Roar Uthaug who's directing the Tomb Raider movie reboot announced that filming had begun today. His previous film was called The Wave. Lara is played by Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, The Danish Girl, Jason Bourne) but the film also features Wilton Goggins (Justified, Hateful Eight, Vice Principals) and Daniel Wu (Europa Report, Into the Badlands). It was previously announced that the movie will be inspired by the reboot series. It is scheduled to be released March 16th, 2018.

Not expecting it to be good but what the hey, go nuts hollywood.

I mean the Angelina Jolie movies were 'decent' at least.

As far as videogame to movie adaptations are concerned, the bar is pretty low to beat expectation, so it has that going for it

looking forward to this after the success that was Assassins Creed!

The new games are pretty grounded with a dash of supernatural thrown in for good measure. Not a hard template to adapt. Still, approach with caution.

Goggins is actually a really good actor; wonder how he got roped into a video game tie-in.

If Hollywood can make decent super hero movies, why can't they ever seem to do the same with video game adaptations? A good Tomb Raider movie shouldn't be hard at all. Write a sequel to Indiana Jones or National Treasure, replace the protagonist with Lara Croft, slightly adjust various elements to better fit your new character, and you're done.

Let's see if it can knock off Mortal Kombat as Best Video Game Movie.

Because comics and movies are a passive medium while video games are an active medium?

Anyway, it might work if the movie actually tries to have a sense of humor and lightheartedness, rather than being all serious and lifeless like the new games.

His agent called and said "Hey, Walton, would you like some money?"

This has some good names behind it, but so did Warcraft and Assassin's Creed and look how those turned out.

Let's see how it goes with this one, I'm not expecting anything that good but hopefully they can at least beat the pretty low bar of videogame to movies adaptations.

Doesn't stand a chaaaaaance.

@cikame: I like those new games but i'll always prefer old Lara. Something about new Lara is just a bit too Hunger Gamey for my tastes.

Also this is a video game movie reboot, of course it's doomed. It's also a gritty reboot without the grit. (because it'll have to be 12A/PG-13)

It's a movie based on a video game series literally called "Tomb Raider". This will not be good.

Alicia Vikander is at least as diminutive as modern video game Lara, why not.

Alicia Vikander, you deserve better projects than this. Original Tomb Raider is just modern day Indiana Jones with a lady. Modern Tomb Raider and Uncharted are slightly less hokey, modern day Indiana Jones. On paper, any of those are fine ideas for a doofey action movie, but Vikander actually has some acting chops compared to what the role requires.

The games that get movie adaptations continue to be baffling.

@bisonhero: So what kinds of games would you like to see adapted to film?

Not trying to be a smart a** here, I'm genuinely curious as someone who has pondered this thought before.

Love them or hate them, the talent involved in super hero movies is generally a few notches better than you're average videogame movie. Also since super hero movies are so successful, they tend to justify bigger budgets. Not that it always translates to better movies, but I don't think it hurts either. If you have bigger budgets its not only for flashier visuals, but you can hire better actors, screenwriters, and on and on down the line. I don't think it has all that much to do with the nature of videogames versus comic books.

@ezekiel: I think it also helps that there are actually good comic stories out there to adapt. Technically speaking, there aren't very many good video game stories.

To that argument, I would say Netflix. I can't accept that Netflix superhero shows are WAY better than super hero movies, despite clearly being more limited in terms of casting, special effects, and the overall budget.

You don't need high-priced actors, or amazing effects, or an insane budget to make a good move or TV program. You need a script that isn't crap, and you need people who actually care about the product that they're making. From my point of view, Hollywood's inability to make good video game movies continues to be inexcusable.

I'm not sure why people are so down on a Tomb Raider movie

If there is any game franchise that seems suited to making a passable movie franchise, it should be one that's basically inspired by an existing Movie series.

