Transcript note: This transcript is based on the original working script. It may contain production notes, draft wording, spelling mistakes or other material that differs from the finished video - these scripts were meant to be spoken, not read.

Back in 1996 - When you first slipped the Tomb Raider disc into your favourite gaming machine, you weren’t loading up just another game

You were stepping into something new, becoming part of pop culture history.

Lara Croft.A female lead who wasn’t a sidekick, wasn’t a token, and wasn’t waiting to be rescued.

She was strong, independent, fierce, new, exciting and… Everywhere.

By the time Hollywood came knocking, we already had five games in as many years.

Tomb Raider changed how games looked, played, and were marketed.

They had a golden run with Tomb Raider I through 3, then we got 4 and Chronicles, which - Well, in hindsight might have been a bit soon - BUT - people were still lapping them up.

Lara wasn’t just a video game character, she was a full-blown brand.

She was flogging Lucozade in adverts, plastered over magazine covers, even popping up in U2’s PopMart tour.

She wasn’t confined to pixels anymore - she’d crossed over; it's fair to say that she was the first A-list celebrity born from Pixels and polygons.

Almost inevitably, in 2001 we got a film.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

And I guess that's the first thing to note, the name.

“Lara Croft” first and foremost, although the “Tomb Raider” part would be bigger on the film posters - I guess they were hedging their bets with that one.

Hollywood were clearly banking on character recognition before anything else from the start

The first question to be answered would be – who was going to play her?

The press went wild with speculation, all kinds of names were being banded about.

But director Simon West always insisted it was going to be… Angelina Jolie.

Yeah, the casting was controversial.

An American playing Britain’s most famous adventurer?

Fans weren’t sold.

Anglelina Jolie also had a wild tabloid reputation at the time - knives, tattoos, the blood-vials with Billy Bob Thornton. Etc.

Not exactly a “safe” choice in a lot of people's eyes.

But, once on screen?

Angelina Jolie nailed it.

She was Lara.

The accent, the attitude, the moves.

Honestly, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role as Lara now.

But make no mistake, it was one of those things that nearly killed it before it got going.

Now.

Angelina might have been able to convince the world she was Lara, but even the intrepid adventurer needed a supporting cast.

First up, Hillary - An aging but faithful Butler found wandering the halls of Croft Manor following Lara around like a puppy dog, and quite often finding himself locked in a fridge for his troubles.

In the games he also spelled his name W-I-N-S-T-O-N

For some reason.

Anyhow…

In the film. Here he's fairly young and played by Chris Barrie who was probably best known to UK audiences for his roles as Brittas in The Brittas Empire, or Rimmer in the cult comedy Red Dwarf.

Joining Lara and Wins… Hillary at Croft Manor, Bryce - A young tech genius responsible for building all Lara's gadgets and toys.

He's played by Noah Taylor, not an unknown at the time but his face hadn't been around much in Hollywood either.

He was a character created for the film so doesn't appear in the game at all, but a welcome addition to the team.

Also, a helpful way to explain the huge robot she fights at the start of the film.

Lara's Dad also makes an appearance even though he's long since passed in both game and film, and played here by Angelina Jolie's real life Father, Jon Voight.

And, of course we'll tip our hats to the late but great Leslie Phillips who had a small role as Wilson, a friend of Lara's late father who keeps one eye on Lara and helps her out from time to time.

Well, I say that but at some point he's gotten involved with the villains of the piece Alex West, played by Daniel Craig and Manfred Powell, played by Iain Glen.

These two are members of the Illuminati who are the main villains of the film.

And, yes you're right. The illuminati were never really a part of the Tomb Raider games.

We got the Illuminati, because in the year 2001, every blockbuster villain plot eventually came back to shadowy men in robes fretting about a planetary alignment.

It was a thing. Don’t ask.

Which brings us nicely to the plot.

Hollywood went off and did their own thing with the story of the game - which is fair enough.

At that point, Lara had been on so many different adventures it didn’t really matter which thread they pulled.

So instead we got something very of its time.

The story properly kicks off when we see the Illuminati fretting about a planetary alignment that will let them reassemble the Triangle of Light - a mystical artifact that can control time.

The problem being, they don’t have the key to unlock it.

Back at the manor, Lara discovers a mysterious ticking clock hidden by her father along with some equally cryptic letters.

Bet you can’t guess what the clock reaaaaaaaaaaally is - Can you?

To be fair, that kind of mystical nonsense was nothing new. The games had already thrown Atlantis, the Dagger of Xian, and cursed meteorites at us.

So a time-controlling triangle?

Honestly, fits right in.

Soon enough, her house gets raided, the clock stolen, and she’s swept into a race against Manfred Powell and Alex West.

We soon find our hero in Cambodia.

There’s a temple, puzzles, and well - It’s all quite Tomb Raidery really.

Lara figures out what nobody else can and then it all kicks off for a bit, a boss battle if you like

She does what Lara does and escapes with half the Triangle, but not the clock, so the chase continues.

Back in Venice again - The bad guys try to offer Lara a deal, dangling the idea that the Triangle could bring back her dead father.

She reluctantly plays along, which leads us to Siberia for the final showdown.

There’s an orrery contraption, a collapsing tomb, and the bad guys making their move to claim the Triangle.

Lara gets a vision of her father urging her to destroy it, not use it, which she does - after rewinding time just long enough to make some changes that save the day.

But nobody was buying a ticket for the story, it was almost irrelevant so long as Lara was there.

It wasn’t smooth behind the scenes. 11 scriptwriters came and went before West rewrote most of it himself.

