Tomb Raider 2018

[GeneChing]

APRIL 28, 2016 1:32pm PT by Borys Kit
Alicia Vikander to Star as Lara Croft in 'Tomb Raider' (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/alicia-vikander-star-as-lara-888593)

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The reboot has Roar Uthaug ('The Wave') on board to direct.

Lara Croft has been found.

Alicia Vikander has signed on to star in Tomb Raider for MGM, Warner Bros. and GK Films, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The movie project, which has Roar Uthaug (The Wave) on board to direct, will tell the story of a young and untested Croft fighting to survive her first adventure.

MGM and Warner Bros. are co-producing the film, with MGM overseeing production. They acquired the rights from GK Films, who had previously purchased the film rights in 2011 from Square Enix Ltd.

Graham King is serving as producer.

Angelina Jolie famously starred in the two previous Tomb Raider movies, 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and 2003's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, which established her as a bankable, franchise-carrying international star.

Vikander, who won an Oscar for her turn in The Danish Girl, is hoping for a similar path, and the Tomb Raider movie gives the actress her own franchise after proving her salt in acclaimed dramas.

Last year was a turning point for Vikander, who starred in Ex Machina and also appeared in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. This year she will be seen in the drama The Light Between Oceans as well as the Matt Damon action pic Jason Bourne.

Not to be crass, but does she have the 'guns' to be Lara?

[GeneChing]

Tomb Raider Reboot Script Is Finished, Shooting Begins Soon (http://movieweb.com/tomb-raider-reboot-script-production-start-walton-goggins/)

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BRIAN GALLAGHER | 5 days ago

Last month, we reported that MGM's action-packed Tomb Raider reboot has found its villain, with Walton Goggins coming aboard to star alongside Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft. Shortly after news of Walton Goggins' casting dropped, another report surfaced claimed that shooting was slated to begin at some point in January 2017. Yesterday, Walton Goggins jumped on social media to reveal that the script has been finished, and that production may already be under way now, just a few days into the new year.

Walton Goggins' Instagram photo revealed the cover page of the screenplay, written by Geneva Robertson-Dworet, along with the caption, "2017...day 3... and imma bout to go Raid a motherf---ing Tomb." While Walton Goggins doesn't necessarily state that production is under way, we can also see a fedora hat resting on the edge of the script, which may be part of the actor's actual costume. Or, perhaps he just likes to wear fedora's while reading scripts. At this point, it's anybody's guess, but even if shooting hasn't begun, it will likely happen soon.

Last week, Walton Goggins teased in a new interview that his reboot villain is "confused and angry and desperate," while adding there are "real reasons behind his antagonism" which are quite unexpected. Back in November, producer Graham King revealed that this story will follow a "young Lara Croft in search to see if her father is dead or alive." Director Roar Uthaug has also confirmed that the movie is based on the 2013 video game reboot, and in related news, it seems the video game franchise itself is undergoing some big changes.

Crystal Dynamics revealed yesterday that Rhianna Pratchett, who served as the head writer on both the 2013 video game reboot and its 2015 follow-up Rise of Tomb Raider, is leaving the franchise. Rhianna Pratchett won a Writers Guild of America award earlier this year for Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing, for her work on Rise of Tomb Raider, and she also wrote a number of comic books that bridged the gap between both of her video games. Here's what the writer had to say about leaving the franchise, in a series of tweets.


"So, I'm packing up my climbing axe plus a little venison jerky for the road, and bidding a fond farewell to Lara. Onwards to new adventures! I want to thank the Crystal Dynamics team for their dedication especially Josh Stafford, Cameron Suey, and Noah Hughes. Guys, it's been emotional. But, I like to think we did some good things. Maybe shifted the gaming landscape a wee bit. And that feels **** good. I also want to thank TR's terrific fan community. You really are the best in the world. Constantly helping me remember why I do this job."

While Rhianna Pratchett's departure from the franchise certainly won't have any impact on the current Tomb Raider movie, it may impact the stories told in future films, but that's quite a long way's away. This current reboot still needs to be a hit for that to happen, and it may just be the one film to break the original Tomb Raider's 15-year-old box office record. The original Tomb Raider starring Angelina Jolie still holds the record for the highest-grossing video game adaptation at the domestic box office, with $131.1 million, although Warcraft became the top grossing video game adaptation worldwide last year with $433.5 million worldwide, despite tanking in North America. Hopefully we'll get more details on Tomb Raider soon, including confirmation about when production starts, but until then, take a look at Walton Goggins' Instagram photo.

This film just became very interesting to me because a friend just signed on. It's not Goggins. I don't even know who Goggins is really. And I'm not really at liberty to tell as it was told to me in confidence (but there is a hint in the article above).

[GeneChing]

This is why I ttt-ed the Tomb Raider reboot (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69467-Tomb-Raider-reboot) thread on Monday. Daniel Wu told me that he probably can't make our KUNG FU TAI CHI 25TH ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69762-KUNG-FU-TAI-CHI-25TH-ANNIVERSARY-FESTIVAL-May-19-21-2017-San-Jose-CA) this year because he has committed to this project. (Get the hint? Warcraft (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69449-Warcraft))


‘Tomb Raider’ Reboot Adds ‘Into the Badlands’ Star Daniel Wu (EXCLUSIVE) (http://variety.com/2017/film/news/tomb-raider-reboot-daniel-wu-1201958245/)
Justin Kroll
Film Reporter
@krolljvar

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MEDIAPUNCH/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
JANUARY 11, 2017 | 11:34AM PT

Daniel Wu is set to join the reboot of WB/MGM/GK Films’ “Tomb Raider,” the latest adaptation of the popular video game, starring Alicia Vikander as the iconic character Lara Croft.

Warner Bros. recently announced the movie — from Norwegian director Roar Uthaug — will be released on March 16, 2018.

Wu will play Lu Ren, a ship captain who partners with Croft on a quest to find her father.

MGM joined the project in 2013, acquiring rights to the video game to develop the feature in partnership with Graham King’s GK Films. King, who obtained “Tomb Raider” in 2011 from Square Enix, will serve as producer.

Cassidy Lange is overseeing production for MGM and Niija Kuykendall is handling production for Warner Bros.

The original “Tomb Raider” video game was released in 1996 by London-based Eidos Interactive, which is now part of Square Enix. Square Enix released a reboot in 2013 with a younger, 21-year-old Croft being sent off on her first big adventure amid amped-up action and set pieces.

Paramount’s two films starring Angelina Jolie as the British archaeologist were released in 2001 and 2003, and grossed a combined $431 million worldwide.

Warner Bros. will co-produce the pic with MGM and GK Films.

Wu is the star of the martial arts series “Into the Badlands,” which returns to AMC for its second season this spring. He is repped by CAA, Leverage Management, and attorney P.J. Shapiro.

[GeneChing]

Exclusive: Here's Your First Look at the Tomb Raider Reboot (http://www.gq.com/story/exclusive-heres-your-first-look-at-the-tomb-raider-reboot)
BY SCOTT MESLOW
6 hours ago

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GRAHAM BARTHOLOMEW

Director Roar Uthaug shares a first-look image of Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft and grants an exclusive interview about his big-screen reboot.

It’s been nearly 15 years since Lara Croft last graced the big screen—but the Tomb Raider heroine is about to make a big comeback. Taking over the role originated by fellow Oscar winner Angelina Jolie, Alicia Vikander will play Lara Croft in a Tomb Raider origin story drawing inspiration from Crystal Dynamics’ 2013 video game reboot of the franchise, and due to arrive in theaters in 2018. Here’s your exclusive first look at Vikander as Lara Croft:

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So what can we expect from this new Tomb Raider? Between night shoots in South Africa, director Roar Uthaug agreed to an exclusive early interview about his adaptation of the popular video game franchise.

How far along are you in filming right now?

We are just wrapping up the South African portion of our location shoot and will proceed next to London.

Video game movies have a reputation for disappointing both critics and fans of the games. What will make your Tomb Raider different?

We drew a lot of inspiration and reference from the game and the entire Tomb Raider canon to develop our world, and I believe fans will recognize that. At the same time, this is a completely different theatrical approach to Lara Croft that will offer something new in the origin and development of the character. It’s a story that not only highlights her incredible physical accomplishments but delves deeper into her humanity.

Other than the Tomb Raider franchise, what are your influences for the new movie?

I’m inspired by other modern action movies as well as classic survival movies. And I’m also trying to bring some of my European sensibilities when it comes to character development. Striving to combine all of this into a rollercoaster of a movie.

Have you seen the two Tomb Raider movies starring Angelina Jolie? If so, what do you think of them?

I’ve seen the films—they were a lot of fun and Angelina Jolie was a terrific Lara Croft. We are [making] a very different film, an origin story and I think fans will love Alicia in the role.

Audiences who aren’t familiar with the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot game (and its 2015 sequel) have a very different mental image of Lara Croft. How will your movie reintroduce audiences to such a different take on the character?

As an origin story, this movie will introduce Lara as a young woman who hasn’t yet found her way and her place in the world; a young woman with great spirit and potential. We follow her struggles and her journey toward becoming the person she was meant to be and earning the role of Tomb Raider.


"Angelina Jolie was a terrific Lara Croft. We are [making] a very different film, an origin story."

How closely will your movie echo the narrative of the 2013 Tomb Raider video game?

That game was certainly part of what inspired our film. I think fans will be delighted to discover many touchstones from the game throughout the story. At the same time, this is not the kind of video game adaptation you often see, with a lot of CGI and effects. Our movie takes a more realistic, grounded approach. Lara Croft is a hero and a champion but she is not a superhero. She is very much human, and we see her deal with that humanity in many ways.

