| Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life |
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|---|---|
| Directed by | Jan de Bont |
| Produced by | Lloyd Levin Lawrence Gordon |
| Written by | Dean Georgaris |
| Starring | Angelina Jolie Gerard Butler Ciarán Hinds Chris Barrie Noah Taylor Til Schweiger Djimon Hounsou Simon Yam |
| Music by | Alan Silvestri |
| Cinematography | David Tattersall |
| Editing by | Michael Kahn |
| Studio | Mutual Film Company |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 21, 2003 July 25, 2003 August 22, 2003 |
| Running time | 117 minutes |
| Country | United States Germany Japan United Kingdom |
| Language | English Mandarin |
| Budget | $95 million |
| Box office | $156,505,388 |
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is a 2003 action film directed by Jan de Bont, and starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. It is a sequel to the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Like the first film, the film received mostly negative reviews, but critics noted an improvement on its predecessor particularly in the action-sequences and continued to praise Jolie's performance.
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The film begins on Greece’s Santorini island during a traditional Greek wedding that is interrupted by an earthquake. The earthquake dislodges a code in the form of a sphere. Lara Croft finds the sphere while exploring the submerged Luna Temple following the earthquake, but it is stolen by the crime lord Chen Lo. Lara (Angelina Jolie) is tasked by MI6 to find Pandora's Box, an object from ancient legends which supposedly contains one of the deadliest plagues on Earth, before evil Nobel Prize-winning scientist turned bio-terrorist Jonathan Reiss (Ciarán Hinds) can get his hands on it. The key to finding the box, which is hidden in the mysterious Cradle of Life, is a magical luminous sphere that serves as a map, the one stolen by Chen Lo in Santorini (Simon Yam) who plans to sell the sphere to Reiss. Lara recruits an old lover, Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler), a former mercenary and Royal Marine who had spent his last couple of years in prison in Kazakhstan, to help her track down Chen Lo and the ball.
Among the action sequences that take place during this time are the duo's entry into mainland China, a fight scene in suburban Shanghai, and a leap off the then-under-construction International Finance Centre skyscraper in Hong Kong landing on a ship out in the Kowloon Bay after stealing the Ball from Reiss and wrecking his company's computers. The ball later reveals the location of the Cradle of Life to be somewhere near Kilimanjaro in Africa. Lara sends this info back to Bryce (Noah Taylor) back at Croft Manor. After the transmission, Reiss and his men had infiltrated the mansion and captured Bryce and Hillary (Chris Barrie) where Reiss corrects Bryce stating that the computers that Lara destroyed were repaired quicker than he anticipated. Meanwhile, Lara and Terry begin to fall in love with each other again but Lara starts to back away from him. She seduces him one morning then leaves him chained to a bedpost.
Lara meets up with Kosa (Djimon Hounsou), an African friend who serves as her translator as they obtain information from a local tribe about the Cradle of Life. Kosa translates for the tribe's chief stating that the Cradle of Life is in a Mountain where its Jungle are filled with King Kongs. As the expedition starts, Lara, Kosa, and the tribesmen with them are ambushed by Reiss' soldiers. Many of the tribesmen are killed by Reiss' soldiers with some of the soldiers being killed by Lara in the fight. The fight ends with Lara surrendering due to overwhelming odds as Reiss' helicopter starts to land. Reiss and Sean (Til Schweiger) threaten to kill Bryce, Hillary, and Kosa unless Lara leads him and his men to the Cradle of Life. Soon they face perils such as a Jungle full of King Kongs that kill immediately when they sense a movement. This ends up happening when Sean and most of Reiss' soldiers are killed by the King Kongs. When Lara drops the ball into the hole that opens the entrance to the Cradle of Life, the King Kongs Disappears. There is a pool of highly corrosive black acid which holds the box. During this time, Terry arrives, frees Reiss' captives, and catches up to Lara.