Steven E. de Souza of Street Fighter infamy handled early drafts that were binned - Which was probably for the best all things considered.

Daniel Craig - hated the film, called it nonsense

But the finished film throws in plenty of nods for the fans.

Quite a lot in the first few moments of the film as well, the opening training montage of her squaring off against a robot would see Lara pull out all her moves, dual pistol wielding, back flips while drawing her weapons, rolls along the floor as she turns round - It’s all there.

Even the reloading of the weapons is explained, which is kind of a pro move when it comes to giving nods to gamers.

It was very much a time capsule of early 2000s filmmaking. Slow-motion flips, rope swings, giant CGI statues coming to life.

Obviously, Hollywood couldn’t resist leaning into Lara’s sex-symbol status.

Remember the old “Nude Raider” cheat code rumour that never actually existed?

That was the cultural baggage the films had to deal with.

After all, It was the era of leather pants and crop tops - just look at Relic Hunter, which was basically Tomb Raider on a TV budget before Hollywood came along.

That was essentially Tia Carrere spending half the show in her underwear for, well… Reasons

That’s what the audience was being sold back then, and the studio clearly wanted to tap into the same thing.

Early drafts included shower scenes, skinny dipping, even entire gags around Lara’s body being used to distract her opponents, even her cleavage as an actual weapon in some cases.

Anglina Jolie pushed back on most of it, but they clearly wanted to sell her as both action hero and fantasy figure.

We did end up with a little pseudo nudity - just a short shower scene with some side boob

Which, I won't say is disappointing, but surprising. She was even hesitant about Lara’s trademark short shorts in the opening robot fight scene.

She eventually agreed - mainly to please fans - but admitted she felt practically naked for the first few days of filming.

The early 2000s were brutal for over-sexualising female leads

And for the record, yes - apparently Anglina Jolie suggested Lara have a Mohawk.

That idea died fast, thankfully.

And if you were in any doubt that this was 2001, just check the soundtrack.

The Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and Nine Inch Nails - I could go on with this, the soundtrack read like a who's who of music at the time though.

It’s wall-to-wall Nu-Metal and club tracks.

Subtle?

Not at all.

But the soundtrack alone stamps the film firmly in its era.

Still, the marketing push was massive. Filmed at Pinewood, marketed like a tentpole, and it actually paid off.

For once, a video game adaptation outgrossed expectations.

Critics?

They tore it apart, brutally and without remorse.

Audiences though?

They showed up.

Including me.

I was there opening night. And I loved it. Sure, I laughed at some of the dodgy effects - those skeletons were one step up from Jason and the Argonauts, and not in a good way.

I even spotted tattoos Angelina wasn’t supposed to have.

But none of that mattered.

It was Lara Croft on a screen. Overblown, ridiculous, but fun.

And that’s all I wanted it to be.

Turns out I wasn’t alone. It pulled nearly $300 million worldwide, smashing past the first Pokémon movie to become the highest-grossing video game adaptation.

It held that crown for almost a decade until Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in 2010, and held the domestic record for 18 years until Detective Pikachu.

For Hollywood, that was proof enough.

They might not have understood how or why it worked, but it did.

And while the sequel’s another story for another day, the 2001 film did something important: it made Lara Croft a global cinema icon.

As an adaptation it’s messy, dated, and remembered more for Angelina Jolie than for the story.

What the film never really captured was the atmosphere of the games.

Those early Tomb Raiders were quiet, eerie at times even.

You’d spend minutes or even hours just hearing Lara’s footsteps echo through empty ruins before anything happened, broken by the occasional “no” as she refused to do something you wanted.

That said, thankfully Angelina manages to move with some style and grace, it's as though she never heard of tank controls…

The movie?

Well, that never shuts up.

Funny, really - And a little ironic.

And just to round things out - the film managed to pull off the rare double of Angelina Jolie getting nominated for Best Actress at the Saturn Awards, Best Female Performance at the MTV Movie Awards…

and also a Worst Actress Razzie nomination in the same year - Go figure.

She even picked up a Kids’ Choice Award for “Favorite Butt Kicker.” - Which, yeah - If you’ve won the kids over for anything video game related you’ve done well.

There would have course be a sequel, The Cradle of Life would hit the cinema a couple of years later.

No spoilers, but - Well - It wouldn’t do quite as well… But, that’s a different video for a different time.

The games?

Well - They’re still with us, in one form or another - They’ve moved with the times and gone through two full reboots.

The most recent reboot, the Survivor Trilogy, took Lara off in a new direction - They reinvented her story and told her story from young adventurer to being the seasoned veteran we saw in the original game.

That series would come with its own film reboot in 2018, but - Again - That’s another different video.

There’s been an animated Netflix TV show, which… Well… Could have done better, and at the time of this video there are rumours of a new live TV adaption in the works from Amazon, but… Details are sparse on that and I won’t delve into rumours for them to age like milk.

But back to the 2001 effort for now, and depending on who you asked back then - Anglelina Jolie was either one of the best, the worst, or just the coolest person on screen, if not the planet, at the time.

But as a cultural moment?

It’s fair to say it helped cement Lara Croft in pop culture forever.

Early 2000s blockbuster excess, wrapped around a gaming icon, with Angelina Jolie at the peak of her swagger.

Not perfect. Not even close.

But unforgettable.

Unlike most video game movies.

Even with all the games that came after - the reboots, the shows - you can still bet on Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider being the favourite.

The first one at least.

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Or don’t. I’ll be here anyway.

Anyways - I’ve been Paul, and this was Pixels, Popcorn. Thanks for watching.