Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (also known as simply Tomb Raider) is a 2001 action-adventure film based on the "Tomb Raider" video game series featuring the character Lara Croft, portrayed by Angelina Jolie. An international co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, it was directed by Simon West and revolves around Lara Croft trying to obtain ancient artifacts from the Illuminati. The film was released on June 15, 2001, and received generally negative reviews from critics for its stylized action and bland plot, although Angelina Jolie was praised for her performance. "Tomb Raider"
Lara Croft had worked on the series constantly for four years and the staff felt they had exhausted their creativeness. Feeling the series lacked innovation, Core Design decided to kill the character and depicted Croft trapped by a cave-in during the final scenes of the game. The next title, "Tomb Raider Chronicles", depicted the late Lara Croft via her friends' flashbacks. The game introduced stealth attacks, which would carry over to the next game, "Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness". While the original development team worked on "Chronicles", Core Design assigned a new team to develop "Angel of Darkness" for the PlayStation