Lara is an icon to the younger generation.
She's great, because she is that kind of clean-living
all-round good person.
I think it's a… I think it's an intelligent game.
And I think it's also really obvious… She's, you know… She's built.
Women wanna be her. Men want to be with her.
And I think that's a recipe that works across both genders.
Our video game is about escapism.
It's a way of people maybe being something
that they couldn't be in real life.
The history of Lara came from the E3 show,
where I saw for the first time a Sony PlayStation
and was like, "Wow, this is the future.
"This is where gaming is going. This is such a cool machine."
Came back, said, "These are the games we've got to beat.
"These are the games we've got to get better at."
It started like that.
It actually allowed us to sort of bring a sort of a dream that we had,
of what the game could be
using the then, you know, technology.
One of the guys said, "I've got this great idea for a pyramid game,
"an Egyptian game." I said, "Yeah, I just love that idea."
Six months later, he said,
"There's the character. What do you think?"
Very cool but Indiana Jones, and it was this male character.
And I said, "You know, where's his whip?
"We're gonna get sued. We need to change it."
Literally, a week later I changed it, and there was Lara.
"But it's a woman.
"You've gone from a man, and now you put a woman there.
"Are you going mad?"
I said, "No. no, it's going to be really cool.
"She's going to do so many different things that men can't do."
The game was about solving puzzles
and looking after this character.
And actually what we did,
we wrote little characteristics of the character down on a piece of paper.
We wanted the character to certainly have an agility, almost a coyness.
And the more we looked down this list
the more it pointed toward being a female character.
She was called Laura Cruz.
And then we had to change the name because Americans can't say "Laura."
Laura, like an English Laura.
They kept going. "Lara.” We're going, "She's Laura.” "No, she's Lara."
So then Cruz didn't work.
Our perspective as English people is that
the American people like a lot of our history.
A lot of the things that England has that we take for granted.
And we thought, "Well, let's really utilise that."
That's why we changed her name from Laura Cruz,
because to us that sounded more of an American name, to Lara Croft
and Tomb Raider was born from that.
I think the game came at a breakthrough time in the industry.
Technology took a significant leap
from the sort of 2-D graphics into 3-D graphics.
And the gameplay which is very compelling.
You're an adventurer. You're in a world. You're fighting.
You're going around finding objects, with a very involved story line.
Oh, Miss Croft. I take it you're ready to sign on.
To what?
The timing for Lara was so good
because there was this whole shift in the demographic
of what was happening if you're, like, in the whole female movement.
We knew that we wanted this character to be
something other than a person that carried guns and just shot things
because that wasn't what the game was about.
All of a sudden, the women were far more confident
in what they wanted to do
and sort of, why the guys…
"You are no better than we are. We can do what you guys can do.
"And, hey, get out of our way, because we're coming through.”
There certainly have been other female characters in video games.
But I think we're the first one, really, to take it
and only be a female character.
The easy option for us in Tomb Raider would have been to say.,
"Let's have a female and a male character
"and you can select which one to be."
But we thought this was key to the game,
being a female character,
that the male players would relate more to the character.
They'd feel more in keeping.
They wanted to nurture Lara and make sure that she was protected
and that she could survive the ordeal that was facing her.
Tomb Raider 2, which is some six years ago now,
when obviously the Lara phenomenon was really taking off.
There was almost a feeding frenzy around
for what we were going to do next for Tomb Raider.
Lots of people were actually asking and assuming
that we were gonna go off and do almost a computer-generated movie,
along the lines of sort of Toy Story, a movie that was very popular then.
At the same time, the interest was sort of,
you know, it became fairly apparent
that Lara as a character could make that transition
from video game screen onto the big screen.
Our biggest concern when we were looking for a partner with the movie
was exactly what they're gonna do with Lara.
Lara is our Mickey Mouse.
And we're as protective over her as Disney is over Mickey.
And we had to be pretty sure that we could say no.
Paramount was the only company that was prepared to do that.
The only movie studio that was prepared to do that.
We were very involved in looking at the script
and the cast and the characters to make sure once again
that the integrity of the property was maintained
because it was such a big part of our business.
And we felt we didn't really want to compromise.
And certainly with Angelina, who is…
There is no second choice. She's the perfect Lara Croft.
In my opinion, I don't think they could've got anybody better to be Lara Croft.
She has so many of the attributes that we've always thought Lara.
She is a very strong-willed person.
She's also got a very soft and feminine side.
Angelina Jolie has all of those attributes.
She really took it to heart.
She accepted everything, all the challenges.
When I was down and seen her on the set
she was in harnesses, bouncing above 100 feet above us
and that's staggering, absolutely staggering.
She's got all those things.
She has all the things we love about James Bond.
She's got all the cool stuff.
She comes from a certain past and history and certain kind of, you know…
She's got all that sexy intelligence.
But she's also Indiana Jones.
And she's a real active person.
The game and the movie are two different things.
It just so happens that the movie is using a star of the game.
Whereas at the moment we're working a lot
on what we're calling, Next Generation Tomb Raider.
And I think that the time has come maybe for Lara
to meet other characters and interact with other characters,
and other characters playing much more of a part of Lara's adventure.
The character that you see on the screen
will be sharper, will have better animation.
And once again, your association with realism
will be much better because of the technology.
Listen, the great thing about Lara
is she can have a tuck and a lift and no one even notices.
So in 30 years, she's still gonna be around.
But who knows? She may get married and have children.
And there'll be Lara, the daughter.
Can you imagine? That'll be great.