Lara Croft Tomb Raider (2001)

I got the idea for this robot fight while I was staying in LA. I had jet lag, I was in a hotel room, I couldn't sleep, so I turned on the TV, and there was this infomercial for a boxing training device. This thing looked like a big plastic dummy of a man, and it had lights for its eyes and lights for its mouth, and when one of these lights lit up, you were supposed to punch or kick it in that spot. And when I was thinking up ideas for what Lara would do in her training, I thought, well, she's gonna have something a lot more advanced this plastic effigy of a man. So I thought up the big mechanical robot. And of course, it can climb walls, it has weapons, it has killing devices. And it was a much more advanced version of this very simple kind of boxing training device. Most of the shots in this sequence were done with a computer-generated robot. but we did actually build a full-size working maquette of the robot that was eight foot tall, weighed 500 pounds, and this was built by my special effects supervisor, Chris Cobalt. It had to be moved around on a crane, of course, because it was so heavy, and it was really only used for close-ups of bullet hits and when it was looking right into her face, eyeball to eyeball.

To move the robot around the set, we had a couple of old rusty G-clamps that we just used to attach to its head and then drag it round. Ironically, the toy makers came to visit us one day to take the design of the robot to make the toys for mass production. And unbeknown to me, they'd taken photographs with these rusty old G-clamps on its head. And when I went... to look at the toys months later, I'd found that they'd actually thought it was part of the design of the robot. So there were thousands of these plastic toy robots out there with these weird lumps on the top of their heads. Angelina trained very hard for this part, not just this sequence in the film, but the whole movie itself. She spent about three months learning all these different fight skills and weapon skills. And at the beginning of the training, she couldn't even lift the guns up. She was so weak. And of course, by the end of it, she's spinning them around like a gunslinger. Again, that's quite hard for an actress to play off because she doesn't actually see what is attacking her and what she's fighting with for most of the time.

This sequence only lasts about two and a half minutes but it took almost two weeks to shoot every single shot for it. These close-ups here are done with the full-size working model of the robot.

course the gag with the sequence is that you're supposed to think she's out on a mission and maybe even in somewhere like Egypt or some ancient temple but of course it's really just in her house in a training area this set was actually tiny originally I planned this to be a gigantic ballroom in the house with all these effigies and statues in but when we were cutting back the budget I had to reduce this set and it's actually smaller than a tennis court and just by careful shooting and using different areas of it and moving the props around for each shot it looks like a much bigger area. As I said this full-size ...working model, weighed about 500 pounds. And so when it came for Angelina to drag it... ...we had to devise a whole system of wheels underneath it... ...and three or four guys with cables pulling it. And then when she dragged it down the steps... ...these guys had to restrain it from running out of control. Unfortunately, on one of the takes... ...she dropped that robot's leg right on her foot... ...which was extremely painful, as you can imagine how heavy that thing is. Not live rounds, Lara. Oh, he's in real pain right now. We named the robot Simon, and the initials, the letters of that name are supposed to stand for something, and it's one of the puzzles I put in the film for people to work out what those letters stand for. Oh, well, that would be a no. But you said make it more challenging, so... I cast Noah Taylor after seeing him in Shine a few years earlier, and I thought he was such an unusual character that... For quite a predictable, techie, assistant character, I thought he would bring something different. Now, this shot shows off one of our first big, impressive sets in the movie, designed by Kirk Petruccelli and built by the incredible craftsmen at Pinewood Studios. It really was beautifully made. Every detail was perfect and to such an incredible scale, so I was always blown away every day when I came in and worked on these wonderful sets. Now, this shower scene was quite hard to shoot for quite a funny reason. Angelina has, I think, as many as 23 tattoos on her body. So I had to paint out a lot of these, well, not personally, but the makeup artist did, these various tattoos that she has over her body. And each day, depending on what outfit she was wearing, we'd have to paint out different tattoos. So this was the worst one, of course, because it shows a lot of bare flesh.