Are you using any material from the 2015 game Rise of the Tomb Raider—the sequel to the 2013 video game reboot?

Again, this was one of the things that provided inspiration. I think fans will be delighted to discover elements of it in the story.

This is a story about Lara becoming the Tomb Raider, which means she’s totally inexperienced as the movie begins. How are you juggling her character growth with the need to deliver top-notch action scenes?

This is exactly what the movie is about. Our goal is to show the complete journey that Lara Croft takes, and that means acknowledging both the emotional and the physical aspects of her evolution. We meet her as a young woman who is strong but questioning her place in the world, through the trials that help her hone her skills, and finally, to the formidable—yet still vulnerable—woman she becomes, as the Tomb Raider.

In general, what’s your philosophy for directing a good action scene?

Action always serves the story and the character development. Our goal with Tomb Raider is the kind of action that feels real and visceral and will resonate with audiences in a powerful way. We want to put the audience right in the middle of the action.

How do the themes of exploration and survival play into the film’s narrative?

Lara is an explorer by nature. The inspiration for her journey is her search for answers. But it’s a dangerous journey as well, and survival is an integral part of it, as Lara is pushed to her physical and emotional limits time and again.

What, specifically, can you tell me about what Alicia Vikander brings to the role of Lara Croft?

Alicia is a truly great actress, and she lights up the screen as Lara Croft. She brings great depth and humanity to this character, and great passion, while simultaneously delivering the intense physical action that the role demands. I’m very impressed by her dedication to the part and her tireless pursuit to get everything right.

I never played the game so I'm not attached to the plot that way.

[GeneChing]

I rewatched the Tomb Raider films last year, somewhat in anticipation of Time Raiders (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69652-Time-Raiders) and a piece on such films that I've had gestating for a while now. Maybe I'll review them here, just for archival sake, as they are somewhat fresh in my mind.


Angelina Jolie's Drug Tests, Harassment and Wacky "Spiritual Hokum" on the Set of 'Tomb Raider' (Exclusive Book Excerpt) (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/angelina-jolies-tomb-raider-drug-tests-book-excerpt-989249)
6:00 AM PDT 3/29/2017 by Stephen Galloway

A new biography of Sherry Lansing reveals that the 2001 film — which helped turn Jolie into a major star — was one of her biggest challenges, and an experience that left her feeling empty.

Few of Paramount's films under Sherry Lansing proved as complicated as 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, which needed an actress sexual enough to resemble the computer creation while accessibly human. Only one person could pull it off: Angelina Jolie.

It was early 2000, and the 24-year-old (soon to win an Oscar) was not yet a major star. She was plagued by damaging reports about her personal life, rumored to have dabbled in drugs and to have had an odd relationship with her brother, along with an even odder one with soon-to-be husband Billy Bob Thornton, whose blood she reportedly carried around her neck in a vial. "She definitely had some baggage and something of a dark reputation," said director Simon West. "Funnily enough, that was one of my selling points: This troubled and dangerous aspect in her reputation actually helped the character."

Lansing was concerned, especially when Jon Voight (Jolie's father) and Jane Fonda (a family friend) called to warn her that the actress was extremely fragile. With Lansing's blessing, West flew to Mexico to meet Jolie on the set of the thriller Original Sin. "She said: 'Look, I want to do it, but I know what my reputation is, and I'll do anything you want to prove that I'm worthy. I'll be reliable, and I'll turn up, and I'll work hard,' " recalled West. "She said, 'I don't care if the studio wants to drug test me every day.' "

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Photofest
Angelina Jolie in 'Tomb Raider'

Lansing met with Jolie. "She was beyond beautiful," she said. "She was smart, she was strong." Negotiations commenced, and so did the drug tests. Said then-Para*mount president John Goldwyn, "We were sufficiently worried that we obliged her to undergo random drug tests — and not just urine tests but also blood tests."

To everyone's relief, Jolie passed. Even so, the studio and producers were concerned enough to talk about keeping an eye on their star. "We would put a team around her for two purposes," said a member of the production crew. "One really was practical: to get her into great shape for the movie, not only in terms of appearance but to do what she had to do onscreen. Then there was this notion that we had to give her spiritual and psychological support."

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At the Gone in 60 Seconds premiere in June 2000 with Thornton, Jolie’s husband of three years.

That's when the real problems began. West suggested hiring Bobby Klein, a former photographer and therapist who he believed had the right kind of experience. "There were issues with the studio and producers being very nervous about Angelina," he said. "There was a discussion with the group: 'We're looking for someone to oversee or keep an eye on her because we're all making the film.' That guy Bobby Klein came up as somebody who had worked in that world of psychotherapy or drug management or whatever. He was brought in to supervise Angelina."

Relationships that had been tense became strained to the breaking point, and producer Larry Gordon, who had battled the studio over money and the script, bristled at Klein's presence. "Simon West comes with this guy, Bobby Klein," said Gordon. "He's dressed all in black. He's a weird-looking guy with a white beard and white hair. He's very esoteric and gives me a thing that if you wear it, you can't get cancer, some bull**** thing. [They said,] 'He's going to be a big help, and he's going to do all these great things,' and so on and so forth."

As preproduction got underway in England, Klein asked to be placed in charge of Jolie's physical preparation, even though a stunt coordinator was already working with her. After Klein insisted on employing a health expert who had been investigated by Scotland Yard, the production team balked. "[The expert] wanted her to have milk baths and started talking about yoga and meditation and wanted to be the point person in charge of Angelina's training," said Lloyd Levin, who produced the film with Gordon. "It was just this bull****. It seemed like spiritual hokum."

When Klein was then accused of sexually harassing West's assistant, among other issues, he left the production. Gordon was ecstatic. "I said, 'Angelina doesn't want you around, and I never wanted you around, so your ass is gone. You can get your **** and go, or I can get security to throw you off the lot. You decide.' He said, 'I still get my expenses?' I said, 'Unfortunately, yes.' "

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Courtesy of Everett Collection
Jolie as Lara Croft.

With Klein out of the way, Jolie was a dream. "In the dailies, she was riveting," said Lansing. "She took what might have been a cardboard character and added a layer of mystery and emotion and humanity."

Only at the end of the long, turbulent shoot did an accident occur, when the actress fell and hurt her foot. "It's to be expected," said Jolie. "After all the big stunts, I ended up hurting myself on a smaller stunt. A big jump over a statue, and I landed badly on my ankle. A partial tear, and I came back to work with a cane. Not very Croft."

Tomb Raider made $275 million worldwide when it opened in June 2001, enough to warrant a sequel. Lansing had launched a new franchise at minimal cost to the studio and helped turn Jolie into a major star. And yet the experience left the studio chief feeling empty.

She had been bothered for some time by her growing awareness that the quality of pictures no longer seemed essential, that clever sales strategies could redeem all but the most abysmal of movies. When she revealed her fears to Rob Friedman, her vice chairman and a marketing expert, he dismissed them. "Don't worry," he said. "You can spend all this money to improve the picture, but it won't make the tiniest difference to how much it brings in."

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Lansing, Jolie and then-Viacom Entertainment chairman Jonathan Dolgen at the June 11, 2001, Tomb Raider premiere.

Adapted from Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker ©2017 by Stephen Galloway. To be released by Crown Archetype, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on April 25. It's available for preorder now.

This story first appeared in the March 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

[GeneChing]

INTERVIEW, MARTIAL ARTS, TELEVISION

One-on-One with Into the Badlands’ Daniel Wu (https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2017/04/03/one-on-one-with-into-the-badlands-daniel-wu/)
AMC’s Into the Badlands is in their second season and are going strong with their viewership, storyline, and martial arts. Unlike other series that attempts the martial arts genre, Into the Badlands’ stellar moves can be attributed to executive producer, and star of the series, Daniel Wu.

The Nerds of Color got a chance to sit down and chat with the actor about the second season and what makes the show so appealing to audiences.

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LAURA: So, the series is getting a lot of comparisons with another controversial “martial arts” show that was released on the same weekend as season two of your show. Into the Badlands was deemed the cure to your Iron Fist blues and the show that Iron Fist should have been. With the controversy over the Asian American Iron Fist campaign and critics panning Iron Fist for the lack of martial arts, what are your thoughts regarding these issues?

DANIEL: I think if you’re going to sell a show as a martial arts show and you don’t have martial arts in it or the martial arts sucks, then that’s obviously a problem. When we created this show, Badlands, our main point was to try to bring Hong Kong level martial arts action to American television. That was our goal. That was our main goal. Everything else was trying to make a good show — secondary to that main goal. Of course, we want to have a good show so you have to have a good story, good characters, and all that kind of stuff. But, that’s what we were selling and that’s what we’re going to do. That’s what we did sell in the first season. I think, you know, again with this Marvel property, I don’t know because I haven’t seen it yet. But again, if you’re going to be selling martial arts, you guys should know how to fight well. If they don’t fight well, then that’s a big problem.

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In terms of the whitewashing issue, I don’t know if it’s a whitewashing issue because their character was already white to begin with. And, then you talk about cultural appropriation, I think Asian Americans need to chill out a little bit, because that’s like saying “white people can’t rap,” right? That’s like saying “Asian people can’t play American football” or Jeremy Lin shouldn’t be playing basketball. It’s ridiculous to say that white people can’t do martial arts. That’s cultural appropriation. I don’t buy that. That’s not fair. I mean, Bruce Lee, the King of Martial Arts, was key to bringing martial arts to America, not just Asian America. He taught white people. He taught black people. He taught all kinds of people. That’s my philosophy. Martial arts is an equalizer. It doesn’t matter what culture you’re from. If you feel like you’re weak, you can become strong. Martial arts can give that to you. It’s not about your race at all, in any way.

