he Lara Croft digging up treasure in the new Tomb Raider film may surprise those who aren’t familiar with video games.
Played by ballerina-turned-Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander, the rebooted character bears little resemblance — in her physicality or emotional makeup — to the version portrayed by Angelina Jolie in the early 2000s films. She is more muscular than buxom. She wears cargo pants instead of spandex shorts. She’s naïve and determined instead of hardened and blithe. And she’s too busy raiding an island’s worth of tombs to bother with romance.
The following history pertains only to the major releases in the video game series. For info about the Tomb Raider movies, novels, comics, animated series, etc., please see the Links section below. This page contains spoilers. So if you haven’t played all of the games, be warned.
Note that this timeline does not attempt to reconcile the contradictory biographies established by the series’ two developers: Core Design (1996-2003) and Crystal Dynamics (2006-present). My Introduction to the Tomb Raider Series gives a brief overview of each game. For detailed plot summaries, visit WikiRaider and Wikipedia.
On This Page
Lara Croft: Vital Statistics
Lara Croft: Vital Statistics
Birth Date: February 14
Birthplace: Wimbledon, London, England
Title: Countess of Abbingdon
Residence: Croft Manor, Surrey, England
Blood Type: AB-
Height: 5′ 9″ / 1.75 m
Weight: 130 pounds / 59 kilo
Measurements: 34D-24-35 / 86-61-89
Hair Color: Brunette/Auburn
Eye Color: Brown
Marital Status: Single
Parents: Richard Henshingly Croft, 10th Earl of Abbingdon (father); Amelia Croft, Countess of Abbingdon (mother), both deceased
Note: The information above comes from Lara’s original 1996 biography, which has been revised several times over the years. She’s now younger, shorter, has sort of grayish eyes, and while her deceased parents are still called Richard and Amelia, the backstory has been rearranged somewhat. Stay tuned for updates. 😉
February 14, 1968 – Lara Croft born Parkside Hospital, Wimbledon, London (original biography)[1]
– OR –
? 1992 – Lara Croft born. Location unknown. (Crystal 2013 Reboot)[1]
Ages 3-11 – Lara received instruction from a private tutor. (Core)[2]
Ages 3-6 – Lara attended Abbingdon Girls School (Crystal)[3]
Age 9 – Lara and her mother, Amelia, were involved in a plane crash in the Himalayas, after which Lara’s mother vanished under mysterious circumstances. (Crystal)[3]
Ages 10-15 – Lara accompanied her father on various expeditions. (Crystal)[3]
Age 11 – Lara explored a haunted island off the coast of Ireland. (Black Isle levels TRC)[4]
Age 15 – Lara’s father disappeared in Cambodia. (Crystal)[3]
Ages 11-16 – Lara attended Wimbledon High School for Girls. (Core)[2]
Age 16 – Lara accompanied Werner Von Croy to Angkor Wat, Cambodia, to retrieve the Iris. (TRLR)[2]
Age 16? – Lara infiltrated a Russian military base attempting to retrieve an artifact called the Spear of Destiny. (TRC)[5]
Ages 16-18 – Lara attended Gordonstoun Boarding School in Scotland.