This upcoming shot where she throws the towel off was very difficult as well because I knew I was working in a PG-13 area type of film and so the idea was to show a little but not too much and so that took quite a few takes to get right. Originally I was going to shoot quite a bit in Venice but it proved to be too expensive because of the cost of everything else in the film. And so this interior was actually shot in Greenwich, just outside London. But I think it is a pretty good match for a Venetian interior. Our main bad guy is played by Ian Glenn, but in the story he's really just sort of middle management bad. And the leader of the bad guys is played by Richard Johnson there, who actually turned down the part of James Bond originally and left it open for Sean Connery. I have no explanation. Certainly no excuses. Except to once again respectfully remind the Council that we are working from clues based on ancient cosmological models. Predating Aristotle. But I'm happy to announce that we are almost ready. And I am supremely confident that we will have our answer in time for the relevant planetary alliance. Ian Glenn is, of course, a great stage actor and hasn't done a lot of films. But I'd seen some of the work he'd done and wanted to put him in this film because he was, I think, a very evil but also a very sexy character. And I wanted my bad guy to be almost as sexy as the good guy, which is, of course, Angelina in this film. Because if there is any sexual tension in the story, it's between Lara and Powell, the bad guy, and not necessarily between... the good guys, because I think Lara would be more interested in a dangerous, semi-psychotic, if you like, bad guy than in the boy-next-door type. She's such a strong character that she's not gonna be attracted to a nice guy or anyone safe. She's gonna be attracted to the character that is more likely to kill her than take her out on a date. We're not ready, are we? No.

This scene shows up particularly Peter Menzi's beautiful lighting. Everything in the film is just exquisitely shot. I'd worked with Peter before on my previous film, The General's Daughter, and I loved the look of that film, but I think in this film he really surpassed himself, and every single shot and every single scene is quite exquisite, and this is a very good example of it, with the light flooding in through the window on Lara at the desk. Spanish galleon? Do you know what day it is, Hilary? Yes. Of course. The 15th. And that is never a good day.

I based the idea for Lord Croft's stone tent memorial on Sir Richard Burton's mausoleum in Mort Lake Cemetery outside London. Sir Richard Burton was supposed to have discovered the source of the Nile and was a classic Victorian explorer. I discovered that he was entombed in this very cool stone replica of his field tent, the roof of which actually has a glass panel in it so you can look down on his coffin by climbing up on this old rusty metal ladder.

The original starting point for the story came to me as I was reading a short article in a science magazine about a true life planetary alignment that was due the following year. One of the previous times this had happened was over 4,000 years ago and was such a world-shaking event that the Chinese started their calendar from that day. There was some debate as to whether this new one would cause all manner of natural disasters. This fitted in with my desire for the film to contain ideas of nature still not being tamed, even in our age of technology. a kind of new age mysticism. Once I started moving the planets in the story, this gave me a great ticking clock to count down to to the finale of the film. And I realized that the theme of the film should be time. This would fit nicely with the genre I was dealing with, as a Tomb Raider is constantly dealing with the past. I then realized that, of course, the location or position of anything on our planet is measured in longitude and latitude, the units of which are read in minutes and seconds. So a clock is what I chose to lead the way to the hidden treasure. I wish you could remember her. She loved you so much. Mommy! I wish I could remember her, too. I still have you, Daddy. Yes, you do. The exact alignment of the planets necessary to activate the triangle only occurs once every 5,000 years. But that proved to be just long enough for little Lara Croft to grow up and to find it. So it all tied together with time as the central theme for the film. I really liked the idea that there were greater forces at work. the planets moving, natural things happening in nature, things that technology and computers couldn't predict or couldn't fix, and that there were still great mysteries out there to be discovered. So instead of people sitting in front of computer screens trying to work out what's going on, they actually have to get out there and travel the world and go to the jungles and go into the forests and learn from nature.

Now this scene shows up the differences between, I think, American audiences and European audiences. When I showed it to an American audience, they said, well, how can she hear the clock ticking from one end of the house to the other? And then when I showed it to European audiences, they all assumed that the ticking was in her head and that she was almost possessed by this dream about her father's clock. So that shows you the difference between an American audience's way of watching a film and a European audience's way.

One of the special effects guys specialized in making those little robotic creatures, and every day he would come to me with a new one he'd made, and I would say, okay, can we have one that looks like this kind of bug, or can we have one that crawls, or can we have one with more lights on? So I think there was one guy devoted just to making all those little robotic insects that inhabit Bryce's trailer. This had better be good.