A lot of people had a lot of issues with Iron Fist because it was not whitewashing, but following the white savior trope — where the white guy saves Asian people or the white guys saves them using Asian methods.
Is that’s what happening in the show? I don’t know if he’s saving Asian people in that show. In the comics, it was a white guy who went to Asia to learn martial arts and comes back and becomes a superhero.

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There are some awkward moments where he’s speaking Chinese to a girl. There are also moments where he’s better than people who have been training their entire life.
Sure. If you made that character Asian, would all those issues still be a issue? If the character becomes Asian and he becomes better than his master, who has been training for thousands of years. It’s still an issue.

At the same time, if an Asian guy used a language to talk to a girl or study their background, it’s much more acceptable.
Yeah. I haven’t seen the show, so it’s really hard for me to really judge that. I want to be fair. At the same time, they are obviously paying for their mistakes now. I’ve seen the backlash, so I know people are ****ed off. I feel, probably what happened is, what you can blame there was an opportunity for Marvel to make it better and they didn’t do it. That’s all I could say there.

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Into the Badlands has proven that a series can break away from the Asian martial arts trope with its character development. The character is not defined by their skill and instead is allowed to grow. What elements do you feel that Into the Badlands was able to accomplish with that?
I think what is interesting is that we don’t talk about race in the show at all, but it’s a very diverse show. There’s black, white, Latino, and other Asians, but we don’t talk about race. It’s about their abilities. It’s about what these people are doing. It’s about their stories. So, we don’t make it an issue about race. That’s what I like about it. I don’t know if I could do a show about Asian American issues. That’s kind of boring to me. Having grown up in America as an Asian American and then lived in Asia for twenty years, then come back. I’m not interested in Asian American whining. You know, “we’re not represented enough.” It’s like, go do it. That’s the kind of person I am. I don’t sit around and complain and wish I had better opportunities. I make the opportunities happen for me. I think that’s what we need to do as Asian Americans now. There are no boundaries, especially now with the digital era. If you want to make film and put it on YouTube, you can. Look at all these people who are YouTube stars right now. They’re Asian American. They’re doing it. They found a way to make it work for them. I give all those people a lot of credit for it.
continued next post

[GeneChing]

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I’m very proud that we’re diverse without having talked about “diversity.” Like, these characters, Sunny and Veil — that relationship — a black woman and an Asian man. You’ve never seen that on anything in the world ever actually before. I think it’s very cool that we’re just people in love. We’re not a black person or Asian person. We’re just people in love. We’re trying to have this baby. It’s very cool. I’m proud of that. We’re being diverse without raising a diversity flag, because that’s not what the show is about. Again, what we’re trying to do is make a good show and if it happens to be diverse. Those are great bonuses to jump along with, but that shouldn’t be the catalyst for the show. That shouldn’t be what makes the show run.

Director and stunt woman extraordinaire Lexi Alexander has highly praised Into the Badlands as a whole. Many of the cast and creatives have also interacted with her on Twitter. Is there any chance of a collaboration with Into the Badlands or even outside of the series?
Yeah, I think we’re open to all kinds of possibilities for our show, especially with television directors. We switch out directors every two episodes. So with a ten-episode season, that means there are five directors per season. So there’s a lot of opportunities to work with great people. So if they’re a good storyteller, then I’m definitely open to the fact to bring them in.

Into the Badlands has been praised for its strong female characters. Aside from Veil, there were few WOCs on the show last season, but this year we have The Master and Baron Chau. Was it a conscious decision to include more WOC characters?

I would say it was a conscious decision to add more characters of color, I think, to be more diverse. Yeah. So you see it this season in the first episode, you see a lot of the Butterflies in the background, there’s all kinds of girls there. That is a conscious decision to reflect upon what we think American society would be in the future and what it is now. I think most people, when you talk about the post-apocalyptic genre, it’s not really about the future, it’s reflecting on what’s happening right now. So, to reflect on now, you have to be true to that. So, we definitely made the decision to cast more diverse with all the roles, whether it’s female or male. You’ll see the other barons. There are a few other barons that are different races and different sexes. We’re trying to make a world that everyone can understand and relate to.

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In an article last year, you made a statement that you would have to wait a bit to see what impact Into the Badlands has made for people, whether it’d be in the Asian American community or the martial arts world. Since this is the second season, and it has been highly praised, what impact do you feel the series has made?

I mean, I think we made a little blip on the pop culture meter for sure. I mean, in multiple levels. One, we have a martial arts show that is successful on television right now. There aren’t many martial arts shows, so that was one of our main points. Then secondly, to have the action lauded as it is. People love the action. People come back for the action. Then to have a great story that happens to be with a very diverse cast. That’s also a great thing that people are in to. There are characters that people can get into, whether you want to follow Sunny’s storyline or not. Some people just like the Widow. The #ColorMeBadlands Twitter people just love Sunny and Veil and that relationship. So that’s what I think is great about the show.

It doesn’t just follow one person or one storyline. There are multiple storylines. As an audience, if you’re a teenager or a twelve-year-old, you might be really into MK and Tilda and their storyline. If you’re a full grown adult, you might be into the Sunny storyline. You might be into Quinn’s storyline. There are so many different things there for everyone to relate to. Then, [you’ll see] what these characters and storylines represent in the real world. What are they trying to say? And, that’s all in the subtext. I think we slide all that stuff in there for the audience trying to figure out what we’re talking about. You’ll see references. You’ve seen episode two with the wall. There are all these references that we’re talking about and we’re putting them in there as kind of Easter eggs, but also to get people thinking a bit more. This is a show about the future and about how the world got ****ed up and how it ended up this way. We’re putting in things about how that happened. You have to be careful as a human race, as Americans, and how we run this country in the future. It could end up like the Badlands and we don’t want that to happen.

It’s almost time to wrap up, but what can you tell us more about your role in the new Tomb Raider film starring Alicia Vikander since you’ve entered production for the film?

I can’t talk too much, but the character is named Lu Ren. Lara Croft comes to Hong Kong after she finds some clues about [her father]. It’s an origin story, so it goes back to the very beginning before she becomes Lara Croft: Tomb Raider that you know from the game. She’s looking for her dad. The story is that her dad has disappeared for seven years. She thinks he’s dead, but she finds some clues [showing] that he may still be alive. That leads her to Hong Kong and that’s where she finds me and enlists me to help her along this journey to go to this place where her father might be. So I’m there to help her along with her journey.

https://i1.wp.com/cdn2us.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeekus/files/styles/article_width/public/2017/03/lara-croft-reboot-alicia-vikander.jpg

Is there a potential love interest or friendship?

It’s more of a partnership because there is something that I’m also looking for as well. I wouldn’t say it’s a love relationship. It’s more of a partnership.

They're calling Into the Badlands 'the cure to the Iron Fist blues'. I don't think that's really fair because ITB is it's own thing, but given the Netflix Marvel precedents, I get it.

[GeneChing]

There's a vid if you follow the link.


Alicia Vikander Talks Upcoming 'Tomb Raider' Role | TIFF 2017 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/alicia-vikander-talks-upcoming-tomb-raider-role-tiff-2017-1038774)
3:08 PM PDT 9/13/2017 by Kirsten Chuba

The actress recently wrapped filming on the highly anticipated reboot, taking on a role made famous by Angelina Jolie. This version, which will be released in spring 2018, provides an origin story for the action hero Lara Croft.
While at this year's Toronto International Film Festival to discuss her latest project Euphoria, Alicia Vikander also opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about her upcoming role in the Tomb Raider reboot.

"I grew up playing the games and I was thrilled when I was 15 and I saw the films with Angelina Jolie," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "She really made her into an icon with those films."

Following a change to the classic video game in 2013, Vikander's version of Lara Croft will focus more on the character's early life, which has not yet been explored onscreen.

"It's very much an origin story and it's much more of kind of the next door girl taking on a journey of becoming the action hero that we've very much known her to be," she said. "So I definitely think there's a lot of elements there, both honoring the character people know of and a lot of new elements that they will hopefully be surprised and engaged to see."

The Tomb Raider reboot is expected to hit theaters in March 2018.

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am9iapwtzj8

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ndhidEmUbI

Woah. Sunny (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1275) & Bajie too (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1343)! :cool:

[GeneChing]

No image, but an embedded vid behind the link.


Alicia Vikander Among Nearly 600 Swedish Actresses Calling Out Sex Abuse in Film, Theater (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/alicia-vikander-600-swedish-actresses-calling-sex-abuse-film-theater-1057037)

10:54 AM PST 11/10/2017 by Scott Roxborough

Inspired by the #MeToo movement that sprung up in response to the sexual assault and harassment allegations against disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein, the letter calls out the Swedish industry for failing to protect women from sexual abuse and for profiting from the work of known abusers.
Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander has put her name to an open letter signed by nearly 600 Swedish actresses calling out sexual abuse in the Swedish film and theater industry.

Inspired by the #MeToo movement that sprung up in response to the sexual assault and harassment allegations against disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein, the letter calls out the Swedish industry for failing to protect women from sexual abuse and for profiting from the work of known abusers.

“Directors, you have failed. Producers, you have failed. Production companies, you have failed. Theatre managers, you have failed. Politicians, you have failed,” it reads. “It is your responsibility to ensure that nobody is sexually abused at the workplace.”

