You can't exactly say that Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is one of Angelina Jolie's best films. In fact, you can't really say that about either of her two Lara Croft films. This probably explains why there was never a third movie in that franchise. Even still, the first movie, at the very least, was financially successful and added a decent amount to Angelina's massive net worth.
Had the first film gone a different route, perhaps Angelina would have continued on with the character and Alicia Vikander wouldn't have taken over the role which originated from a popular video game. Although, given how abysmally video game adaptations tend to do with critics, it's likely that the 2001 Simon West-directed movie was doomed from the beginning. Even still, the movie we got was almost very, very, very different.
About A Million Writers Wrote A Version Of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Even though video games that were turned into movies weren't exactly what studios wanted in the 1990s, producers Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin were convinced that the character of Lara Croft would succeed on the big screen. What exactly that movie was supposed to look like was another story entirely.
The truth is, six different writers are credited on the movie but numerous more also took a stab at creating an original Indiana Jones-inspired story for the beloved video game heroine. The first of which was Brent Friedman, who didn't even get (or want) a credit on the final film.
"I pitched my whole take on The Egyptian Book of the Dead, and I think I got halfway through the pitch and [producer Lloyd Levin] loved it," Brent Friedman, who also wrote the script for a Mortal Combat movie said in a tell-all article by Flickering Myth. Now I had no way of knowing, but he had majored in Egyptology or something like that and he was absolutely fascinated by the book of the dead. So he loved the pitch and I was hired."
However, Sara B. Charno was also hired to write a script separately and simultaneously. Whoever wrote the best script would get their project made.
While Paramount Studios liked Brent's version, they deemed it too expensive. So, Brent tried working other ideas. Sara, on the other hand, had two very different pitches, one of them had a major plot point that was eventually used in the final movie.
"I had two pitches. The first pitch was Lara was looking for the 8th Wonder of the World [and the second pitch] was about the Harmonic Convergence, the lining of the planets: the allowing of an evil force to happen. So she had to work out where it was going to be and what she had to do in order to stop it," Sara B. Charno said.
The studio liked Sara's pitches because they had some of the traditional Lara Croft elements from the video game, such as how she would get an object and later use that object to her advantage. While Brent started writing an idea about the search for El Dorado, the lost city of gold (which was ultimately panned), he did stumble onto the idea to develop the relationship between Lara and her father. This, of course, also made it into the final movie.
Even with two writers working hard at a Lara Croft script, another was brought on. This was Steve De Souza who ultimately got his name taken off of the final project after major clashes with the director (who also re-wrote the script), according to Flickering Myth.
Apparently, both writers were dismissed by Charles Cornwall and EIDOS, who owned the Lara Croft property, as they didn't feel Sara and Brent truly captured what the character was all about. This is why a more 'A-List' writer, Steven, was brought on. And his version of the script was very different...
"We had it that Aristotle and Alexander [the Great] had these adventures that were too terrifying to be shared with the world. And in my script, these stories were kept in this tomb that, due to an earthquake, was now available. And Lara goes scuba-diving to find this, but she’s double-crossed at the excavation and they discover they need to find the thing, which is at another location yet. So, the clue was in the Alexander the Great’s tomb, but she now had to go on an adventure with strange people to find the rest of it," Steven De Souza said.
Even More Writers Were Hired To Change Things Up
After Steven's script was accepted by Paramount, the studio hired a director who ended up having a major box-office flop. This caused the studio to be unsure of him, so two more writers (Patrick Massett and John Zinman) were brought on to re-write the script so that it had a lower budget. When that wasn't good enough another two writers, Mike Werb and Michael Collery, came in to do another pass. Their version managed to attract director Simon West and Angelina Jolie.
"I think when I signed on there were around four or five scripts by different writers and writing teams and they were all very different but had been adapted from each other. They’d all been given different commissions and they’d all taken different stabs at it," director Simon West said, before explaining that he, himself, ended up doing a re-write. "Basically I laid out the story, and [Massett and Zinman] – the proper writers – would write them as scenes. At some point I did end up being a bit of an editor between ideas and drafts. And to be honest, it’s how a lot of Hollywood films are put together."
Ultimately, this proved to be a major mistake for the final project. While it made a lot of money (warranting a sequel) it didn't go over well with critics or even audiences. And, on top of it, it managed to anger many of the writers on the project who all thought their ideas were better than what Simon West pieced together at the last minute.