Alicia Vikander has officially stepped into the boots of the young and inexperienced Lara Croft for Roar Uthaug's Tomb Raider and taken her place in the Hollywood pantheon as a new action icon. Though critics have not showered the film with universal acclaim yet, there seems to be a consensus that Vikander delivers a scene-stealing performance as the badass heroine. With that in mind, the debut of Tomb Raider naturally raises one crucial question: should Alicia Vikander double down and make Tomb Raider 2? Well, as it turns out, the answer to that question is a hard "yes!"
As an origin story exploring the birth of the Lara Croft that fans know and love, Tomb Raider has to shoulder quite a bit of exposition to get us up-to-speed. This tends to slow down the first act of the current film, as it puts all of the pieces in place. However, once Tomb Raider actually gets going and sends Lara on her mission to find out the truth behind her father's disappearance, the film kicks into a higher gear and delivers a near-perfect adaptation of the rebooted games. We finally have a video game film that seems to understand the formula behind its source material, and with a proper world established, we could see the Tomb Raider franchise continue to dissect that video game Lara in a way that fans have waited decades to see.
Warning: spoilers ahead for Tomb Raider! Read ahead at your own risk!
There's also the fact that Tomb Raider ends with the promise of more story for Lara Croft. By the time the origin story concludes, we understand that Trinity has infiltrated the highest levels of Croft Holdings, with Lara now aware that Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a wolf in sheep's clothing who wants to use the company for her own nefarious purposes. Tomb Raider's ending is the definition of a cliffhanger, and this new incarnation of Lara deserves more films to explore that story.
Moreover, we need to say that a refusal to return to this Tomb Raider landscape would ultimately waste Alicia Vikander's fantastic work building this character. The Oscar-winner threw herself into the creation of this Lara; between her physical transformation and her commitment to the character's emotional core, audiences have discovered one of the most compelling action movie heroes in recent memory.
In fact, at one point during Tomb Raider's run, Lara even makes a crack about not being a superhero, and while it seems like a simple one-off line, it actually highlights why Tomb Raider works so well. In a landscape dominated by films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the DCEU, it's genuinely refreshing to get a film that doesn't feature a hero who shrugs off bullets or wears a cape. Alicia Vikander's Lara screams in pain when she gets hurt, she barely overcomes her enemies in combat, and the burgeoning badass continually makes mistakes that she needs to learn from during her mission. She's a heroine with so much more room to grow and evolve, and a hypothetical Tomb Raider 2 could inch the dial forward ever-so-slightly by finally allowing her to fire her two iconic handguns.
Beyond the sheer potential for story in the newly-rebooted Tomb Raider universe, it's also worth addressing the fact that there's financial incentive to keep a sequel in mind. Domestically, Tomb Raider wasn't able to beat Black Panther at the box office, but the video game adaptation's international run is going quite well. As of right now, Tomb Raider has cleared its $94 million production budget and has thus far raked in roughly $126 million globally, which will likely go up in the coming days. Money talks, and the international success of Tomb Raider seems to indicate that a sequel could similarly serve as a global cash cow for Warner Bros.
CinemaBlend will bring you more information related to Tomb Raider and the possibility of a sequel getting made as more details become available to us. For now, check out our full review of the film, keep an eye out for all of our up-to-date coverage on it, and check it out in theaters for yourself to see the latest addition to the video game film genre!
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