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Though this is not the first time Hollywood has paired
up with a popular video game series, it's the most buzzed-about union of the
movie and gaming industries, which last year raked in more than $7 billion and
$6.5 billion, respectively.
Unlike other game-to-screen vehicles, Tomb Raider
looks like it has the makings of a massive opening weekend. Earlier attempts
include such follies as Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, Street
Fighter and Wing Commander; but 1995's Mortal Kombat, the
video game industry's first crossover success, grossed $70 million, enough to
spawn a sequel and an animated TV series.
Most agree that Tomb Raider is a whole new creature,
with its big budget (rumored to be $100 million), big-league director (Simon
West of The General's Daughter, Con Air) and a fiery, sexy heroine
embodied by Oscar winner Angelina Jolie.
"What Tomb Raider has that previous films from this
genre have lacked is sex appeal," says Paul Dergarabedian of the Exhibitor Relations
box office tracking firm. "The very thing that has made the video game so hugely
popular is what will contribute to the movie's success. The Lara Croft character,
as personified by Angelina Jolie, appeals to men for her sex appeal and attitude,
and to women for the same reasons that the empowered female characters in Charlie's
Angels and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon brought women to theaters.
This is what should enable Tomb Raider to transcend its video game roots
and appeal to a wide audience necessary for box office success."
There are perils and pitfalls for a game character attempting
the leap to cinema, say Tomb Raider producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd
Levin. But Gordon insists, "It can be done. But you've got to understand: It's
hard to make a good movie in any case."
One thing's certain: Gordon and Levin thank the day they
found a muse in Jolie.
"We cast the right person," Gordon says. "That was the
major, major thing we did right. Lately, I've been asking myself, 'Who the hell
would have played this part if we hadn't gotten Angelina?' I don't know who
we would have used."
Dean Takahashi, who covers the video game industry and
technology for Red Herring magazine, agrees. "Casting is half the battle,"
he says. "Angelina Jolie is a reasonably good actress and will play the part
well. So the film is going to be a big hit. It's more like, how can they mess
it up?"
Part of what spurs such enthusiasm is the tremendous popularity
of the source game.
Since the first Tomb Raider game was released for
PCs in 1996, Eidos has sold 9 million games in the USA, accounting for more
than $300 million. Worldwide sales have hit about $700 million.
"The game is one of those few things that comes along and
captures people," says John Davison, editor in chief of The Official U.S.
PlayStation Magazine. "Lara Croft is a very strong character, and the beauty
of the franchise is that she has a certain presence that really works."
Groundbreaking game
Tomb Raider blazed new video game territory by
bridging the gap between "puzzle-solving adventure games like (1993's) Myst
and first-person shooters," such as Doom, says Steve Koenig, a senior
analyst for research firm NPD Intelect, which tracks the PC/video game and toy
market.
"It clearly has a cultlike following that has developed
on this whole Lara Croft character," he says. "She has somewhat become larger
than life."
When you play the video game, you see Lara — a shapely
woman (another twist, as most game protagonists were male) in a bright aquamarine
T-shirt and tiny khaki shorts. This third-person perspective allows gamers to
see Lara and the environment she faces.
"Tomb Raider is fun. It has humor. You can shoot
and blow up things. It requires patience and, of course, it has a sexy heroine
... a female version of Indiana Jones," says David Aaron Bailey of Harrisonburg,
Va., who has a Web site devoted to the games. "She isn't a sidekick to a male
like Jane in the Tarzan novels."
Says fan Jola Daniels, 33, of Wichita: "It is a hard game,
but Lara moves like a real person. ... She is not just a view of the front of
a gun. Lara can attract any kind of person. The story lines in the games have
all different types of themes."
Even Jolie, whose physical regimen and capacity for doing
her own stunts made headlines during the film shoot, says she is better at playing
Lara Croft in the movies than she was at playing the game.