Asserting “zero tolerance against sexual exploitation and violence” the signatories demand that employers, from film companies and theaters to book publishers and Swedish television networks, “stop protecting, hiring and making money on perpetrators” of sexual violence.

The letter was published in Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet along with numerous anonymous first person accounts of specific incidences of abuse.

"In one film I acted alongside one of the most prominent film actors, both in Sweden and abroad,” reads one testimony. “At a party he followed me into a hotel room, pushed me hard onto the floor, threw himself over me, held me tight and laughed with a dark look in his eyes. The thought 'he is going to rape me' ran through my head, but somehow I managed to get him off of me and ran.”

“At one of my first jobs, in the theatre elevator, I was pushed up against the wall by an actor in the same production and told to come to his dressing room at three o'clock, otherwise I would not continue working at the theatre,” reads another.

A third: "I was 23 years old and laid on a mattress to rest between rehearsals. One of the conductors came in, asking if he could rub my back. I immediately felt that I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t say no. He sat on top of me and started to massage my back. He then took out his ***** and began to masturbate. When he was about to climax he lifted up my shirt and ejaculated on my back. Then he got up and left. Before the show started that night, he took my arm and said that it was nice and it was our secret."

Alongside Vikander, the signatories to the open letter include such well known Swedish actresses as Sofia Helin, star of the original Swedish version of TV series The Bridge, and veteran actress Marie Goranzon (I Am Curious, Yellow).

The letter ends with a warning to abusers or those who seek to protect them.

“We will no longer be silent,” it reads. “We will bring those responsible to account and let the justice system run its course when needed. We will put the shame where it belongs — with the perpetrator and those who protect him. We know who you are.”

The group has started its own hashtag for supporters of their efforts, #tystnadtagning (#silenceaction in Swedish).

It's not just Hollywood's Open Secret (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70520-An-Open-Secret-Hollywood-Please-Watch) according to Alicia Vikander of Tomb Raider (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69467-Tomb-Raider-reboot).

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enqFulGwFYY

[GeneChing]

Lara is back! READ TOMB RAIDER: Lara Croft’s Globetrotting Treasure Hunt (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1408) by Gene Ching

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/admin/site_images/KungfuMagazine/upload/7930_20181210-TombRaider.jpg

Thread: Tomb Raider reboot (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69467-Tomb-Raider-reboot)
Thread: Into The Badlands (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67844)

[GeneChing]

A decent opening for Tomb Raider (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69467-Tomb-Raider-reboot), but unable to dethrone Black Panther (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70307-Black-Panther).


‘Tomb Raider’ Tops $100M Offshore, Digs Up $41M In China – International Box Office (http://deadline.com/2018/03/tomb-raider-black-panther-coco-greatest-showman-international-box-office-weekend-results-1202341938/)
by Nancy Tartaglione
March 18, 2018 2:57pm

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/tomb-raider.jpg?w=446&h=299&crop=1
Warner Bros

UPDATE, writethru: In its 2nd weekend of overseas play, Warner Bros/MGM’s Tomb Raider unearthed $84.5M across 65 markets. That includes China where the No. 1 debut came in at a solid $41.1M, ranking as Warner Bros’ 7th biggest opener ever and landing on par with Wonder Woman and Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. The full cume at the international box office is now $102.5M for $126M worldwide.

Rival distribution sources like the offshore debuts on the reportedly $90M-budgeted movie — although it does not have a lot of theatrical runway ahead with Pacific Rim: Uprising and Ready Player One coming down the pike. Japan, which opens this week, will be one to watch.

This weekend’s figures give the Lara Croft origins story a leg up as the No. 1 movie internationally. It’s also the No. 1 title across Europe and Latin America, comping above Red Sparrow, Divergent, Salt and Ghost In The Shell. The Alicia Vikander-starrer sprang into action in nine Asian markets last weekend, looking to get out early ahead of Pac Rim 2 . The results there were good, although Korea continues to be a disappointment.

Meanwhile, last week’s champ, Black Panther, has reached $1,182.5M worldwide to edge Captain America: Civil War and Minions. The Disney/Marvel phenom is now the No. 14 movie ever at the global box office. Internationally, T’Challa boasts the No. 5 MCU release of all time — he has also outgrossed all non-MCU superhero titles except The Dark Knight Rises.

The Wakanda crew added $30M in 57 markets to lift the international box office total to $577.1M. The drop in China was steep with the movie now at $96M as it struggles towards $100M. Holds were strong elsewhere including South Africa where it’s the No. 1 film of all time. In Europe, BP is the 4th highest grossing MCU title ever.

In other news, Sony’s Peter Rabbit had a hopping good start in the UK with $9.5M after cast engaged in a local press push and family gala premiere. That sets it up nicely for Easter; it also crossed $100M domestic this weekend.

Another animated title, Pixar’s Coco finally landed in Japan where it opened to $5.8M including previews. The picture should settle into a long and successful run in this slow-burn market. The offshore total is now $549M, topping Finding Dory and The Lion King to make it the No. 4 grossing new IP animated release of all time. The global total is $757.7M.

Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time, however, is having a rough go of it overseas with a cume after two frames of just $10.6M.

And, Best Picture Oscar winner The Shape Of Water has topped $100M overseas, grossing $110.8M through Sunday. That was aided by a $10.35M start in China.

The coming frame sees Universal/Legendary’s Pacific Rim: Uprising start offshore rollout on Wednesday in France and Korea, notably. It adds majors, save Japan, throughout the weekend including China on Friday. IMAX will have it on more than 1,200 screens globally.

Breakdowns on the films above and more have been updated below.

Continued next post

[GeneChing]

NEW
MARY MAGDALENE

Focus’ biblical drama spread the word in eight markets in its debut, bowing to $2.2M. The majors in the first suite include Italy, the UK, Germany, Brazil and Spain. Italy was the top opener with $667K at 350 locations, above Lion which shares a director in Garth Davis. Brazil also opened above Lion with $375K at 369. The UK came in at No. 10 at 425 with $341K.
Universal has 35 more markets to release including 22 next weekend. The film stars Rooney Mara in the titular role alongside Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus in the portrait of his devout yet misunderstood follower. Mary, constricted by the hierarchies of the day, defies her traditional family to join a new social movement led by the charismatic Jesus of Nazareth. She soon finds a place for herself within the movement and at the heart of a journey that will lead to the capital city of Jerusalem.

Pic is written by Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett, and also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tahar Rahim. See-Saw Films’ Iain Canning and Emile Sherman are producers alongside Liz Watts.

SHERLOCK GNOMES

Paramount Pictures
Opening a week early overseas, Paramount/MGM/Rocket Pictures’ sequel to 2011’s Gnomeo & Juliet bowed in its first five international markets with $2.1M. Russia was the top start on the John Stevenson-helmed animated picture with $1.4M at 1,000 locations. That’s 13% bigger than the original.
Emily Blunt, James McAvoy and Johnny Depp voice the lead garden gnomes who recruit renowned detective Sherlock Gnomes to investigate the mysterious disappearance of other garden ornaments. Mexico is the next major market to release as rollout continues through May.

HOLDOVERS/EXPANSIONS
TOMB RAIDER

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/tomb-raider1.jpg?w=301&h=202&crop=1
Tomb Raider
Warner Bros
After accessing nine Asian markets last weekend to start the ball rolling internationally, Warner Bros/MGM’s Tomb Raider dug into $84.5M in a total 65 hubs this session. That lifts the overseas cume to $102.5M for a worldwide take of $126M.
In IMAX, Tomb Raider grossed $8.3M globally on 1,209 screens including $5.7M on 809 offshore. The international IMAX cume is $7.1M.

Coming 15 years after Angelina Jolie last donned a holster to play heroine Lara Croft, the Roar Uthaug-helmed Tomb Raider origins story is off to a decent start overseas. The $90M-budgeted pic will need to flex offshore muscle. Rival distribution execs expects it to reach break-even — but it does not have a lot of runway ahead with Pacific Rim: Uprising and Ready Player One coming down the pike.

The China start, despite a 6.5 Douban rating, is solid at $41.1M, on par with Wonder Woman. It looks set on a path to a figure in the $60M+ range given the other activity in the increasingly fast-burn market (whereas WW got to $90M). This was not expected to do Resident Evil style business in the Middle Kingdom; the game is more familiar to an older demographic and the picture was sold on Alicia Vikander’s strong female lead action hero. Although it also features local star Daniel Wu, there was no China tour. A key gamer market to watch will be Japan which was big on the previous movies.

Let’s look more closely at this weekend. The Lara Croft origins tale is the No. 1 movie internationally and across Europe and Latin America, comping above Red Sparrow, Divergent, Salt and Ghost In The Shell. The major disappointment is Korea where they are just not feeling it — the film dropped to No. 6 this weekend and has cumed just $4M to date.

The top opener this session was Russia at $4.4M, 11% ahead of Wonder Woman, 30% ahead of The Hunger Games and more than double Divergent. The UK follows with $4.2M on 1,089 screens for No. 2 and on par with Lucy, but above Ghost In The Shell (+30%), Red Sparrow (+63%) and Divergent (+70%).

France ($3.2M), Germany ($2.15M) and Mexico ($2.15M) round out the Top 5. In Asia, where the overall drop was about 50%, the top markets outside China are Indonesia ($4.4M), Korea ($4M), Taiwan ($3.6M), Malaysia ($2.9M) and Hong Kong ($2.3). Japan comes online Wednesday.

