The upcoming Tomb Raider looks interesting. I know a lot of gamer women who are excited about it and as someone who very much enjoys the games and the Angelina Jolie films, I am most looking forward to seeing what a modern Tomb Raider movie looks like. One of my hopes was that this movie would do something the Jolie films didn’t give Lara some female friends. Sadly, that looks like it won’t be happening.
In an interview with BBC’s The One Show, Oscar winner and new raider of tombs Alicia Vikander talked about how excited she was to be playing a badass female character and how exciting it is “To see female characters in these kinds of films… It’s definitely a big change happening.” During the interview, host Alex Jones expressed her disappointment at the lack of female roles in the film, something that Vikander agrees with.
The dialogue, shared by Buzzfeed for all of us non-UK people goes as follows:
“The only thing I was slightly disappointed in was that you were this brilliant main lead, and then everybody else, bar two, who had minor roles, were men,” the presenter said.
“I got to work with Kristin Scott Thomas, and she is an extraordinary actress, but me too. I agree,” Alicia replied. “I was on this island going, ‘There’s not enough women, where are they?’ I was running around looking for them.”
What is so disappointing about this is that so often in these action films, we are only allowed to have one heroine who gets to save the day. While we still don’t have as many female action led movies as we should, at the same time this reboot of Tomb Raider is a reboot of a commercially successful series. The Jolie Tomb Raider movies made a lot of money ($350 million adjusted for inflation for the first movie), and we have had “chosen one” white women-led franchises time and time again from Underworld, Resident Evil, The Hunger Games, Atomic Blonde, etc. We need ensembles.
Part of the reason I and everyone else loved Mad Max: Fury Road so much is because it featured multiple women fighting for their freedom. Everyone is raving about Black Panther‘s cast of bad-ass female characters. What did everyone want in the Wonder Woman movie? More time with the Amazons. Even the Fast and the Furious franchise has had several female leads throughout it, the majority of them being women of color.
It is great that this reboot wants to highlight more realistic physical body types and add a real sense of grit to the action, but how about added more for the female cast to do. I was excited to see Killjoys actress Hannah John-Kamen on the cast list, and I hope that what little we do see of her is good and Bechdel-Wallace Test worthy.
So yes, we are still excited about Tomb Raider and look forward to seeing Lara jump real-real-real far, but from now on, when it comes to casting female heroines in films…
At least…
(via Buzzfeed, image: Warner Bros.)
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