Ages 18-21 – Lara attended an exclusive Swiss finishing school. (Core)[2]
Age 21 – On the way home from a skiing trip, Lara’s chartered plane crashed in the Himalayas, leaving her the only survivor. After a 2-week trek through the wilderness, she returned to civilization a deeply changed person. She has since devoted her life to solitary exploration and adventure. (Core)[2]
Age 21? – Lara visited Rome in search of the Philosopher’s Stone. (TRC)[6]
– OR –
Ages 18-21 – Lara attended college, where she became friends with Amanda Evert. During this time, Amanda was trapped at an archaeological dig site in Peru. Although her remains were never recovered, she was presumed dead. (TRL)[3]
– OR –
Age 21 – While searching for a legendary lost island off the coast of Japan, the vessel on which Lara is traveling is destroyed, leaving her shipwrecked. The young relic hunter becomes the hunted as she struggles to survive. (Crystal 2013 Reboot)[7]
Age 22 – Presumably the following year, Lara traveled to Syria and Siberia in search of the lost city of Kitezh and the Divine Source. (Crystal Reboot: Rise of the Tomb Raider)
Age 23 – The next year, Lara traveled to Mexico and stole an ancient dagger, triggering a series of cataclysmic events. She then continued to Peru to find another hidden city and the artifact needed to save the world from herself. (Crystal Reboot: Shadow of the Tomb Raider)
? – After being disowned by her family, Lara inherited a mansion in Surrey from a great aunt. (Core)[8]
?? – Since Lara’s father’s body was never recovered, a family feud over the Croft title and lands ensued. Lara eventually won the legal battle but as a result is now estranged from her relatives. (Crystal)[9]
? – Lara’s first globe-spanning adventure involved the search for a mysterious artifact called the Scion. (TR1/TRA) [6]
? – Lara returned to Egypt and Atlantis. (TRUB)
? – Lara hunted for the fabled Dagger of Xian. (TR2)
? – Lara visited Alaska to find the Mask of Tornarsuk. (TRGM)
? – Lara traveled the world in search of four artifacts forged from an ancient meteorite. (TR3)
? – After learning of the existence of a fifth meteorite artifact, Lara set out to recover it. (TRLA)
27 – Lara sneaked into Von Croy Industry headquarters to steal the Iris artifact from her old mentor. (TRC)[10]
31 – On another visit to Egypt, Lara accidentally released the entombed spirit of the evil god, Set, and had to re-imprison him in order to avert a worldwide cataclysm. At the end of this adventure, Lara was trapped in a collapsed temple and presumed dead. (TRLR)[11]
31 – Lara’s friends gathered at Croft Manor to mourn her loss. Meanwhile, in Egypt, Werner Von Croy attempted to find Lara, dead or alive. (TRC)[5]
? – Werner Von Croy was murdered and Lara became a suspect. In order to clear her name, Lara sought to discover the real killer. In the process, she came up against a sinister cabal and joined forces with another young adventurer, Kurtis Trent, to foil the cabal’s evil plot. (TRAOD)
?? – Lara searched for the fragments of a sword rumored to be King Arthur’s weapon, Excalibur, in the hope that it would help her locate her mother, who disappeared when Lara was a child. Amanda Evert, an acquaintance from Lara’s college days, who had also vanished under mysterious circumstances, reappeared. She was also searching for this legendary weapon, though for different reasons. (TRL)
?? – Lara continued to pursue the truth behind her mother’s disappearance. Following leads left by her father, she sought a set of artifacts—the gauntlets, belt, and hammer belonging to the Norse god Thor—which Lara hoped would enable her to gain entrance to a mystical underworld where she believed her mother was imprisoned. (TRU)
?? – Lara returned to the ruins of Croft Manor (destroyed in TRU) to locate a powerful artifact her father had hidden there. She encountered the doppelgänger created by Natla (in TR1/TRA) and enlisted her to help finish Natla once and for all…perhaps. (BTA/LS)
“We wanted to make her more relatable, which we maybe leaned into a little more than the Angelina Jolie movies of the past,” says screenwriter Geneva Robertson-Dworet. “She’s tough on the outside but in a bit over her head. We wanted to give her an internal journey, not just an outward adventure.”
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The new Tomb Raider movie — largely based on the 2013 rebooted video game series — also attempts to contend with the complicated history of the video game character. First introduced in 1996, she became one of video game’s most popular characters.. Female gamers clung to her as one of the few playable female characters in video games, aside from Ms. Pac-Man. Yet the original Lara Croft character was created in 1996 by men in with men in mind, the original cyberbabe.
When gamers play as a character, they see things from their perspective. Lara Croft remains one of the few popular female video game characters that players can actually control, so how men feel when they step into Lara’s combat boots matters. “For men to say ‘I did this’ about a female avatar is a big deal in a society that teaches men not to value women’s experiences,” says Jessica Hammer, a Carnegie Melon professor who researches gender in gaming.