BLACK PANTHER

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/bp1.jpg?w=301&h=202&crop=1
Black Panther
Disney
In its 5th weekend, Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther added $30M in 57 markets. The international cume is now $577.1M for $1,182.5M worldwide. Overseas, it has now become the No. 5 MCU release of all time, and has also grossed more than all non-MCU superhero titles except The Dark Knight Rises. BP is likely to taper off around the $600M range offshore, having passed the milestone domestically this weekend.
China is still the top market at $96M through Sunday, as it inches towards $100M which is the low end of the range coming out of last week’s first frame. That will land it lower than Thor: Ragnarok and Doctor Strange in the market, and around Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2, while above Wonder Woman.

As a region, Europe was down 45% with the film now the No. 4 MCU release ever, crossing $200M this weekend. In South Africa, the Ryan Coogler-directed movie held No. 1 for the 5th straight session and is the highest-grossing film of all time. In Asia Pacific, Singapore had a great -14% hold while Latin America was down 47% as a whole.

Rounding out the Top 5 after China are the UK ($59.5M), Korea ($42.7M), Brazil ($32.7M) and Australia ($28.1M).

THE SHAPE OF WATER

Fox Searchlight
The Best Picture Oscar winner crossed $100M internationally this session, rising the tide to $110.8M in 63 markets for Fox. The $17M weekend was boosted by a fantastic China opening at $10.3M, topping all comps. The awards halo also helped in Germany where Guillermo del Toro’s fairy tale was down just 28% for a $4M cume and in his home country Mexico where the drop was 30% for a $14.7M total. The next releases are in Malaysia and Indonesia this week and next. For a closer look at the China performance, see my separate story here.
PETER RABBIT
Peter Rabbit
Sony Animation
Sony’s animated adventure from Will Gluck started wider international rollout this weekend, hopping to a fantastic $9.5M in the UK. The updated take on Beatrix Potter’s classic was bigger than the original Paddington by 32%. In Mexico, it doubled that film with $1.4M. The total session was worth $15.5M on 8,600 screens in 22 markets. That lifts the overseas cume to $42.7M with the movie on track to play well through the Easter holiday. It has a similar dating strategy to last year’s Boss Baby, opening ahead of the holidays and building word of mouth.
The UK did over 50% market share, which is great for a family film outside holidays and with Tomb Raider entering the market — and despite heavy snowfalls with play throughout the day including evening shows.

The UK number for a non-holiday 3-day weekend also topped Zootopia and Secret Life Of Pets. For the release, James Corden, Daisy Ridley, Domhnall Gleeson, Elizabeth Debicki and Gluck did local press last weekend and attended a family gala premiere. Corden appeared on ITV’s Ant And Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. He and Ridley also did Chris Evans’ BBC Radio 2 show while Ridley and Debicki were on This Morning, also on ITV.

Next weekend adds Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Russia and Spain.

RED SPARROW
Fox’s spy pic uncovered $8.9M in 72 markets this weekend for a $66.6M total so far. Drops in Germany (-25%) and Holland (-31%) were solid. The lead plays are the UK — currently in the midst of a very serious real-life issue with Russia ($7.3M), Germany ($7M), Australia ($6.1M), Spain ($5.5M) and Taiwan ($4.9M). The international cume is 4% bigger than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in the same group of markets and at current exchange rates. The Jennifer Lawrence-starrer opens in five more markets this week, including Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE.

COCO

Disney
Little Miguel and his otherworldly family finally hit their final market of Japan this weekend. They came in as the top Western release, posting $4.6M ($5.8M including previews). That’s 43% ahead of Wreck-It Ralph ($30M final), 20% above Inside Out ($32.5M final) and 8% bigger than Zootopia ($70M final, all at historical rates). Japan is a slow-burn market where movies play and play, and the sentiment is that this is set up for a nice run.
The full international weekend for Disney/Pixar was $6.5M in 27 markets with an overseas cume of $548.5M and a global take of $757.7M.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

Twentieth Century Fox
Closing in on $400M worldwide, Fox’s Hugh Jackman singalong earned $3.8M in 25 markets this session. The offshore total is now $229.1M for $397.7M global. Japan is swinging with a great dip of just 22% for a $29.7M cume to date. The UK is now at $53.2M and Australia has cumed $25.3M.
GAME NIGHT
Warner Bros/New Line’s comedy added $3.7M on 2,842 screens in 51 markets to bring the cume to $30.5M. The UK is leading play with $5M, followed by Australia at $4.8M, Germany at $2.6M off a slight drop, Russia with $2.5M and Holland at $2M. Staggered overseas releases continue in April with Mexico, France and Spain.

...

MISC UPDATED CUMES/NOTABLES
Fifty Shades Freed
Universal Pictures
Fifty Shades Freed (UNI): $2.4M intl weekend (53 markets); $265.4M intl cume
I’m Losing Weight (UNI): $2M intl weekend (Russia only); $8.9M Russia cume
Lady Bird (UNI): $1.8M intl weekend (40 markets); $19.2M intl cume
The Post (UNI only): $1.4M intl weekend (21 markets); $30.6M intl cume
Den Of Thieves (STX): $1.3M intl weekend (57 markets); $28.6M intl cume
Phantom Thread (UNI): $1M intl weekend (46 markets); $22.6M intl cume
Maze Runner: The Death Cure (FOX): $753K intl weekend (29 markets); $226.3M intl cume
Gringo (STX): $535K intl weekend (17 markets); $1.6M intl cume

China was key, as predicted.

[GeneChing]

Why we’ve been arguing about Lara Croft for two decades (https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/17/17128344/lara-croft-tomb-raider-history-controversy-breasts)
From fembot to feminist, her many paradoxes reflect our cultural ambivalence about what makes “strong” women.
By Aja Romano@ajaromano Mar 17, 2018, 9:10am EDT

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Az9_VtqS22aeoDJZCSG4cJhJwE8=/0x0:1500x999/920x613/filters:focal(499x194:739x434):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59059667/tombraider4.0.jpg
Ilzek Kitshoff/Warner Bros.

Since Lara Croft blew up gaming culture in 1996 with the first installment of Tomb Raider, her character has been so predominantly defined by her sex appeal that two decades on, we’re still trying to extricate conversations about her from conversations about her breasts.

Lara Croft has always been a cultural flashpoint, always in direct relation to her gender. Over the years, she’s also served as an example of gaming evolution, particularly in terms of graphic design. But it’s virtually impossible to find an abiding cultural conversation about Lara that doesn’t ultimately return to debate over whether she’s an empowering character.

And it’s impossible to consider her as a character without also considering the role she holds within gaming as essentially the first, and still one of the only, female characters to helm an action gaming franchise.

Lara Croft was the original “cyberbabe” — but from the beginning, she was also a whole lot more

When Tomb Raider first appeared on the scene, swiftly followed by Tomb Raider II a year later, Lara Croft was critiqued as belonging to a long cultural tradition of science-fiction fembots. With her “polygonal breasts” and breathy voice, it was hard for some critics to see her as representing more than a digitized sexual fantasy. A flurry of user-made game patches with titles like “Nude Raider,” made solely for the purpose of removing her clothes to reveal her pixellated body, didn’t help that impression.

“Launching a franchise with a female archaeologist was seen as a novel concept,” Samit Sarkar, an editor at Vox’s sister site Polygon, told me. “Her character model was relatively primitive, since 3D graphics were in their infancy at the time, but it was plainly obvious that she was designed as an adolescent male fantasy: chest twice as wide as her waist, teal tank top, khaki booty shorts. At the same time, she had a take-no-guff attitude and dry British wit that people latched onto, and her video game exploits were, of course, badass.”

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jQ4mTjcOiW6DGq_ajGdLIExwPBY=/0x0:450x302/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:450x302):gifv():no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10439457/tombraider.gif
The evolution of Lara Croft over the years Modified from Reddit

By 2000, the media was crediting Lara with originating the concept of the “cyberbabe.” The idea of the hyper-unrealistic female game character who served as a repository for male fantasies would go on to become a much-parodied and much-debated part of gaming culture. And the apparent contradiction between Croft’s sexual appeal and her sophisticated persona would spawn two decades of cultural ambivalence about what kind of character she was. “The battle between these parts of Lara defines the debate around her character,” Sarkar said.

Ironically, Lara’s sex appeal is also what made her one of gaming’s most groundbreaking characters. If she’d been less sexy, she arguably couldn’t have gotten away with being the lead of a video game franchise — and that was huge. Aside from 1981’s Ms. Pac-Man and a twist ending of Nintendo’s 1986 game Metroid that revealed the lead character to have been a woman all along, major game franchises basically didn’t have playable female characters as their leads at that point in the medium’s history.

Lara Croft was a huge exception to a rule that still sadly holds true for much of the gaming industry today: building a franchise around a female lead is seen as a risk. In an unpublished study whose data was reportedly shared with gaming site Penny Arcade in 2012, the video game research company EEDAR found that just 3.6 percent of nearly 700 games it surveyed had playable characters that were exclusively women — that is, female characters who couldn’t be swapped out with a male avatar. And the games in the study with male-only playable characters were said to have sold better than the ones that included women.

So Lara was, in at least one sense, an extraordinary example of female empowerment. It was rare enough that she helmed a franchise in which players can only play as a woman — but that franchise was also a worldwide bestselling cultural phenomenon. Lara, in her earliest incarnations, may have been a fembot, but if male gamers wanted to fantasize about her, they had to get to know her first.

And there was a lot to get to know. As “the female Indiana Jones,” Lara was aristocratic, filthy rich, highly educated, adventurous, and a technological wunderkind. She even killed Bigfoot. In 1998, the British Ministry of Science named her as an ambassador for British scientific excellence.

