Alicia Vikander is Lara Croft in TOMB RAIDER (Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)

The successful and acclaimed reboot of the 2013, Tomb Raider tells the story that will set a young, resolute and empowering Lara Croft, played by Oscar winner Alicia Vikander, on a path toward becoming a global hero and a heroine for this generation. Directed by Roar Uthaug, the film is an action-packed extravaganza on a rescue mission to save her dad.

During the Los Angeles press conference, Alicia talked about Lara Croft’s origin as a inspiration: ” […] coming of age that’s our inspiration. We’ve seen it a lot in these superhero and action movies. If you have the origin story, that’s a way for us to get to know our character, to feel for them and to related to them on a more human level. I thought it was wonderful to play a woman who was still trying to find her footing in the world. It’s a story where she goes out of her world and where all the traits she has in her are forced out due to the adventure she goes on and the challenges she’s put through.”

Alicia Vikander and the director Roar Uthaug (Credit: Warner Bros Pictures)

To built the character and the relationship with the dad, Alicia worked on the psychological part of it and added, “we wanted to find an emotional way in to feel with her. One of them is the relationship with her father. We kind of know this character too;  she has this love of history, mythology and artifacts. It’s not until she finds his secret chamber where she realizes he was not only a suit at a corporate company. There’s actually a reason for why she has the love for these things. That’s a discovery, but also an acceptance of who she is. That’s something any young person can relate to and also the fact that she has a lot of people that tell her, or ask her, what’s she going to do with her life. I think that’s a pressure.”

(Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

But Alicia had the big, I would say huge, action-packed scenes and the actress had to be in shape for that: “what I loved was though, when I met Graham and Roar, is that we wanted the sequences that are going to be such a big part of this film to be set in a reality. Would you buy that this young girl could beat this bigger, stronger man? We then, story-wise, integrated she’s a physical being, trains and is a bicycle courier. I wanted her to be a strong girl so it could be plausible that she could do what she does later on in the film.”

Since this movie has more character development, Lara Croft uses more her strengths and Alicia explained, “she doesn’t use a gun in this film. Instead, we go back to an integrated story in this adventure. I loved that with everything she uses; right down to the ice pick, she needs to be innovative. She has to use what’s around her. If she doesn’t have the strength, she needs to use her wit and intelligence instead. It’s really empowering when you get to be there in the end, because when you have all these struggles and you feel for her as a real girl, then you root for her even more.”

Tomb Raider hits theaters on March 16 and also stars Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu and Oscar nominee Kristin Scott Thomas.

(Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

About the film

Lara Croft is the fiercely independent daughter of an eccentric adventurer who vanished when she was scarcely a teen.  Now a young woman of 21 without any real focus or purpose, Lara navigates the chaotic streets of trendy East London as a bike courier, barely making the rent, and takes college courses, rarely making it to class.  Determined to forge her own path, she refuses to take the reins of her father’s global empire just as staunchly as she rejects the idea that he’s truly gone.  Advised to face the facts and move forward after seven years without him, even Lara can’t understand what drives her to finally solve the puzzle of his mysterious death.

Going explicitly against his final wishes, she leaves everything she knows behind in search of her dad’s last-known destination: a fabled tomb on a mythical island that might be somewhere off the coast of Japan.  But her mission will not be an easy one; just reaching the island will be extremely treacherous.  Suddenly, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Lara, who—against the odds and armed with only her sharp mind, blind faith and inherently stubborn spirit—must learn to push herself beyond her limits as she journeys into the unknown.  If she survives this perilous adventure, it could be the making of her, earning her the name tomb raider.