Lara Croft has had to carry the burden of representing the perspective of all women. “Her superpower is that she’s smart. At the same time, she’s conventionally,” says Hammer. “So she becomes a flashpoint for people to talk about gender in games and gender in society.” That means Robertson-Dworet had to contend with more than just telling a good story when bringing Lara to the big screen: it also mattered how both men and women experienced this unique heroine.
Eidos Interactive, Square Enix
The first Tomb Raider game was released just two months after the Spice Girls dropped their first single, “Wannabe.” Like her fellow Brits, Lara Croft earned fans for both her independent spirit and her nice outfits. But unlike the Spice Girls, she was designed for a primarily male audience. In fact, her creators have admitted they were surprised when women wanted to buy the game, too.
Not only did Lara’s creators endow her with a Barbie doll figure, but the mechanics of the game encouraged objectification — already a problem in the male-dominated gaming space. The camera often focused on her rear end. (As cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian once pointed out, game makers usually cover male avatars with capes or make it impossible for the camera to zoom in on their behinds.) A rumor spread that a certain line of coding could remove Lara’s clothes. An ad campaign for the games suggested men were abandoning strip clubs to play the game and fantasize about Lara. In 1997’s Lara Croft 2, Lara climbs into a shower before turning toward the player and saying, “Don’t you think you’ve seen enough?”
Lara is far from the only female avatar in video games: female heroes as well as damsels are first and foremost, often fighting in heels and lingerie instead of flats and armor. “This is often used in gaming as an excuse for men to play and enjoy playing a female character,” says Hamme
By the time Angelina Jolie took on the role of Lara in two Tomb Raider films in 2001, the girl power moment had largely faded from popular culture. Jolie wore the same tight shorts sported by Lara in the game, a padded bra and even ventured into a frozen tundra in a spandex outfit. But she also exuded an untouchable cool that felt aspirational, if not relatable, to female audience members. The Croft character launched Jolie’s career as a bona fide action star at a time when few women got to star in more than one action franchise: After Tomb Raider came a sequel, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Wanted and Salt.
The prolific actress became the face of the iconic video character Lara Croft in the live action adaptation of the game Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
The prolific actress became the face of the iconic video character Lara Croft in the live action adaptation of the game Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Paramount
Still, the Lara Croft character remained better known for her figure than for her adventures, one of the few fictional characters to be featured in Playboy magazine. After the Jolie films, video game sales slumped. So in 2013 SqaureEnix rewrote the Lara story. They changed Lara’s physical appearance, aged her down and added new depth to the character. Lara had long been infallible. The new version was cocky but vulnerable and had plenty to learn about slinging arrows and scaling mountains. Though some gamers whined about the alterations, the changes actually boosted sales. Tomb Raider (2013) became the best-selling game of the Lara Croft franchise. Together, the reboot and sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016) have sold an impressive 18 million copies.
That’s not to say that SquareEnix became the model of woke gaming. The 2013 game seemed to take sadistic pleasure in Lara’s injuries and moans of pain. And before the reboot’s release in 2013, one of the creators said there would be an attempted rape scene. SquareEnix quickly walked back the language, but the actual scene remains an uncomfortable play-through: A kidnapper touches Lara’s cheek inappropriately and then chases her as she tries to escape. Make a misstep as a player, and Lara is choked to death. The scene communicates the very real threat of rape and gender violence. If Lara escapes, she learns to craft fire arrows and returns to kill the kidnappers with righteous fury. But gamers still debate whether playing through a triggering scene was worth it for the moment of empowerment.
Perhaps wisely, the creators of the new Tomb Raider film omitted this scene from the movie. They also gave Lara more of a background story: She can shoot arrows because she was once a champion archer; she can fight because she’s trained in a boxing ring; she can sprint because she’s spent months as a bike messenger.
The writer and director also decided not to give Lara a love interest. (Daniel Craig played Jolie’s in the original films.) In fact, every time any man tries to work up the courage to ask Lara out in the movie, she’s already biking away on to another adventure. “The temptation in a lot of these movies is to have a full-blown romance plot,” says Robertson-Dworet. “We wanted to explore other parts of her character.”