But despite these character traits, she was still seen primarily as a sexual object — and, disturbingly, as a power fantasy for male gamers who enjoyed having direct control over her. In a 2000 interview with one of her creators, Adrian Smith, he described her as “frail ... someone you’ll want to protect and nurture.” This idea would surface again over her franchise history, most notably in 2012. He also presented her as a universal romantic fantasy — for straight men like himself. When asked, “What’s Lara looking for in a soul mate?” he responded, “Definitely someone like myself: suave and sophisticated.”

Though Tomb Raider’s original publisher Eidos wanted to keep her image strictly PG, it also didn’t even try to pretend Lara appealed to women, as seen in the game’s 1997 “Where the boys are” ad campaign, which suggested men were abandoning traditional male spaces — including a strip club — to go hang out with Lara.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ExFpdv_0C8
continued next post

[GeneChing]

In 1999, Eidos went to court to keep Lara’s name and the Tomb Raider logo out of Playboy, successfully arguing that such a public association of the character with pornography would forever ruin her image. By that point, however, it was clear that Lara’s design was part of the problem.

The cultural conversation about Lara has always involved her breast size

Though most people associate Lara Croft with gaming culture’s problem of sexual objectification, the truth is that she’s probably less representative than you think. In fact, a 2016 study examining three decades of gender representation in games found that “extreme sexualization” of women — all the traits Lara Croft came to embody, rightly or wrongly — actually reached their peak in 1995, the year before Lara appeared on the scene.


So when considering that we have spent two decades being fixated on Lara Croft’s cup size, it’s helpful to keep in mind that this ongoing cultural conversation about boobs has arguably done more to curb systemic sexual objectification in gaming than to perpetuate it.

Part of the reason for the constant scrutiny of Lara’s boobs — which famously got larger in the second installment of the game, allegedly due to a coding error that the developer decided to keep — is that in the late ’90s, larger questions about who was meant to play Tomb Raider and relate to Lara Croft kept getting derailed by the issue of whether women could relate to her if they didn’t also have enormous breasts.

For the 1998 essay collection From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender in Video Games, Cal Jones, then the reviews editor for PC Gaming World, articulated an argument that would recur throughout Lara’s history: that her impossible anatomy made her a sham of a feminist role model, and that women (and himself) knew better than to fall for it. “Lara, get those melons out of your vest and I’ll like you a whole lot better,” he concluded.

In 1997, the Independent lightly examined the way tabloids had been ranking potential actresses who could play Lara based primarily on their breast size. Teenage girls were supposedly driven to get breast implants because of her. The models who played her were hailed for matching her physical proportions.

In essence, while it was assumed that male gamers would be eager to embrace Lara because she was hot, the idea that women could also relate to her if they didn’t mirror her physically was hotly contested.

There also seemed to be a nebulous sense of unease around the idea that Lara was virtual and not real — that we could inhabit her and even manipulate her, but never fully know her. The perpetual discussion about her breasts, then, may have served as a way to both negotiate and combat this anxiety.

At first, the discussion mainly fixated on the weird triangle boob effect caused by the early days of graphics, and the way it emphasized just how alien she was to the typical presentation of a male sexual fantasy. But update after update, the breast chat kept right on coming. And the more physical we made her, the more we kept her cyborg-like nature at bay.

The focus on her cleavage also, of course, gave us a perennial starting point for larger discussions about the depiction of women in the media. In 2015, for example, a website devoted to fighting eating disorders depicted Lara with anatomically realistic proportions as part of a series devoted to pointing out how unnaturally women are depicted in game design.

As gaming culture advanced, the mainstay conversation about her physical appearance also began to expand and overlap with an emerging critique of an archetype she had arguably helped originate.

Is Lara Croft a strong female character? Or a “Strong Female Character”?

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2015’s Rise of the Tomb Raider Square Enix

Lara Croft’s success is built on a number of paradoxes. She had a list of badass character traits, but was also, for most of her franchise, a total cipher with zero development. For all the conversation about her boobs, early installments of the game showed her from behind most of the time during the actual gameplay. According to her own creator, she was simultaneously “strong” and “frail.” She was a virtual fantasy, but was made flesh and blood by the first Tomb Raider movies starring Angelina Jolie — which necessitated yet more discussion about cup size.

All of this made her synonymous with a conversation that recurred throughout geek culture in the late-aughts and early tens: the issue of the “strong female character” and the pernicious embedded sexism within its presentation as a form of female empowerment.

For most of the first decade of her existence, Lara was lauded as a strong female character — no quotes. But as conversations about depictions of women in media began to evolve, and notions about pop culture tropes began to expand, the early critiques of her character as anti-feminist began to return. Lara increasingly began to be seen as an example of a character whose “strength” is deceptive, usually depicted as purely physical, while her primary purpose is to placate the male gaze, and her overall character satisfies a patriarchal depiction of femininity.

This critique got a major boost from 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot and the subsequent 2015 sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider. As part of the press around the reboot’s development, in 2012, Eidos announced that “you’ll want to protect” the new Lara Croft — from sexual assault. This famously caused a gaming community firestorm around the trope that equates female “strength” to forcing them to survive sexualized violence. (Though Eidos downplayed the element of sexual assault after it drew backlash, it’s still arguably present in the ultimate version players experienced.)

The Tomb Raider reboots provided a cultural touchstone for emergent criticism of the Strong Female Character archetype, while also providing a space for reimagining what that archetype might look like from a more overtly feminist perspective. Crucially, the new Alicia Vikander Tomb Raider drew heavily upon the reboot and sequel, and has carried all of the franchise’s frustrating litany of paradoxes along with it. “Can Lara Croft ever really be a feminist icon?” Mashable’s Jess Joho asked in response to the film:


Lara once again feels like a woman who was not birthed from a womb, but rather sprung from the mind of a patriarch, fully formed, like your modern-day Athena in a ripped tank top.

And fundamentally, that’s precisely what Lara Croft is. She began as the pixelated creation of a man, molded for the consumption of a presumed male audience, and continually iterated upon by teams made up of predominantly men. Yes, both the new games and movie have women in lead writing roles. But evidently, one woman’s voice cannot retroactively undo decades of Lara serving as a virtual plaything for boys and men.

Former game developer (and current congressional candidate) Brianna Wu told me she “never cared much about Lara Croft until the 2013 Tomb Raider because so much of the conversation was about her body. It felt like she was yet another character created for men.” Now, however, the focus is — finally, hopefully — off her body, Wu says, and “is now about her internal struggle to be more than she is.”

But as much as fans like Joho and Wu are ready for a more nuanced version of Lara, some male critics and fans have taken issue with Vikander’s version as too nuanced. In a much-maligned piece for PhillyVoice, writer Jerome Maida blasted the new Lara’s lack of sex appeal and “interchangeability” with any male character (comments that have since been redacted from his review). Others just kept focusing on her boobs.

“A lot of this discussion is about male geeks marking their territory,” Wu told me. “They liked it just fine when Lara Croft was a character created for their satisfaction. And they honestly can’t understand what others see in her.”

But Lara clearly resonates with women who’ve long been treated as afterthoughts in the gaming world. “There’s a reason when you go to Pax [a nationwide series of gaming conventions] you see so many women cosplaying her,” Wu said. “I know I identify fiercely with her — and I’m not the only one.”

How far this cultural reappraisal will carry the Tomb Raider franchise into the future is anyone’s guess — but it’s clear that the ongoing trend of reevaluating and reframing Lara Croft as a feminist icon has yet to outstay its welcome. The many paradoxes of Lara Croft have helped shape depictions of women in the first decades 21st century, and will be with us for a long time to come.

I found myself grappling with some of these issues when I wrote my review (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1408) too. Lara is strangely complicated.

[GeneChing]

Asia megastar Daniel Wu on his supporting turn in 'Tomb Raider' and his journey back home — to Hollywood (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-daniel-wu-tomb-raider-20180317-story.html)
By JEN YAMATO
MAR 17, 2018 | 3:00 AM

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California-born Daniel Wu became a megastar in Asia and only now is getting traction in Hollywood, appearing in the "Tomb Raider" reboot and starring on AMC's "Into the Badlands." (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Twenty years ago, with a University of Oregon architecture degree under his belt, Bay Area kid Daniel Wu took a serendipitous trip to Hong Kong as his graduation present. He wanted to witness the handover, stay a few months, then go home and figure out what to do with his life.

But a chance scouting in a bar led to a commercial gig, then some modeling. Chinese director Yonfan saw the commercial and approached Wu with an offer he couldn't refuse — although he tried.

"He asked me to play the lead in his movie," said Wu, revisiting the moment his accidental career as one of China's biggest movie stars began. "I was like, 'What are you talking about? I've never acted before and you want me to be the lead in your movie? That's crazy!'"

Born and raised in Northern California to Shanghainese parents, and discovered in Asia, the details of Wu's unlikely origin story are well known to his massive Chinese fan base overseas, where the 43-year-old actor and producer is now a superfamous A-lister who gets swarmed by paparazzi whenever he leaves the house.

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Despite having never acted before, not to mention the fact that his Cantonese wasn't great, Wu took the role in that first film, "Bishonen," playing a closeted gay cop opposite fellow future star Stephen Fung. A few weeks after finishing that film, he landed his second role. By his first year in Hong Kong, he'd made three films. In his second year, he made six.

He's now acted in 60 feature films in Hong Kong and China — including crime thrillers, action comedies and historical epics, movies like "New Police Story," "The Banquet," and "Shinjuku Incident," and roles opposite Chinese superstars Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, and Zhang Ziyi.

