SIMON, to train and challenge her in combat.

The date is May 15, the day of the first phase of a planetary alignment, or syzygy, of the planets of the solar system culminating in a solar eclipse on the Earth, an astronomical occurrence that only happens once every 5,000 years. In Venice, the secret order known as the Illuminati is searching for a key of great importance so that they can rejoin two halves of "the triangle," which they must do by the final phase of the alignment, in one week's time. Mr. Powell, a member of the Illuminati, assures the Council that they are almost ready but in reality he has no idea where to find the key.

Meanwhile, in Lara's mansion, she is sitting rather morosely in her father's office while her butler, Hilary, tries to interest her in several different projects. May 15, as Hilary is aware, is the day that Lara's father disappeared in the field several years before, and as she says, "That is never a good day." She has never recovered from his loss.

Later that night, Lara is sleeping when she has a dream reminding her of what her father told her about the alignment, and about an object linked to the alignment called the Triangle of Light. After waking up from the dream, she becomes aware of a clock ticking somewhere in the house, and after a search opens a secret chamber beneath the stairs, in which there is a carriage clock that had spontaneously begun ticking. She wakes Bryce before dawn, who probes into it and discovers a strange device hidden inside the clock.

At daybreak, Lara motorcycles to an auction house to speak to a friend of her father's, Mr. Wilson, an experts on clocks, since the device resembles and seems to behave like one. She believes it's connected to the "Triangle of Light," but Wilson disavows any knowledge of the clock or the Triangle. While there, Lara also encounters Alex West, a fellow tomb raider with unscrupulous methods. They are attracted to each other, but Lara cannot abide his for-profit attitude. That night, Lara is contacted by Mr. Wilson, who tells her that he gave her name to a man named Manfred Powell in regards of the clock. In reality, Mr. Wilson is also a member of the Illuminati.

The next day, Lara goes to see Mr. Powell in his lavish home, but instead of showing him the clock she shows him photos instead. That night, discussing it with Bryce, she points out that Powell was obviously lying about his knowledge. Before bed, Lara partakes in a daring acrobatics to relax her, but while she is doing this, commando troops invade the house, imprisoning Bryce in his motor home on the premises, attacking Lara, and destroying a great deal of the house in the process. Lara manages to incapacitate most of the commandos but they still succeed in stealing the clock.

The next morning while cleaning up the mess, Lara receives a letter from her father, arranged to arrive after the beginning of the alignment, whereupon he explains that the clock she found is the key to retrieve two halves of the mystic Triangle of Light, forged from metal from a meteorite that fell during the final phase of the last planetary alignment 5,000 years earlier. Misusing the Triangle destroyed the city where it was kept, and to prevent its further misuse it was split into two halves. One half was hidden in a chamber in Cambodia, the other half in the ruined city itself, in modern-day Siberia. In the letter, her father urges her to find and destroy both halves of the Triangle before the Illuminati can find it.

In order to get to Cambodia in the short time they have left before the final phase, Lara calls in a favor to a military unit she worked with in the past, who deliver her to the temple, which she enters just as Mr. Powell and Alex West enter. West figures out part of the puzzle of how to retrieve the Triangle half, but Lara realizes that they are about to put the clock-key into the wrong lock, and convinces them to give it to her to put in the right one next to her. They do so, but this simply releases a suspended log, which must pierce the urn of the chamber's giant multi-armed statue, which in turn releases the half of the Triangle from a hiding place in front of Powell. Before Powell can retrieve it, however, Lara grabs the half and gets herself to a safe distance away.

Before she can escape, however, the statue and the stone guardians of the temple come to life and begin attacking everyone in the chamber. Powell, West, and many of the men escape with the key, but Lara is left to fight the statue, which she destroys by driving the still-swinging log into it. She then escapes the temple and Powell's men outside by running through the forest and diving from a waterfall. West tries to stop her, but though she is an easy shot he lets her go. Lara phones Powell from Angkor Wat and they arrange to meet in Venice, since each of them has what the other needs to finish the Triangle.

In Venice, they meet in the base of the Illuminati, where Powell proposes a partnership to find the Triangle. He also tells Lara that her father was also a member of the Illuminati, in the seat Powell now occupies. She doesn't immediately commit to helping him, but eventually Lara and Bryce meet with Powell and proceed to Siberia to the lost city.

Once inside the city, they discover a large chamber set up as a giant model of the solar system, which activates as the alignment nears completion. Lara retrieves the last half of the Triangle inside the model’s sun, but when Powell tries to complete the Triangle, it won’t fuse together. He realizes that Lara knows the solution to the puzzle, and to induce her to complete it he kills West and induces her to complete the Triangle to save both West’s life and the life of her father. Lara retrieves the final fragment of the Triangle, hidden inside the key, and the Triangle fuses together. Lara and Powell then struggle for control of the Triangle, with Lara prevailing.

Lara then finds herself in a strange alternate existence facing her father. He explains that it is a “crossing” of time and space, and urges her to destroy the Triangle instead of using it to save his life. She leaves her father and returns to the chamber, where time is slowly running backwards from the point where Powell killed West. Lara takes the knife he threw into West’s chest and reverses it, then destroys the Triangle with a gunshot, which returns time to its normal flow and directs the knife into Powell’s shoulder.

The chamber begins to self-destruct. Everyone turns to leave, but Powell taunts Lara by telling her that he killed her father and retrieved his pocket watch. Lara fights him in a vicious street-style fight to retrieve it, killing him in the process and escaping as the chamber comes down around her.

Back at the mansion, Hilary is about to serve breakfast when Lara enters wearing a dress and hat “like a lady,” unlike her usual self. After paying her respects at her father’s memorial site, she returns to the house, where Bryce and Hilary have a surprise for her: a rebuilt and reprogrammed SIMON, ready for combat. She takes the guns they offer her and prepares for battle.