As I said earlier, I thought the theme for this film should be time, so all through the story, everyone is always dealing with clocks and time and, as I said, location is measured in time and position is measured in time. The theme of the story being time also means that this brought in the emotional side of the story for me, that Lara was searching for her... her lost father and also trying to regain the time that was taken from them, the time that she lost with her father as he disappeared when she was very young. So the idea of time kept recurring and coming back in the story. I'm gonna need some coffee. Okay, in we go. Looks pretty ordinary to me. So time is measured with lots of different devices. In this case, it's measured with a very antique clock and then but also it's measured by the movements of the planets and the turning of the Sun and things like that so as I said we're constantly referring to time in the story the bad guys in this film the Illuminati whose secret sign is the all-seeing eye are actually a real conspiracy theory so if you go on the internet and type in the word Illuminati The screen will fill up with all these great theories of where they are... ...and what they're doing and how they're controlling the world. And it's fascinating. So I actually used a real conspiracy theory to be my bad guys in this film. Oh, please. It's my map, so I know where they all came from. It's camouflage. I always like the idea that Lara's always very impatient... ...and while everyone else was being very... careful and pernickety about how they were doing their research. Lara would wade in there with a hammer and just cut to the chase and get on with it and just smash the thing so she could get the information she needed. This clock was beautifully made by a real clockmaker and it really lit up inside and every piece worked on it and it was a beautiful piece of workmanship made of solid brass and we had two or three different versions of it that did different things and also we built a gigantic I think three or four foot across version of it to do the close-ups which also was totally mechanical and worked perfectly. Lara's motorbike was specially made as well. In the game she rides a classic Norton but they don't make motorbikes anymore so what we did is design a bike as if Norton was still in business and what kind of bike they would make now and so Kirk Petruccelli got together with engineers and devised this concept bike, really, of what a Norton might look like in this millennium. 2,100,000 pounds now. 2,100,000 pounds. Any more? 2,200,000. Thank you, sir. 2,200,000 pounds now. 2,200,000. 2,300,000. 2,400,000. Ladies bid. 2,400,000 pounds now. 2,400,000. Against you, sir. 2,500,000? No. This of course is one of the oldest jokes in the book but it always got a great reaction and I did cut it out at one point because I thought it was too cheap a joke but when I put it back in and tried it in front of an audience they liked it so I put it back in because it's just a great old joke about getting caught at an auction buying something. This is Daniel Craig who plays Alec West in the film and he's originally... His name was Alex Mars. But I was just about to start shooting this scene and I got an urgent fax from Paramount's legal department saying that the name Alex Mars wasn't cleared legally and that we had to change it. Normally I would have some time to think of different names and send them off and have those checked by the lawyers, but I was actually about to shoot the scene. So the only thing I could do was think of giving him my father's name because I knew I could get clearance on that. And so that's why he ended up being called Alex West in the film. for no other reason than it was a very quick legal solution to this problem. Stole, stole from you, you know, that's funny. You know, it's not like you ever really own them or anything. Hey, you're the tomb raider. Mr. West, we are ready for you. Oh, I think your clients need you. Oh, good. You're wanted on the floor. It is ironic in this film that everybody is playing a different accent to their own accent. Angelina's doing an English accent. Daniel, who is English, is playing an American. And Powell, who is Ian Glenn, who is Scottish, is playing English. John Voight, who's American, is playing English. So there's not many people in the film that are speaking in their own accent.

People will never know really how much work goes into every little detail of these films. Things like that clock obviously took weeks to build and make every little part of it work. And just the idea of making the dial glow was very difficult. We had to actually find this special paper that if you pass a current through it will glow as if it was an electric light. And that was built into the clock as well so that the face would light up. So each little tiny part of a film can be a huge job. He said it gave its possessor extraordinary power, the power to control time. He called it the triangle of light. Have you heard of it? No, no, I haven't. I'm so glad I got to work with Leslie Phillips. I'd always been a huge fan of his films from the 50s and 60s in England. It was great to work with someone that you'd watched when you were a little tiny kid. He was such a sweet guy that I had a wonderful time working with him. He was a very funny man, too. Port? It's really very fine. I can't help you, Lara. This clock truly is a mystery.

Another idea I wanted to put in that Lara may be able to do all this fantastic fighting and acrobatics and travel the world and take on all these bad guys, but actually she can't cook. So again, going against the sort of cliched female attributes that she's really just a normal person and why not, like a lot of women, she just can't cook. You take care. Thank you.

The exterior for the shop was taken in central London, but the interior was in a very special stately home about two hours outside London, which is an incredible interior that I found when I was scouting for locations, and the entire inside of the building is hand-carved marble, and we had to be very careful moving around our equipment in here so we didn't do any damage. I think you'll agree it's a fantastic interior, and it was just the kind of opulence and decadence I wanted to give my bad guys, so that even though he's a respectable lawyer living in the middle of London, he's built this whole secret, decadent interior world for himself. A lawyer. Isn't it obvious? Lady Croft, my pleasure. Manfred Powell, QC. Good morning. I believe you were quite an authority on things ancient and mythological. Oh, I travel. No, no, Mr. Wilson said you were quite the archaeologist. Please. Oh, he's very sweet. He knew your father, I believe. Yes, they were great friends. I had the honor of meeting him myself once in Venice. I was so sorry to hear about his death.