Yet in his native America, where Wu appears this weekend opposite Alicia Vikander in video game adaptation "Tomb Raider," audiences are still learning his name, in spite of the fact that he's four times as Google-searched as his Swedish Oscar-winning costar.

"Not a lot of people know about the 20 years I spent in Hong Kong. To a lot of people I'm just this new actor, but I've been around for a long time," he said with a chuckle on a brief press stop in Los Angeles.

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Daniel Wu as Lu Ren, a newly created character for the "Tomb Raider" reboot. (Warner Bros.)

He'd had roles in the recent disaster pic "Geostorm," "Warcraft" (a motion-capture turn as a CG orc), and the little-seen sci-fi "Europa Report." But here, Wu is still best known for starring as the fierce warrior Sunny on the popular AMC series "Into the Badlands," the martial arts-steampunk hybrid now entering its third season, which he also produces.

Wu was already a huge star overseas when he and Fung linked up with show runners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar and fellow executive producers Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg on "Badlands," which he was initially only going to produce. Well into their search for an Asian lead who could speak fluent English and perform martial arts action, producers turned to the perfect candidate already in their ranks: Wu.

"He took some convincing!" said Gough. "What I love about the show is people watch it, even executives watching dailies, and they're like, 'He's amazing!' And I say, 'Guys — he's the Brad Pitt of China.' He's a movie star. He's been doing this for years. Of course he's amazing!"

The movie star charisma honed over two decades as a leading man can't help but seep out in "Tomb Raider," in which he plays Lu Ren, a Hong Kong boat captain whose habit of drinking away his sorrows is interrupted when Vikander's scrappy Lara Croft arrives on his ship in search of her missing father.

"Lu Ren is a character that we created for this film — he is someone who has gone through similar experiences to Lara and goes on the journey with her because he too has questions that need to be answered," said director Roar Uthaug via email. "I wanted to find an actor who could stand up to the punishing physical stuff but also could warm audiences. Daniel is just so **** charismatic.

"Directors want to find actors that audiences can connect with and I believe this is just as important in an action movie," added Uthaug, whose previous film "The Wave" combined large scale action with human stakes. "I put the characters through all this stuff, and none of it really matters unless we care about them. And I think the audience will really care about Daniel."

"It was this very intimate story packaged as a big action movie," said Wu of the "Tomb Raider" script by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons. "Honestly speaking, I was thinking [my character] was going to be a flat, stereotypical, 2D character who just kind of helps [Croft] along the way, but he ended up being a really three-dimensional character."

Embarking on a dangerous mission together in search of their missing fathers, Lara and Lu Ren forge a bond while surviving treacherous seas and sinister villains. "I think his father was always in and out of his life, so when he walked out he just thought he disappeared, had finally walked out… and good riddance. But people in denial really want to know the truth, and eventually that's what motivates him to go on this dangerous journey with Lara."

As a bonus "Tomb Raider" was partly shot in South Africa, where Wu and his wife, actress and model Lisa S., own a home. Stepping onto a realistic boating village set recreating the Hong Kong he knew with startling accuracy added something unexpectedly personal to the experience.

"It made me miss Hong Kong," he smiled. "It made me want to go back and get something to eat!"
continued next post

[GeneChing]

I didn’t see people like me on American screens, or if I did they were bad representations ...

DANIEL WU

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Daniel Wu grew up in California before becoming a major movie star in Hong Kong and China. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

It was devouring the films of Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan as a child in the San Francisco East Bay, where he watched Grandmaster Tat Mau Wong host "Kung Fu Theater" on local TV every weekend, that first sparked his lifelong interest in martial arts.

"I distinctly remember when I was 7, my grandfather took me to the Great Star Theater in Chinatown. He said, 'You want to see real wushu, real kung fu?' We went to see 'Shaolin Temple' together, which was Jet Li's first movie."

Wu, like many Asian Americans and youth from communities underrepresented in Hollywood, found inspiration and cultural connection in the movies. A few years later, he began training in earnest, developing the skills and adopting the discipline that would later come to be valuable assets in his own career.

"I didn't see people like me on American screens, or if I did they were bad representations of Asians like Long Duk Dong in 'Sixteen Candles' or David Carradine in yellowface on 'Kung Fu.' When I saw Jet Li and Jackie and all these cool guys doing cool stuff onscreen, I actively searched it out."

Wu first arrived in Hong Kong an outsider who spoke Shanghai dialect Chinese at home but only rusty American-accented Cantonese. But he knew the city from the movies. He describes his first "Wong Kar-Wai moment" when, late one night, he found himself caught in a rainstorm eating dumplings inside a 7-11.

"I was eating microwaved xiaolongbao waiting for the rain to stop, and I thought, 'This is a real Hong Kong experience.' It reminded me of 'Chungking Express,' and I was like, 'I'm here now, in Hong Kong,'" he said.

Wu, who now splits his time living in Oakland with his family, expresses a firm belief that fate lead him to this point in his life and career — or, at least, a belief in the opportunities that fate presents, at which point one must make their own luck.

How else could one explain how at a chance meeting, only a few weeks after filming that first movie role, Wu was introduced by a friend to his longtime idol Jackie Chan and within days was signed to a management deal with Chan's company?

"The biggest dream I ever had as a martial artist in the Bay Area was, 'I hope one day I can be a stunt guy in a Jackie Chan movie and have him kick me down a flight of stairs,'" said Wu, grinning. "That's all I ever wanted."

Perhaps it all had to happen exactly that way, anyway. Stardom in Hollywood hardly seemed an option for any Asian American actors when he first started out.

Years ago, as his career took off in Hong Kong and then China, shifting to the mainland as the film industry there exploded, Wu returned home to take meetings, hoping to land acting roles stateside. But the doors remained closed, even to a homegrown Asian star with dramatic acting chops and a sizable international following.

"I came out to Hollywood to see if there was any interest — and there wasn't, so I just gave up," Wu said. "I went back. I would take meetings and nothing would come of it. Quite frankly speaking, nothing came of it until recently, in the last few years, when there's been such a focus on the Chinese box office."

He continued, finding the balance in that hard lesson. "It sucks that it was money that motivated that move, but at the same time it's a good opportunity for everybody. You started to see more Chinese actors appear in Hollywood movies. I could see that that was about to happen, and then it happened."

He did bigger roles in small films such as "Europa Report" and small roles in bigger films such as RZA's "Man with the Iron Fist" ("I did it just because of RZA — I was a huge fan of Wu Tang Clan.") then landed a succession of higher profile gigs including "Badlands." "It was this slow progression of people starting to know who I was and then being educated on my influence back in Asia, and realizing, 'Oh, he speaks perfect English — that's a major plus.'"

In a world where we’re trying to expand what a leading man looks like ... I keep telling people, ‘He’s done it in Asia. You guys are late to the party.'

"INTO THE BADLANDS" SHOWRUNNER ALFRED GOUGH

http://www.latimes.com/resizer/mL9AVVmPGtzijTfU9gicudHIt5M=/1400x0/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/GSLYEF5HFZAVJFKB3Q44HMHJCI.jpgDaniel Wu in season three of AMC's "Into the Badlands" (Aidan Monaghan/AMC)

He directed a film once, 2006's "The Heavenly Kings," which caused a stir when it was revealed to be a mockumentary satire of the Hong Kong pop music industry, for which he formed a fake boy band with fellow actors. But directing requires too much dedicated time for Wu right now, at a busy new juncture in his career.

Preparing to head back to Ireland to finish filming and producing an even more ambitious season of "Into the Badlands" — and set to do a second season of Chinese reality show "Dream House," in which he brings modern architecture to rural villages across China — he pondered his future in Hollywood.

"My favorite genre of filmmaking is crime drama, which I did a lot of in Hong Kong," he said. "One thing we can't do in China is heist movies because people doing bad things can't get away with them; the censorship you have to deal with is the challenge of working in Asia. But I would love to do an 'Italian Job' type heist film… or a comedy."

"He's got the charisma, he's got the chops, and he just really is the full package," said Gough. "And in a world where we're trying to expand what a leading man looks like in movies — you look at 'Black Panther' and movies like that — I keep telling people, 'You don't understand. He's done it in Asia. You guys are late to the party.'"

Wu laughs at the irony of having had to travel all the way across the world just to have a career at home. But San Francisco-born Bruce Lee did it too, so he's in good company.

"I think the difference now is the audience is different," he mused. "The audience is more diverse now not just culturally, but the white kids growing up today are eating Asian food. When I was growing up white kids were like, 'Hey, what are you eating?' And that was only 20 years ago."

Studio executives just have to take cues from today's culture-crossing youth and start thinking that way. "Once an opportunity is presented, we run with it — but at the same time it's [the people in charge] that have to give us those opportunities."

jen.yamato@latimes.com

@jenyamato



THREADS:
Tomb Raider 2018 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69467-Tomb-Raider-2018)
Into The Badlands (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67844-Into-The-Badlands)

[GeneChing]

They Don't Know Kung Fu: Why Asian Actors are Ditching Martial Arts (https://www.inverse.com/article/43675-asian-hollywood-daniel-wu-lily-ji-pacific-rim)
How blockbusters are ditching racist stereotypes.
By Eric Francisco on April 17, 2018

Asian movie stars have been stereotyped as kung fu masters for ages, but there’s a quiet revolution underway in Hollywood that might see them finally leave kung fu behind. All one has to do is look at two recent blockbusters.

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Daniel Wu in 'Tomb Raider'

“In Tomb Raider, Daniel Wu stars opposite Alicia Vikander’s Lara Croft. He’s a drunk, roughneck captain named Lu Ren leading Lara through dangerous waters.”

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Lily Ji on the set of 'Pacific Rim: Uprising".

