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Angelina Jolie: The Realistic Lara Croft
Lara Croft: Her Virtual and Realistic Appearances
One of the popular culture's most prominent female figures dominated last summer's cinematic programme. Her name is Lara Croft.
The Hollywood film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider had its first performance on Friday, 6th July 2001, in the USA. This film is a romance between Hollywood and the computer game industry.
Croft was conceived in a computer at the computer game studio Core Design in 1995. She was a mistake because noone had thought that a video game could be succesful with a female hero.
She had a very problematic time during her adolescence. Early in life she had to leave her life in the upper classes in Surrey, because she was a modern, female Indiana Jones. In other words, Lara is a beautiful and intelligent lady.
Supposedly, she has composed several travel books, but she does not reflect on her status as a star in spite of the fact that she has decorated the front covers of the magazines Face, Wired, Rolling Stone, Newsweek and Time.
Since Lara conquered the the world scenes of the popular culture, she has had the lead role in a new game every year, and every year she has been at the top of the sales reports. Lara has been a talented saleswoman of clothes at Mark & Spencer. She has been dedicated her own book titled Lara's book, and she has received awards because of her exemplary behaviour inside and outside the screen. In few words; Lara is perfect for the film industry.
In the summer of 2000, Paramount started the production of the film Lara Croft: Tombraider, and last summer clothes decorated with Lara Croft and the actress Angelina Jolie could be bought. This time Lara's companion is Lucozado, an orange soft drink which Lara has made popular among teen-agers.
The formular of the film's expected success is old: A durable game icon is transferred to a movie which reproduces the Spartan action of the game. The idea was to allure the enormous number of teen-ager's to the cinemas to utilize the expected effect of synergy, because the teen agers have played the video game, have seen the film and in the end will buy the side-products. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is the best example of Hollywood's business of philosophy: The expences of the film must be secured in advance through the sales of the TV and video rights of and of all kinds of side products.
Because of the development of digital technology the film industry could ally itself with the game industry. For a long time the sales of the game industry have eclipsed the sales of the film industry. A successful computer game or video game often results in a film production.
Like many other game adaptions, the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider has not survived the transfer from the interactive dramaturgy of the game world to the filmatic claims on what is interesting should happen naturally. In conformity with the productions of other popular games like Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is restrained by bad acting achievements. The cause of the bad acting is the transparant story. The reason for transparency of the filmatic story is the all too much closeness to computer game.
As a video game Tomb Raider could offer an unique interactive world which appealed to human need to explore strange univeres and exotic mysteries. To handle most of the computer games requires a very good talent to master the joystick/push button technique to avoid all the obstacles to reach the final end.
But films require our ability to co-invent. Only good films can give us the ability to co-invent. At the same time we are subjected to the producer's visions, and because it is impossible for us to manoeuvre ourselves in the universe of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, we cannot start anew as we can do in a computer game.
In his novel Idoru(1995) the cyberpunk author William Gibson writes about a Japanese virtual celebrity, Rei Toei, an artificialconciousness. Rei Toei revolts against its origin to be able to live in a human body. The next year a new virtual celebrity named Kyoko Date emerged in Japan. Kyoko Date was a result of a co-operation between a software company and a model agency. Kyoko was the first virtual pop star, but her music was so bad that it was trown on the popular culture's scrap heap.A reason why Kyoko was not a success was her realistic appearance. Because she had the qualities of the most famous models and her appearance was too realistic, the audience did not want to project themselves on her.
While the virtual celebrity Rei Toei longs for a physical body and Kyoko Date is too realistic, Lara Croft is lacking so many destinctive features that we can project our dreams and longings on her. Lara acts well based on her own premises like a hyperrealistic and streamlined computer animated figure. Lara is hackneyed and tedious when she is incarnated by a mediocre actress.
Lara has become a complexicon who gives many sexual and popular cultural signals. Typically, the sexual aspect of Lara is emphasized in the film because of Angelina Jolie, because previously Lara was an explicit sex object. Certainly, Lara has a curvy and soft body. But her wardrobe is provided with mainly practical according to her present challenges.
What will happen if Lara's appearance is changed because of Angelina Jolie's sexual figure? Will the game figure aesthetic quality be replaced by a more realistic appearance. If so, Lara's ordinary and archaic features will be replaced by a realistic women - that obviously will undermine her appeal as a game figure. Maybe Lara will become a mature lady one day?
The Virtual Lara Croft
Kyoko Date
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