This is the clock I spoke of. Very interesting. It's a shame you only brought photographs. Nevertheless, it is fascinating. You said it started ticking the night of the alignment? Yes. You said you were a lawyer? Yes. And the study of clocks is a hobby? This is an obsession. Really my speciality, my practice centers around antiquities. But the origin of this clock completely eludes me. I think I've never seen anything quite so beautiful that I know so little about.

This is a pleasurable torment. My ignorance amuses me. Now, my take on Lara was that whatever a normal person would do, she would do to a much more extreme level. So, to relax before bed, you and I might watch TV or do yoga, whereas Lara is going to do something much more out there and much more, as I said, extreme. And that's when I came up with this idea of bungee ballet. I thought she should do something beautiful, but also very athletic and daring. And this is a very impressive routine that Lara does every night before she goes to bed, but Angelina actually had to learn to do for real. Now, I never expected her to do all this. When I cast her, I never thought of her as a stunt person, but during her training program before the shoot, she just learned how to do this thing from top to bottom, and I realized I wasn't going to have to use stunt doubles at all. The most terrifying part of it, I think, for me, would have been that diving off the balcony at the beginning, but Angelina has no fear of heights, and the more she did this, the more she seemed to love it. I think it's my favorite part in the film because, again, it shows the sort of beauty and athleticism of the character and also of Angelina.

Now, with the action scenes in this film, I set certain rules for myself and for Lara. I thought, well, she's a human being. She's not a magic superhero or anything, so she can't fly or do anything like that. So I wanted spectacular action scenes, and I wanted her to be flying up the walls, but I had to have a reason for that. And the bungee cords gave me a reason why she was able to run around walls and do all this spectacular action. My stunt coordinator and second unit director, Simon Crane, and I went to see a dance group called De La Garda, who specialize in bungee work and running around walls. And it was such a great high energy performance that I thought I'd like to do something like that in the film. So between Simon Crane and I, we devised this whole action sequence that is the next two minutes of the film. And of course, again, it may only be a one and a half minute sequence in the film, but it took many days to shoot this and many, many shots. Also, bungee cords never really operate the way you want them to, and constantly these stuntmen were flying into the wrong place and hitting the floor and hitting the walls, and there was a lot of bruising going on in this sequence. Even Angeline herself could only do the bungee work for short bursts. The harness she was wearing was very painful and constricting, and although it was exhilarating and fun to do, she could only do it for short periods because it was very painful.

Lots of things you have to think about in an action sequence, even down to the smallest detail. For instance, I wanted to not have the gunfire so overpowering that it tires the audience out, so that's why I deliberately had all the guns silent, so that the gunshots can be more muted and you can have a lot more gunplay, but the audience doesn't get tired and their ears don't get tired and you feel exhausted by the end of the action sequence.

Of course, one of the fun things with working with a character like Lara Croft is thinking up her gadgets or deciding what vehicle she's going to drive and things like that. So when it came to her garage, I filled it with all my favourite British sports cars like Aston Martin, McLaren, TVR, Lotus, Jaguar, an Ariel Atom and an old Lee Francis, as well, of course, as her Land Rover and Range Rover. The most expensive of these cars, of course, was the McLaren. Now, the company wouldn't actually lend us one of their cars for the film, so I had to go to a private owner. But unfortunately, the insurance was so steep and expensive to have that car on the set that I could only afford it for one day. So we had to make a polystyrene double for the car. And so all the wide shots in the action sequence in the background, the McLaren is actually just a very crude styrofoam version of the sports car. After a fashion... Now the idea for this scene originally was that Lara couldn't see where the bad guys were in the garage, so Bryce was talking her through on the radio. And the way he identified or pinpointed where they were was by their proximity to a particular car. So he would shout out the name of the car to Lara and she would automatically know where it was parked and just shoot blind into the darkness and of course she would hit them. Now this was cut down later so that it's a more curtailed version. Originally, it was this sort of very clever interplay between the two of them, and by shouting out Aston Martin or TVR, she knew exactly where each bad guy was located. Of course, it went wrong on one occasion because Bryce had borrowed one of the cars, the most expensive one, of course, and had driven it around and moved it, and so that's why she ended up shooting the windshield of the Land Rover, because he'd moved one of the cars.