In the ensemble of Pacific Rim Uprising, Lily Ji is Mei Lin Gao, the eldest in a cadet squad of monster fighters. She is “definitely not a stereotypical Asian character,” Ji said in an interview ahead of the film’s release. “All I would hear growing up was laundry owner, prostitute, tai chi player. I was like, man. Can we just do more? We’re all different. I’m so glad [Mei Lin] is not that. She’s not typically sexy. She has brains, she’s driven, she’s interesting. I wanted to bring independence.”

Neither of these Asian actors are kung fu fighters. Instead, they are characters, however long or short their screen time. For Wu, this was an intentional choice, because he actually does know kung fu. While working on Tomb Raider, Wu avoided using his knowledge of wushu kung fu in his portrayal of Ren.

“He’s grittier, different than anything I’ve done in Asia,” Wu tells Inverse. “When we got there [to the set] the action coordinator was like, ‘You wanna do any kung fu?’ I said, ‘No, no.’ The character is not that. He may be a bar room brawler, been in a few fights, but he is not a martial artist.”

Wu puts it another way: “It would be kind of racially insensitive to assume he’s a martial artist.”

Proficiency with kung fu wasn’t always considered a racist stereotype, but for a long time, it has been. In the early Twenties, [[[Sessue Hayakawa was one of Hollywood’s first — and highest-paid — heartthrobs, in movies like The Cheat (1915) and The Temple of Dusk (1918).

But his career came to a halt when “talkies” made Hayakawa’s accent obvious, which was poorly timed with rising anti-Asian prejudice in the United State in the United State in the United State in the United States. From then on, Asian characters became sidekicks, servants, or mustached villains. Many times, they weren’t even Asian actors; check out Academy Award winner Marlon Brando as “Sakini” in 1956’s The Teahouse of the August Moon and gaze in horror.

Then, Bruce Lee came out of nowhere, in 1966’s The Green Hornet on TV. A human wrecking ball who demolished stereotypes with his fists, Bruce Lee became an icon revered after his untimely death in 1973. But just as the star of Enter the Dragon broke stereotypes in portraying a physically imposing Asian male, he left behind new ones, too. “Kung Fu Masters” became a new archetype for the still-rare instances of Asian characters in American pop culture.

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Sessue Hayakawa 1918
Sessue Hayakawa, in the July 1918 issue of Moving Picture World. In his heyday, Hayakawa was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors and a celebrated sex symbol who embodied an image of exotic masculinity rarely seen today.

Historically, heroic Asian characters like Lu Ren have been martial artists, such as Jet Li in The Expendables, Lucy Liu in Charlie’s Angels, Lee Byung-hun in G.I. Joe, Louis Ozawa Changchien in Predators, Jay Chou as Kato in The Green Hornet (a role made famous by Bruce Lee). The list goes on. For non-Asian actors, it’s never a concern if their characters know martial arts or not. But for Wu’s Lu Ren, it’s almost revelatory, as a small but significant step in diverse representation: that an Asian character can kick ass without kung fu.

“Yeah, it’s a bit [of a] stereotype,” Chinese actress Lily Ji tells Inverse. “I hope Hollywood can show Asian characters in different aspects apart from martial arts masters. We obviously can do more.”

As Mei Lin Gao, Ji pilots the war machine (called “Jaegers”), Saber Athena. To prepare for the role, Ji trained extensively in martial arts, but only to physically acquaint herself to the punch and kick movements of a rock ‘em, sock ‘em robot. It’s a gray area, but generally speaking, Mei Lin Gao is no “kung fu girl.”

“She’s definitely not passive or awkward. I really hate that they portray us as passive. I didn’t want her to be like that,” she says. “I portrayed her as this proactive, determined, ‘Strive for better’ type. She’s also [like], ‘If you boys can do this, I can do this too.’”

Wu and Ji know their presence in their films came from “conscious efforts” to encourage Chinese box office revenue. In concert with the rise of a middle class, economists predict China will eclipse the United States as the largest movie market in the world, if it isn’t already already. In 2017, Hollywood films like The Fate of the Furious, Kong: Skull Island, and Transformers: The Last Knight made up 46 percent out of $8.6 billion grossed in mainland China. Hollywood is doing all it can to encourage Chinese ticket buyers, not the least of which includes featuring more Chinese characters. But results have been mixed. Most Asians still occupy the background as set extras, and few get to help save the day. An exclusive scene shot for China, in 2013’s Iron Man 3 where Tony Stark is saved by Chinese doctors, was criticized by native audiences as an obvious effort at pandering.

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Bruce Lee, though a cinematic icon deserving of his status, also left behind "martial artist" as a character stereotype for Asian characters.

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Daniel Wu (left) willingly did not choose martial arts as a character trait in his role as "Lu Ren" in 2018's 'Tomb Raider.'

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Lil Ji, in 'Pacific Rim: Uprising.'

“We have the biggest box office at the moment, so I think people [are] really trying to get in,” Ji tells Inverse. Both sides of the Pacific “are trying to figure out how to do this but maintain our identity and our stories.”

There will be more characters like Lu Ren, Mei Lin, and Rose in 2018’s Hollywood action movies: Queens rapper Awkwafina will star in the female-led Ocean’s Eleven reboot Ocean’s Eight in June; Randall Park will play FBI Agent Jimmy Woo in Ant-Man and the Wasp this July; Korean actress Claudia Kim will be in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald; and Ludi Lin will play Murk, a merman/army general, in the DC superhero film Aquaman this December. This is the small but emerging class of Asian characters that, somehow, are allowed to be more than the “kung fu man/woman” in their respective ensembles.

“It’s very early,” Ji adds, before offering up a solution: Create characters, not set dressing.

“I remember [working on] Transformers 4, that was my first one after graduation. It was kind of stereotyped,” she says. “Few [Chinese] symbols in [the background], nothing to do with the story. I think humanity and stories are the most important thing for the success of a film. Focus on story and the essence of human beings. That would be the thing to do.”

While Hollywood studios have a financial incentive to attract Asian audiences, it will take more than just casting Asian actors in supporting bits. “It does come from financial interest in creating a bigger audience for China,” Wu says. “But I think it’s a good opportunity, and really run with it and create a three dimensional character for an Asian character that we haven’t really seen on the big screen. In America, at least.”

Photos via YouTube.com/Movieclips, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros., Wikimedia / Nesnad
Written by Eric Francisco

I get this, particularly from Daniel because we talked about this (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1408), but I wouldn't call Asians doing Kung Fu racist anymore than African Americans doing hip hop racist or Mexicans playing mariachi music racist. It's tricky because if that's all they are seen as doing, it is stereotyping, but when culture becomes racist, this gets rather murky.

THREAD
Tomb Raider 2018 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69467-Tomb-Raider-2018)
Pacific Rim: Uprising (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69735-Pacific-Rim-Uprising)

[GeneChing]

MGM & Warner Bros Starts Climb Toward ‘Tomb Raider 2,’ Amy Jump To Write Script (https://deadline.com/2019/04/tomb-raider-sequel-mgm-warner-bros-amy-jump-write-script-1202594616/)
By Mike Fleming Jr
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Film
@DeadlineMike
April 12, 2019 9:22am

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Warner Bros

EXCLUSIVE: Get ready for another Tomb Raider with Alicia Vikander. MGM and Warner Bros have hired Amy Jump to write the script for the sequel. Sources said Vikander liked what she was in Jump’s scripting.

She is best known for her collaborations with director and partner Ben Wheatley, who co-wrote several of them. That includes Free Fire, the action drama that starred Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Armie Hammer. Her other credits include the Wheatley-directed Kill List, A Field In England, Sightseers, and High-Rise. The films are cult favorites in the UK. She broadens the pool of female action writers, who are now in high demand. Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons wrote the first installment. Warner Bros released the first film.

Directed by Roar Uthaug, Tomb Raider grossed $274 million worldwide, turning the Oscar-winning Swedish actress Vikander into an action heroine after a string of prestige pics and sci-fi like Ex Machina. Graham King’s GK Films is back as producer after an exhilarating run with Bohemian Rhapsody. Elizabeth Cantillon also is producing.

WME and Independent Talent Group rep Jump.
I wonder if Daniel Wu's character will return. I just saw Daniel last week, and we did chat a little about his role in Tomb Raider, but it was before this announcement was made.

[GeneChing]

Whether or not Daniel gets a recurring role in the sequel, I feel obligated to start a new thread for TR2 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71471-Tomb-Raider-2), poaching the post above off the TM2018 thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69467-Tomb-Raider-2018).



Ben Wheatley Set To Direct Alicia Vikander In ‘Tomb Raider’ Sequel; MGM Sets Release Date (https://deadline.com/2019/09/tomb-raider-sequel-ben-wheatley-director-alicia-vikander-lara-croft-mgm-march-19-2021-release-1202710550/)
By Mike Fleming Jr
September 4, 2019 8:08am

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Warner Bros.

EXCLUSIVE: Ben Wheatley has been set to direct MGM’s Tomb Raider sequel, with the studio setting a release date of March 19, 2021. Alicia Vikander is reprising her role as the lissome, treasure-hunting action heroine Lara Croft. Amy Jump is writing the sequel script and Graham King is producing through his GK Films banner, and Elizabeth Cantillon.

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Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Wheatley directed the films Kill List and Free Fire, and he is in post production on Rebecca for Working Title Films.

Directed by Roar Uthaug, last year’s first film grossed $275 million worldwide. Production on the sequel will begin early next year.

Wheatley is repped by WME, Independent Talent UK, and Ziffren Brittenham.