• Angelina Jolie - Lara Croft
• Daniel Craig - Alex West
• Jon Voight - Lord Richard Croft
• Iain Glen - Manfred Powell
• Noah Taylor - Bryce
• Richard Johnson - Distinguished Gentleman
• Chris Barrie - Hillary
• Julian Rhind-Tutt - Mr. Pimms
• Leslie Phillips - Wilson
• Robert Philips - Julius, Assault Team Leader
• Rachel Appleton - Young Lara
• Henry Wyndham - Boothby's Auctioneer

• Tele-München Gruppe: TMG is a German tax shelter. The tax law of Germany allowed investors to take an instant tax deduction even on non-German productions and even if the film has not gone into production. By selling them the copyright for $94 million and then buying it back for $83.8 million, Paramount Pictures made $10.2 million.
• Lombard Bank: The copyright was sold again to this British investment group and a further $12 million was made. However to qualify for Section 48 tax relief, the production must include some UK filming and British actors, which was acceptable for a film partially set in England.
• Presales to distributors in Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain made a further $65 million.
• Showtime: $6.8 million for premium cable TV rights. (Showtime was a subsidiary of Paramount's parent company Viacom, until it became part of CBS Corporation at the end of 2005).

Total: $94 million.

The deal between Eidos, Tomb Raider's publisher, and Paramount Pictures was structured is such a way that Eidos received a single fee, but no royalties for the making of the film.

Source: Slate: How to finance a Hollywood blockbuster

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Producer/screenwriter Steven E. de Souza, who wrote and directed the 1994 video game movie Street Fighter, penned an early draft of the Tomb Raider script in 1999, but it was rejected by Paramount. However, it was partially resuscitated for the 2003 sequel Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
• In 1998, writer Brent V. Friedman had also written an unproduced Tomb Raider script. The year before, another video game movie, the hugely disappointing Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, which was co-written by Friedman, was in theaters.
• Lara Croft's father, Richard Croft, is played by Jolie's real-life father, Jon Voight. Croft's canonical name was originally Henshingly, but it was retconned to Richard in the games.
• Portions of the movie were shot on location in Angkor, Cambodia, making it the first Western-produced picture to be filmed in the country since Lord Jim in 1964.
• Tomb Raider marked the feature film debut of television actor Christopher Barrie (Hillary), who is best known for his role of "Arnold Rimmer" in the long-running BBC sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf.
• The exterior of Lara's home is actually Hatfield House, a vast country estate in Hertfordshire, England.
• Iain Glen, a Scot, adopted an English accent as Powell, whilst English actor Daniel Craig adopts an American accent for the role of Alex West. Angelina, being American herself, takes on a British accent.
• The Buddhist ceremony in which Lara takes part (following the scene when she telephones Powell from Cambodia) was an actual occurrence and was not staged.
• When Lara calls Bryce from Cambodia, he is seen watching a stop motion children's program, a BBC animated series called The Clangers, which ran from 1969 to 1974.
• In the novelization, when Lara uses the Triangle to see her father, she appears to him just after he finished placing the clues about the clock and just before he is killed by Powell.
• According to commentary by Simon West, the idea for the robot fight was spawned from watching an infomercial about Slam Man, a box-training dummy that lights up where the boxer is supposed to hit it.
• The pistols that Lara uses in the film are the Heckler & Koch USP Match
• The hit U2 song, Elevation, appears in the movie's soundtrack, U2's subsequent music video for the song follows a Tomb Raider theme and even goes so far as to hire Angelina Jolie for a role in it.
• The distances shown between the planets in the various shots illustrating the impending alignment are not to scale. Two obvious examples of this are when Venus enters the alignment phase and when all nine planets and Earth's moon are shown in the final phase.
• Although the year of the movie is not given, a real-life alignment actually occurred on May 3, 2000, about a year before the movie's release. Note however that in the movie, the alignment occurs on May 15.
• The main hall of the mansion and,to some extent, Lara's bedroom are almost exact replicas of areas of the mansion in the game Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend

Tomb Raider delivered the largest non-holiday weekend of the year, opening at number one with a towering $47.7M, giving the studio its second-biggest debut ever. It was shown in 3,308 theaters with a gross of $14,430 each. The film also has the largest opening ever for a movie headlined by a woman, surpassing the $40.1M debut of Charlie's Angels.It is the most succesful video game adaption to date and it also ranks as the fourth best June opening and the fourth biggest debut of 2001.^[1]

Worldwide DVD Forums

• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider at the Internet Movie Database
• http://www.premiere.com/features/1114/tomb-with-a-view.html at Premiere Magazine
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider at Rotten Tomatoes
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider at Box Office Mojo

v • d • e Tomb Raider series
Video games	First continuity (Core Design) Tomb Raider (Unfinished Business) • II (The Golden Mask) • III (The Lost Artifact) • The Last Revelation • Chronicles • The Angel of Darkness Second continuity (Crystal Dynamics) Legend • Anniversary • Underworld Handheld games Tomb Raider • Curse of the Sword • The Prophecy
Film/Animation	Lara Croft: Tomb Raider • The Cradle of Life • Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider Animated Series • The Action Adventure (interactive DVD)
Characters	Lara Croft  • Jacqueline Natla  • Larson  • Pierre Dupont  • Lord Richard Croft  • Werner Von Croy  • Kurtis Trent  • Minor characters
Music & Scores	Games  • Tomb Raider (film)  • The Cradle of Life

Preceded by Swordfish

Box office number-one films of 2001 (USA) June 17, 2001

Succeeded by The Fast and the Furious