Screenwriter Geneva Robertson-Dworet over Tomb Raider

RDJ134 20 maart 2018 om 20:37 uur

Aaaah Tomb Raider de film die dacht wat gamers naar de bioscoop te lokken door wat scenes uit de game te halen en dit te verpakken in een saaie vertoning die maar liefst twee uur duurt. Het is dan ook niet zo heel erg vreemd dat deze film nu keihard op zijn bek is gegaan en we ons geen zorgen hoeven te maken om een vervolg. De screen writer Geneva Robertson-Dworet was tijdens dit interview met Collider nog heel erg blij, maar deze is nu pas online gezet en waarschijnlijk voor de premiere gemaakt.


As a woman, what perspective did you want to give Lara Croft?

ROBERTSON-DWORET
: I loved the old movies. Angelina Jolie nailed it and created such an iconic version of the character. To me, she felt so perfect that I couldn't totally relate to her, but maybe that's just naturally who Angelina Jolie is. I wanted to create someone who ultimately kicks ass, but doesn't start there, at all, and who starts as a very relatable, normal person with the problems that I had when I was her age and trying to pay rent and thought that I could take on the world. Lara quickly finds out that she's in way over her head, when she starts her adventure. As soon as she gets into Hong Kong, she gets in trouble with the kids. She needs to rise to the occasion and ultimately take on whatever is thrown at her, but it was important to me to show the journey of what you go through, internally and externally, to get to the place where can be someone who can handle whatever life throws at you, the way Lara does. That's what I was interested in. I wanted to create that, as an inspirational character. I wanted to see that journey.

Alicia Vikander makes all of that really believable. What did you enjoy about watching her bring this character to life?

ROBERTSON-DWORET:
I want to give more credit than that to Alicia, as a collaborator. It wasn't like I wrote something and she brought it to life. She had major creative input on making sure we maintained the vision of the character that she wanted to have on screen, too. It was a very collaborative process, and she was great. I think she had some really interesting instincts, in terms of making it feel like it does. My very early drafts were more action-comedy in tone, like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Indiana Jones, where it was really quippy. They actually cut out a huge number of the jokes because they felt like it wasn't what a real person would say, in this situation. The heightened tone that Indiana Jones has, which I love, was not the grounded version of Tomb Raider that Roar [Uthaug], our director, and Alicia, our leading lady, had in mind. So, there was a lot of work done to retro-fit it to Alicia's vision, and she nailed that realistic version because it was always in her head. We reworked the script to be more according to her vision and more grounded.

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