Following a climatic fistfight between Lara and Reiss, Reiss is knocked into the acid pool by Lara after he is distracted by Terry. When the couple tries to leave, Terry attempts to take the box as compensation for finding it, but she staunchly refuses to let him leave with it. Despite her love for him, this results in Lara being forced to fatally shoot him in the stomach in self-defense just after Terry draws his own gun preparing to shoot Lara. Lara places Pandora's Box back into the pool, and realised that some boxes are not meant to be found.
The budget for Cradle of Life was just under $100 million (lower than the first film) and like the first film, it was financed through Tele-München Gruppe. The picture was also distributed internationally by Japanese company Toho-Towa.[1]
Filming lasted for three and a half months, which included six-day shoots on location in Hong Kong, Santorini, Llyn Gwynant in North Wales (doubling for mainland China), and a two-week stint in Kenya for shooting at Amboseli and Hell's Gate, with the remainder of the picture filmed on soundstages in the UK.[2] The film was banned in China (save for Hong Kong and Macau) after the government complained that it portrayed their country as lawless and "overrun with secret societies."[3] One scene in the movie was set in Shanghai, but it was shot on a set and not on location.
Cradle of Life also featured the new 2003 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, first seen when Lara parachutes into the moving vehicle in Africa and takes over the wheel from Kosa. As part of Jeep's advertising campaign, it was specially customised for the film by Jeep's design team along with Cradle of Life production designers, with three copies constructed for filming.[4] 1,001 limited-run Tomb Raider models were produced - available only in silver like the film version and minus its special customisations - and put on the market to coincide with the release of the film. Jeep vice president Jeff Bell explained, "[The ad campaign] is more than just a product placement ... the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon is the most capable Jeep ever built, so the heroic and extreme environment in which Lara Croft uses her custom Wrangler Rubicon in Tomb Raider is accurate."[5] In the end, Lara's Rubicon had less than two total minutes of screen time in the finished film.
Cradle of Life received slightly higher reviews than the original, with a 24% rating out of 163 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes,[6] and a 43/100 rating on Metacritic.[7] Salon described it as a '"highly enjoyable summer thrill ride."[8] Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, stating that the film was "better than the first one, more assured, more entertaining [...] it uses imagination and exciting locations to give the movie the same kind of pulp adventure feeling we get from the Indiana Jones movies."[9] David Rooney of Variety praised Jolie for being "hotter, faster and more commanding than last time around as the fearless heiress/adventuress, plus a little more human."[10]
Cradle of Life was nonetheless heavily panned. Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald called it "another joyless, brain-numbing adventure through lackluster Indiana Jones territory,"[7] James Berardinelli said on ReelViews, "The first Tomb Raider was dumb fun; Cradle of Life is just plain dumb [...] the worst action movie of the summer."[11] Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe wrote, "It's a bullet-riddled National Geographic special [that] produces a series of dumb, dismal shootouts that are so woefully choreographed there's reason to believe Debbie Allen may be behind them." He then said of director De Bont, "He has yet to meet a contraption he couldn't use to damage your hearing."[12]
Despite the slightly more favourable critical response, Cradle of Life suffered a disappointing opening weekend, as it debuted in fourth place with a take of $21.8 million,[13] a 54% drop from the original's opening gross of $47.7 million. The film finished with a domestic gross of only $65 million, therefore relying on the foreign box office to make a profit.
Overall, 2003 was not a good year for the Tomb Raider franchise. Paramount blamed the failure of Cradle of Life on the poor performance of the then-latest installment of the video game series, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.[14] After numerous delays, Angel of Darkness was rushed to shelves just over a month before the release of the movie, despite the final product being unfinished and loaded with glitches. It spawned mediocre sales while garnering mixed reviews from critics,[15] and former Eidos senior executive Jeremy Heath-Smith, who was also credited as an executive producer in the film, resigned days after the game was released.[14]
In March 2004, producer Lloyd Levin said that Cradle of Life had earned enough internationally for Paramount to bankroll a second sequel, but any hopes of it going into production were soon quelled by Jolie's announcement that she had no desire to play Lara Croft a third time. "I just don't feel like I need to do another one. I felt really happy with the last one. It was one we really wanted to do."[16]
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