We’ve got the first look at Sophie Turner as Lara Croft and it’s shocking how perfect it is!
For a long while, video games didn’t do well being adapted by Hollywood. The litany of terrible video game films is enough to fill a book, but thankfully recent years have seen improvement. Besides movies, there have been successes in TV like Fallout and coming series based on God of War and Assassin’s Creed.
One of the biggest upcoming video game shows has to be Prime Video’s Tomb Raider series. Thirty years after its debut, the franchise remains a mainstay of gaming with numerous entries focusing on adventuring archaeologist Lara Croft searching for rare artifacts.
Now, Prime Video has revealed the first look at Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner as Lara. And it’s absolutely perfect, as she looks like she stepped right out of the original 1990s games, from the outfit to the dual pistols to the long ponytail to the dark glasses on her nose.
It’s been a long wait for the series, which was announced in 2022 and survived numerous delays. Emmy winner Phoebe Waller-Bridge is handling the writing and showrunning duties, and seems set to put her own unique spin on the property.
Backing up Turner is a first-rate cast that includes Martin Bobb-Semple, Sigourney Weaver, Jason Isaacs, Martin Bobb-Semple, Jack Bannon, John Heffernan, Bill Paterson, Paterson Joseph, Sasha Luss, Juliette Motamed, Celia Imrie and August Wittgenstein. Yet Turner is the one carrying the weight of playing a video game icon and following in the footsteps of some notable actresses.
The previous Laras are a who’s who of talented stars
Debuting in 1996, Lara Croft broke the mold for video game heroines in the 1990s. While gorgeous, Lara was also tough, and highly skilled at wielding dual pistols and solving puzzles amid challenges. It wasn’t long before the character was featured in magazines in a variety of outfits alongside comic books.
Hollywood came calling in 2001, with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider starring Angelina Jolie as Lara. She’d reprise it for the 2003 sequel The Cradle of Life. In 2012, a new game series began with Camilla Luddington voicing Lara there and in two sequels. Those inspired a 2016 movie reboot attempt with Alicia Vikander. Most recently, Haley Atwell voiced the role for Netflix’s Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft.
Fans of Game of Thrones don’t doubt Turner will pull off the dramatic moments needed for Lara. The big challenge will be the stunt work, since it obviously a Tomb Raider series requires a lot of physicality and more action than Turner did on projects like Thrones.
Turner told Julia Cunningham (via Entertainment Weekly) how the security on the set rivaled anything she'd been through on her previous series.
"It's crazier security than Game of Thrones. Yeah, it's crazy," she said, explaining that "in order to access any scripts," she has to go through "a million log-ins" and the "face recognition thing."
"Oh my god. I mean, it's like, it's intense," she added. "It's like raiding a tomb just getting to the scripts."
Still, if Turner can act the role of Lara half as well as she looks the part, then Tomb Raider fans are in for the best adaptation yet, which will prove once again why this character never ceases to enthrall millions of fans.
Game of Thrones is streaming on HBO MAX. Tomb Raider is expected to come to Prime Video in 2027.