Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

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Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

Directed by Jan De Bont

Produced by Lawrence Gordon & Lloyd Levin

Written by Dean Georgaris

Starring Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciarán Hinds, Chris Barrie, Noah Taylor & Djimon Hounsou

Music by Alan Silvestri

Editing by Michael Kahn

Distributed by Paramount Pictures & Mutual Film Company

Release date(s): United States - 25 July 2003 United Kingdom - 22 August 2003

Running time: 117 mins

Country: United States

Budget: $118,000,000

Gross revenue: $156,505,388

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is the 2003 sequel to the much more successful 2001 film, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. It is the second movie to be based on the ever popular Tomb Raider Series.

Plot

Lara Croft returns in the sequel to the original video game based movie. This time, she is tasked to find Pandora's Box by agents from MI6, the object from ancient legends which supposedly contains one of the deadliest plagues on Earth, before evil Nobel Prize-winning scientist Jonathan Reiss 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 orb that is supposed to be some type of a map. While exploring the submerged Luna Temple off Greece, she comes across the orb. However, it is stolen by Reiss' henchman and so she recruits an old friend, Terry Sheridan, a former mercenary and Royal Marine who had spent his last couple of years in prison in Kazakhstan, to help her.

Lara and Terry embark together on an adventure that spans continents in an attempt to regain the orb. Their adventure takes them to Shanghai and Hong Kong where Reiss is engaging in shady dealings with criminal lord Chen Lo. Among the white-knuckle action sequences that take place during this time are the duo's entry by spaceplane, an intense fight scene in suburban Shanghai and the dramatic leap off the then-under-construction International Finance Centre skyscraper in Hong Kong, landing on a ship out in the Kowloon Bay.

Clues unveiled lead the pair on separate paths to the Kilimanjaro in Africa. When Lara sends the info to Bryce and Hillary, Jonathan Reiss and his men infiltrate the house and capture them. Rendezvousing in Africa with Kosa, they obtain help from a local tribe for her journey only for most of them to be killed by a lot of Reiss' men upon his arrival. When Reiss reveals that he captured Bryce and Hillary, he threatens to kill them and Kosa if Lara doesn't lead them to the Cradle of Life. Soon they face perils such as a forest full of shadow monsters that kill immediately when they sense movement and black acid that can destroy anything. Terry eventually arrives, frees Reiss' captives, and catches up to Lara. At the end of the film, Jonathan Reiss is knocked into the black acid, Terry attempts to take Pandora's box as a prize for helping Lara find it. This results in Lara being forced to kill him.

Sorce: wikipedia

Cast

Returning Cast

Angelina Jolie - Lara Croft
Noah Taylor - Bryce
Chris Barrie - Hillary

New Cast

Gerard Butler - Terry Sheridan
Djimon Hounsou - Kosa
Til Schweiger - Sean
Robert Cavanah - MI6 Agent Stevens
Ronan Vibert - MI6 Agent Calloway
Ciarán Hinds - Dr. Jonathan Reiss
Simon Yam - Chen Lo

Production

Budget

Story rights and screenplay: $4 million
Producers: $4 million
Director: (Jan De Bont): $5 million
Cast: $17.25 million
- Angelina Jolie: $12 million
- Extras: $250,000
- Other: $5 million
Production costs: $67 million
- Set design and construction: $17.8 million
Visual effects: $13 million
Music: $3.3 million
Editing: $3 million
Post production costs: $1.5 million

Total: $118 million

Filming locations

Hong Kong
Greece - Several scenes were shot on the Greek island Santorini
Llyn Gwynant in North Wales, United Kingdom doubling for mainland China
Kenya, scenes at Amboseli and Hell's Gate

Sorce: wikipedia

Box office and critical response

Despite its over-$100 million budget, Cradle of Life grossed only $65 million domestically, relying on the foreign box office to make a profit. The box office disappointment of this movie created something of a ripple effect that resulted in production of several similar movies being cancelled, most notably the James Bond spin-off from Die Another Day (2002), which was tentatively titled Jinx and was to have starred Halle Berry.

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. After numerous delays, The 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. Cradle of Life was originally planned to be the second of three movies, but the same harsh critical reception as its predecessor and poor box office performance resulted in the second sequel being scrapped by Paramount in early 2004.

Despite being filmed in Hong Kong, the final movie was banned in China (except in Hong Kong and Macau) after the government complained that it portrayed their country as having "secret societies." One scene in the movie was set in Shanghai, but it was shot on a set and not on location.

Sorce: wikipedia