"I was never good at it, so I used to get really frustrated
and want to throw it against the wall," Jolie says. "It's complicated if you
fall off the thing, and it takes you forever to get around the wall to climb
back up." (A cheat sheet enabled her to briefly triumph, then husband Billy
Bob Thornton's kids wanted their turn.)
Tomb Raider director West immediately realized Lara
Croft's appeal — and her potential for attracting audiences to a feature
film.
"She happens to be cleverer and tougher and more skilled
than all the men," he says. "The game was popular because it wasn't just a shoot'em-up
thing. Women could project themselves onto the character and say, 'That's me,'
and the guys got to look at a gorgeous, sexy girl in the middle of the action."
But gamers are so taken with Lara that the announcement
of a live-action movie version sent many into despair because no mortal could
do Lara justice.
With the landing of Jolie, Hollywood may have come as close
as possible. Her rebel attitude — brandishing multiple tattoos, displaying
a fiery attitude, making waves after kissing her brother smack on the lips after
she won her Oscar, marrying actor/filmmaker Thornton (20 years her senior) —
provides the proper edge needed for acceptance.
"Some don't care for Jolie, because they say she's not
ladylike enough," says fan Daniels, who moderated a lively discussion about
the choice on an unofficial Tomb Raider Web site (www.tombaiderchronicles.com).
She adds that she has come around to the choice. Like Jolie, she says, "Lara
is a little wild."
Producer Gordon, however, says gamers "gave us a rousing
vote of approval."
"If they hadn't," he says, "that would have been our first
mistake — and maybe fatal mistake, by the way."
The video game as art
Casting was only part of the battle, of course. Gordon
thinks he discovered the secret to making a game work on-screen: Treat it "with
the same reverence" as you would a well-received, best-selling novel.
"If we went in a totally different direction from the source
material, we'd be murdered," he says. "So in our film, we played it straight.
This is not a tongue-in-cheek film. Angelina doesn't play it campy. The action
is not silly. It's not so intense. It's a PG-13 film. We have intense action,
but it's not X- or R-rated action. We didn't want G, and we didn't want PG."
The filmmakers did their best to please more traditional
gamers while giving the story a bit more attitude.
Says West: "I tried to apply what was good about the game
but not try to have a game on the screen. Even if you've never heard
of Lara Croft, it's still a strong film."
The basic biographical details behind Lara's character
remain, but a battalion of writers embellished what was already there.
Her mother died in childbirth; her father, when she was
a youngster. But Lara followed in her father's footsteps — much like Jolie
did with her actor dad, Jon Voight, who plays her father on-screen in flashbacks
and a time-traveling scene — and became a globe-trotting archaeologist.
She made the radical change from her pampered lifestyle
when, at age 21, she endured two weeks alone in the Himalayas as the lone survivor
of a plane crash. Already an extreme-sports expert, she developed into a wily
specialist at recovering long-lost artifacts. Handy with pistols, Uzis and grenade
launchers, Lara also has a quick wit.
Jolie as Lara is more hip and menacing, dressed in shades
of black and gray, leaving video-game Lara's cartoonish aquamarine top and khaki
shorts in the dresser.
Jolie sneers and laughs in the face of danger, an expansion
of Lara's character. And in one of the final scenes, Jolie shows some devilish
grit and gets blood on her hands, literally, with an almost savage move that
video game Lara probably wouldn't execute.
The strategy to build on the game's foundation could satisfy
the millions of video gamers who've helped make Lara an icon of the wired generation.
But it will also need to lure those who've never seen her on smaller screens.
"There are not enough gamers out there to give us the gross
we need," Gordon says. "Listen, we have to entertain everyone, and we
have to make an exciting action-adventure movie. It's got to compete in a very
big summer with very successful movies. The competition is mind-boggling."
Interest is high, say box office experts who track such
things.
"I've never played Tomb Raider, but I'm dying to
see the movie!" says Gitesh Pandya, editor of boxofficeguru.com. "I'm sure
tons of moviegoers who have never played the game will see this film because
it is, after all, a big-budget summer action movie that looks cool. Tomb
Raider should perform (at the box office) less like a video game adaptation
and more like comic book adaptations such as X-Men and Batman."