Plus, who is seriously worried about the usual concern of being "true to the source material" with Tomb Raider? Tomb raider already has been rebooted twice and a had a previous movie continuity. Not like there is one definitive version of the series out there,

Chances are this will be ok but not amazing.

Eh. These constant attempts at movies.

Animated works alot better, but doesn't bring in the same amount of money.

Assassin's Creed's trailers looked pretty damn good, and look at how that movie turned out. I think people definitely have a good reason to be down on this movie. Has there EVER been a good video game movie? I mean, some of them are ok, like the first Silent Hill movie. Then we got some that are very campy in a great way like the first Mortal Kombat movie and Street Fighter, but NONE of them have been good.

The only way I see this standing a chance is if it's Tomb Raider in name only. Just do a completely original story with original characters and an original script that doesn't reference the video game franchise whatsoever.

Vikander is one of the best actresses around. This movie might be decent.

I have a long-winded answer, though mainly it boils down to video games rarely having a story worth adapting, so frankly there are very few game I actually want to see made into a movie. The story is functional for the game it accompanies, but most games are enjoyable because they're like 90% gameplay, 10% story. Just enough to justify why your player character should go do all the gameplay you end up doing.

Read on for my rambling, expanded thoughts on video game adaptations:

In conclusion, I would extend my premium subscription for several years if @alex would spearhead the revival of the TANG video series.

An interesting sidenote to the question of whether there's ever been a good video game movie - how many video game movies have been based on games that were story driven in the first place? Is Silent Hill the best example?

Vikander is a good actress for the most part but a terrible casting choice for this part. So many more charismatic female leads they could have gone with that have better presence.

Also yah, the game reboots are a ton of fun but unlike Assassins Creed or some of the more involved video game franchises out there, there is nothing about Tomb Raider that really seems interesting enough to warrant a movie adaptation.

@veektarius said:

That reeeeeeally depends on how loosely you want to define "story driven." I mean, Resident Evil and Silent Hill the video games both have stories, and Resident Evil and Silent Hill the movie both have stories, and I happen to think that Silent Hill movie is actually kinda OK, but is Silent Hill really a story driven game? Don't you walk around and do a whole bunch of arbitrary Resident Evil-style puzzles to get places, and only very occasionally does something that could be called a plot point or character development occur? Could you argue that Assassin's Creed is a story driven game, or is it more of a face and neck stabbing simulator? Final Fantasy, the games and The Spirits Within, are fairly story driven. Advent Children barely has a story, and is kinda just one long anime fight scene for the final half of it.

Here's the list I've been perusing if you want to have at it and tell me which of those you think are story driven games:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games

I feel like you could easily use the general foundation of Tomb Raider 2013 to make a genuinely great movie.

But I assume that Hollywood will once again make sure they find some way to fuck it up beyond belief.

i'm probably a monster in that my favorite video game adaptation so far is silent hill.

@bisonhero: I'm with you on Silent Hill, all things considered that movie did a pretty damn good job in my opinion. I haven't seen it in years but I remember that at the time the effect of changing into the "ash" world was really great as well.

Mass Effect could make a really great movie. Halo has the makings of a good movie. Dead Space could potentially be a really cool horror sci-fi thriller in the likes of Event Horizon. So many possibilities yet I'm almost certain they would all get completely chewed up by the Hollywood machine and spit out as pure trash as we've historically seen up until now.

I mean look at Max Payne - seems like a no brainer with an honest to God decent story perfect for movie adaptation with minimal changes to the original script, and yet they messed that up so badly. I don't know what it is about adapting videogame stories that makes screenwriters veer off target so much. Assassins Creed for all intents and purposes should have been a great movie considering how interesting the source material is. The huge animus arm contraption (granted the least of its problems) is like this weird declaration that the studio thinks the modern movie goer is so dense that they would instantly lose interest if they saw someone lay down on a bed and go into VR. Inception is a great example that you can have more cerebral cinema do well at the box office, especially if you back it up with great acting talent, a little bit of that star power magic, and wonderful cinematography - all things that Assassins Creed had going for it.

