The first Tomb Raider film may have grossed around $300 million worldwide, making it the biggest opening ever for a film with a female star, but Angelina Jolie admits they had to get things right for instalment two, The Cradle of Life. Through her permanent pout she states that the new film is “sharper and darker and sexier” …
Interview by Gareth Gorman
Despite Tomb Raider shifting units, there was a general feeling that the film sold itself on the back of the popular game franchise, and (Angelina Jolie being every bit right for the role of Lara Croft) they had better get it right next time. Tomb Raider was lacking in quips and one-liners, had Lara stuck in her house for the first 45 minutes of the film, and spent way too much time talking to her dead dad. It was a film desperately vying for our attention, but couldn’t command it. Angelina Jolie and the team realised this and promised Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life will indeed rock your world.
“Everyone liked the first film but didn’t love it. We changed a lot of things – the action sequences, everything,” she says. “There are lots of things going on above and below the water.”Yes, water – which means it’s Lara Croft in a figure-hugging wetsuit, boys. Grrrs and hubba-hubbas all around. And this is just the first of many improvements since Lara last graced multiplexes everywhere.
One of the main improvements would have to be the ditching of director Simon West for Jan de Bont of Speed and Twister pedigree. You just know that a guy who can make a film about a scary wind throwing cows around, and turn in an effort so exciting it made stars of Keanu Reeves (pre-Matrix, folks) and Sandra Bullock has to be better than West, a lunkhead director capable of turning in Jerry Bruckheimer no-brainers such as Con Air, but that’s about it.
The Cradle of Life finds our busty archaeologist and explorer extraordinaire, Lara Croft, journeying to a sunken temple (where else?) in search of lost treasures. During her expedition, Croft happens upon a sphere that contains the mythical Pandora’s Box, only to have it stolen from her by Chen Lo, the leader of a Chinese crime syndicate. Chen Lo is in league with a bad guy named Reiss, who wants to use the priceless Box as a doomsday weapon.The film also stars Gerard Butler as Lara’s new love interest Terry Sheridan. Returning are Noah Taylor and Chris Barrie as the boffin and butler respectively.
Fortunately their sequences are much better than the last outing. They are joined by Gladiator actor Djimon Hounsou as a Masai warrior.Location filming took place in Hong Kong and Kenya, but not China. Great Wall Of China sequences were filmed in Wales. Angelina’s favourite, though, was a Greek island. It seems the girl couldn’t get enough of Santorini.”I loved it there. It’s really beautiful. Everyone has been really warm.” Indeed the filming of The Cradle of Life seemed to provide the perfect venue for Angelina Jolie to escape her well-known private life woes. The living embodiment of Lara Croft manages to lose herself in the character much like the spouses of Playstation widows whittle away the hours in Lara’s various virtual worlds.
Such woes for Angelina Jolie include filing for divorce from her husband, actor Billy Bob Thornton and being besieged by pleas from her estranged father, Jon Voight, to reconcile and receive treatment for alleged emotional and psychological problems – thanks, Dad. On a brighter note, Angelina Jolie adopted a child, a Cambodian infant she named Maddox, and it seems he’s provided the happiness nothing else has even come close to.
“There’s nothing else that’s more important. I’m very, very fortunate. It’s wonderful. It’s just the most amazing thing in the world,” she says. “He’s changed my life. He’s really centred me. Anytime I think anything else is important, I just see his smile. He’s made me be the best person I could possibly be. Mind you, he kept peeing on my wardrobe, so I had to get an apron to wear. He’s just a boy, so in between diapers he’d get me.”Angelina is now a bit more careful with her stunts and derring-do. “I check safety things a little bit more than I used to now that Maddox is here.” But she is still doing many of her own stunts, including riding a horse side-saddle, rapelling face-forward down a cliff wall, riding motorcycles and jet-skiing.
“I’d never ridden a jet-ski, and I had a lot of practice, [but the producers] always make it more complicated. So it was stand-up jet-skis, which took me a few days of constantly falling and getting frustrated,” she says. “We started [shooting] in Greece, which was great. Mind you, I hate water and I hate bikinis. So what do we start with, but my worst possible day as an actress. Yup, me jet-skiing in a bikini in the water in Greece.
“On the whole it’s a lot of fun. I’m one of those people who just really wants to do it. What do you say? Mad for it? Yeah, I’m mad for it. There were times where I’d swing like a pendulum and almost hit the wall, and I couldn’t go up and down, I kept swinging and flying like Superman and laughing. And as for being fearless, I think I’m either fearless or crazy, but either way, I’ve found a home for it.”
Indeed she has, and you can bank on the fact that Ms Angelina Jolie is more than happy to be returning to play an icon. It seems she just wants to be adored, as well as do her bit for girl power. “Playing Lara, well it just feels so great to hold my head up as a woman. It’s not really like me to be quite like that. I know all the things about me that are crazy, strange, or dark. And she’s also almost got this swagger. It’s like being on stage and she’s like Elvis. So, you have to jump right in, and that was the hardest thing to me, to be kind of proud, and with that confidence that I don’t have in my life as a woman.”
In Lara, does she believe she’s found something of herself?
“This was a side that I didn’t think was in me. But it wasn’t a surprise to people who know me. You spend so much time in your head as an actor, living in the dark, you forget to be free. And I’m the first person to be looking for what freedom means and to feel trapped and in a cage. It took me a while to realise that when I was standing at the edge of a waterfall in Cambodia, and I was so happy … god, I really learned what the world is about. Now it makes more sense to me, because this is how I’ve needed to be my whole life and I didn’t have an outlet for it. It maybe explains why I’m a little crazy.”When I was younger, I was a bit of a loner and just didn’t feel like doing normal things. I can’t remember when I didn’t think that. I figured everybody else felt the same isolation. I did notice early on that I didn’t seem content when a lot of other people did. But I really just hated hanging out. Just doing regular things never felt like enough.”
Speaking of craziness: while Lara Croft finds happiness is a warm gun, a pistol in each hand, Ms Jolie prefers the feel of cold hard steely knives.”Well, I don’t think that’s that crazy. I lived in New York by myself for three years. I had a knife under the mattress, you know? But I have a case that I lock all my knives in.”Doing Lara Croft’s stunts is one thing, but how does Jolie , ahem, measure up to Lara Croft in reality? Previous incarnations of Lara have included Nell McAndrew, Lara Weller, Lucy Clarkson and Jill De Jong, all employed by the game manufacturer Eidos, and all of whom have gone to considerable trouble to reach Lara’s vital statistics, with Rhona Mitra notably boosting herself up for the modelling role.
“Right. This has been the big question. I’m a 36C. In the film, I’m a 36D. In the game, she’s a double-D 40 with a 20-inch waist and 35-inch hips or something. I have a regular waist, regular hips, kind of like a boy. So we basically gave her a proper padded bra. But it wasn’t so far off, since I had to do the physical things. I’m fine with my breasts and I don’t think its something little girls look at and think, ‘I should be like that and get a breast implant’. It’s part of her character, so you do it. But I want every young girl to know that is not completely me.”
In a strange but true twist, it seems that the living embodiment of the world’s most famous computer game character is a complete and utter technophobe, especially when it comes to mainframes, modems, gigabytes or even just a plain old game of pong. As for dealing with The Perils of Lara on PS2, PC or Xbox – forget it.
“Oh, I just get frustrated with the game all the time. I can’t work a computer, it’s so frustrating.”
Even Angelina Jolie feels frustration from time to time.
The Cradle of Life opened in September 2003.