Hard-core gamers worried
But some die-hard fans worry that moviegoers will get
a sanitized version of Lara. Video game industry veteran Mike Wilson hopes that
the filmmakers don't "blow what could have been a classic action movie" by muting
the violence.
Wilson, who joined id Software when it was creating Quake,
the successor to 1993's 3-D action game Doom, understands that filmmakers
feel pressure to tone down violence after shootings at Columbine and other high
schools. Such tragedies have "certainly moved Doom the movie from the
front burner to the back on more than one occasion," says Wilson, now CEO of
GodGames, which publishes games such as Max Payne and Rune.
Doom: The Movie?
Yes, Tomb Raider represents just the beginning of
what could be a renaissance for movies based on video games. Doom has
been in the planning stages for six years, and while it is no longer in active
development, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead says, "We're working ... to finally
get it made."
Others have had more luck in their path to the big screen.
(See sidebar, 3E) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, based on
Square Soft's Final Fantasy series of games, opens July 11. If both Tomb
Raider and Final Fantasy do well, even more games could see action.
"Heads start to turn and ears start to turn up when they
hear that 3 million people bought (the acclaimed 1998 PC game) Half-Life
and are totally into it," says Doug Lombardi of Valve Software. "When people
in the movie industry start to hear numbers like that, they obviously start
to say, 'Hmmm, maybe this is something that would work as a movie.' " (Lombardi
says actor Chris O'Donnell already wants to play Half-Life's heroic scientist,
Gordon Freeman, if it heads to Hollywood.)
Golden age of game films?
This coming wave of games could fare better than past
efforts because game creators now are focusing beyond the eye candy and developing
better stories.
"Honestly, most developers/publishers don't put a strong
focus on characters like they should," says Scott Miller, CEO of 3D Realms Entertainment,
which created Duke Nukem and produced Max Payne, both movie prospects
at Miramax's Dimension Films.
He points out that many games simply do not translate to
the big screen. "Super Mario Bros. was a clear example of that. Really,
Mario doesn't have much of a character, so there was nothing for a movie to
be based on."
The approach that 3D Realms and Finnish game creator Remedy
Entertainment took for Max Payne was different from the very start of
the game. Miller says, "Everything was tailored for Max to hit the big time."
Payne is a cop working undercover within an organized crime
family, but his family is murdered, he gets framed for his boss' murder, and
he's wanted by the police and the Mob.
"It's this premise that Miramax loved," Miller says, "and
Max Payne is the first game to be signed to a movie deal before the game
is even released and proven itself to be a hit."
Games also have become more ingrained in the culture and
therefore seem more accessible to movie executives. "Some of the people who
are trying to do this now are a little more hip to what the games are all about,"
says Scott Faye of Hollywood-based Collision Entertainment, which has helped
connect gamemakers and studios. His company is involved with producing several
games-to-movies, including Max Payne, which Faye hopes will become "a
Dirty Harry-type franchise."
But the franchise-in-the-making at the moment is Tomb
Raider. Ironically, in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, released
in late 1999, the game ends with Lara presumed dead, though she's expected to
resurface in 2002 in a "next generation" game, says Eidos spokesman Bryan Davies.
In the meantime, this film will spawn books, posters, clothing,
lunchboxes and other assorted merchandise, not to mention TV adds for tie-ins
with Pepsi, Taco Bell, Ericsson and Land Rover.
The hype could land Lara millions of new fans and conquer
the video-game-movie hex.
For some gamemakers, that will be a somber moment. "Turning
a highly evolved game heroine like Lara into a movie character — that's
de-evolution," says Jeff Brown of game publisher Electronic Arts. "Movies and
television are a step backward; the games we make, the interactivity and intensity
of the experience, are years beyond."
Oh, by the way, his company's game The Sims is being
considered for a TV show.
Contributing: Kelly Carter
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