If something as interesting as AC can't do better than middling yawns, what chances does a rote story like Tomb Raider have especially when they're not even relying on cheap eye candy to draw in the less demanding movie goer?

@dudeglove: I haven't seen Prince of Persia in a long time, I'll have to re-watch that. I remember at the time thinking it was alright, while the general masses reeled against it like it was the biggest piece of shit on the planet. That movie was always a mystery to me in the sense that not only does Prince of Persia have a paper thin story, but it wasn't even that hot of a property in the videogame circles as the most recent release during the screening of that movie was the 2008 cel shaded reboot which, while I enjoyed a great deal, was received with mild enthusiasm.

The first Tomb Raider movies were perfectly passable popcorn pulp and Jolie was a good fit for the role. A reboot is not the worst idea. At least it's not another superhero film.

@humanity: I went to a preview screening of Max Payne where a third of the audience was Remedy staff. Half of them walked out before the film finished. I still can't fathom how they messed it up so badly.

What I meant by based on (badly phrased, I know) is that the story is actually the story of the game. What's weird about so many of these movies is they're meant to commercialize on the success of a game without using the game's story - and often they shoot themselves in the foot by not even giving themselves a story to work with. When a comic book is adapted, you expect them to remake an existing story, not to write some vaguely related tangent. So while Final Fantasy is a shoe-in for most story driven source material, they also didn't use the source material at all (it was probably the same creators, though, so maybe that shouldn't matter as much?) Advent Children and Kingsglaive are both better examples of what I mean. Warcraft and Wing Commander both use their source material in their stories, so in terms of "recreations" maybe those are the best? I haven't seen AC, so I don't know whether they were trying to do the AC1 story there or what.

@bisonhero: While I agreed with you on 99% of everything you had to say (great response to my question by the way, I enjoyed reading it), I have to disagree with the whole "video games rarely having a story worth adapting" part. As I have gotten older, and therefore busier (work, wife, kids), I have found that it's the story of many games that keeps drawing me back to them. While mechanics and gameplay do play a part in keeping me playing, it is almost always the story that compels me to carve out time to enjoy this hobby I have enjoyed for the past 30+ years.

I've driven Lara's Land Rover from the first movie. Well, I drove it off and on to a truck a few times.

This one.

Don't remember it? Shame on you, it was in the film for almost 4 seconds.

Just because there hasn't been many great ones, doesn't mean that will always be the case. Comic Book movies for the most part used to be mostly crap except for the rare gem (like Tim Burton's Batman). Now decent ones are practically yearly summer blockbusters.

Seems to me it's only a matter of time before one game franchise gets successfully turned into a mega movie franchise on the order of Batman or Avengers. YMMV on the quality of those, but they certainly are popular.

Like you more or less implied , the mistake most of these make is to try to be close to the letter of the source material as opposed to the spirit (You need to be true to that at least , otherwise you end up with the Super Mario Brothers movie).

Eventually someone is going figure this out, it's not like many of these games don't have a conceit that can't work in other mediums as evidenced by cartoon shows, comic book, manga, anime and books adaption of them over the years. Someone just needs to write one of these as a movie first, being true to the characters and premise first, gameplay second. Tomb raider, given it's similarity to Indiana Jones, seems like one where it doesn't take a tremendous imagination on the part of a writer to conceive of it as a movie.

maybe they will screw it up again, but it does seems like a property that's got a fighting chance to be ok to me.

Hopefully they don't try to write around any of the stuff from the games and just make a film about a lady who does some adventurous archaeology. Just throw any canon out of the window for the movie.

I'm not saying they should make 'Indiana Jones but with a lady' but I think there are many, many ways to interpret the basic premise of Tomb Raider. And some of those interpretations are probably pretty good.

I was actually really looking forward to this when Daisy Ridley's name was being floated around to star, but I'm not sold on Vikander, even if she was great in Ex Machina. Time shall tell.