Well done, mate. Nice one. Now, the stunt coming up where the Range Rover flips on top of the small Mini Cooper car coincidentally was shot on the day that they stopped making those cars. So on the last day of production ever for these great little mini cars, we actually crushed two of them by sheer coincidence with a flying Range Rover.

All these stunts were very hard to do in this very confined space, but to me that's what gives the scene its danger and energy, is that she's racing this motorbike around in a very confined and dangerous environment.

In the original cut this upcoming scene was very much longer and had a lot of interplay between Powell and his assistant Pimms. who was a very funny character, I think. But in the end, it got cut down to this very curtailed version where the clock is just delivered to Pal. Hello? We weren't actually allowed to shoot inside this stately home, so the three or four steps that the UPS man takes is as far as we're allowed to go, and then, of course, it cuts to the interior of the studio, where we'd built Lara's mansion. Morning. Lady Lara Croft? Yes. You have something for me?

I woke up this morning, and I just hated everything. Every day, we would go in and do more and more damage to these sets. And as I said, they started off beautiful, pristine copies of real stately homes. And every day, we would go and put more bullet holes in them, more explosions, more broken glass. And we really did wreck them. So by the end of the shoot, they were pretty uninhabitable. I just saw the name. It looked a funny name. I just asked her what the name was. Lara?

My father. It was written before he died and delivered today as per his instructions. Climbing? Holy shit. To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour. William Blake. Now this scene where she's pulling the sheets off the books is not supposed to mean that Lara Croft doesn't read books, and that's why they're all covered up. It really is just because this is her father's library, and she's left it exactly how he left it when he disappeared when she was a child.

My darling daughter.

Now this is a scene where her father tells her through the letters of the ancient fable and the existence of the bad guys and how to find the first piece of the triangle. Originally I had the father telling this to Lara Croft as a small child in the library, so this was a flashback and a memory of hers. And so it sort of came out more organically in a way when the child was just playing in the library as the father was writing the letter. And some small parts of that scene are still in this version, but as you can see, it was curtailed down to this voiceover and montage sequence of the letter, which is much shorter and quicker. The previous alignment of the nine planets. The people of the light built a great city in this crater where they worshipped the triangle for its ability to control time. It gave its possessor a power that could be used for good or great evil. Their abuse of this power led to the destruction of the city. Be sure no man would ever again wield this power. They split the triangle into two pieces and hid them at opposite ends of the earth. Mara, do you remember the jasmine that only grows in one temple along the ancient Khmer Trail in Cambodia? Find that, and you will have found the entrance to the Tomb of the Dancing Light, where the first half of the triangle is hidden. You must be there at the exact moment, at the second phase of the planetary alignment. So this was great luck getting Jon Voight to play Lara's father. It's not often that your lead character happens to have an Oscar-winning actor as a father, and you need someone like that for the story. So it was a great coincidence that I managed to get Jon Voight to play Lara's father, and it's actually, of course, Angelina's real father. This you must prevent at all costs. I'd always been a big fan of John Voight, and so it was great fun for me working with him. Every day I could come in and ask him about films that he'd worked on as I was growing up. And so one day I would get an anecdote about Deliverance, and the next day I'd get an anecdote about Midnight Cowboy. So as a film buff, it was a great piece of casting for me because it kept me entertained every day that he was there on the set. I told you I'd have Of course, being Angelina's father, sometimes it was a little bit difficult because even after I'd shot his scenes, he would stay around for a few days just for fun to see what we were doing. And Angelina would be in some precarious stunt or in a very dangerous position or something, and he would be leaning over my shoulder, making sure I was looking after her and wasn't putting her in danger and things like that. So a couple of times I had to sort of ask him to leave the set so that we could get on with it. But it was always great fun to have around. a very proud father of Angelina. And this was great fun shooting in Cambodia. I went over for literally three or four days scout a few months before we were due to shoot there and ran around and found all these locations and got permission from the Cambodian government and the temple organizers and the people that look after these sacred sites to go and shoot there. And I wanted to use this temple entrance for the story, but I wanted to have it blocked up so that we could break in and pull down the front of the tomb. And so my art director, Les Tompkins, went over there and basically measured up the hole And then when we got back to London, made up all these giant blocks out of polystyrene and goodness knows what else, and literally on paper worked out whether it was going to fit or not, and then packed it in boxes and sent it over to Cambodia. So then when we arrived to shoot, they put it all together like a big jigsaw puzzle in this hole, and no one knew whether it was actually going to fit or not because it had been done months before in London. And of course it did, it fitted perfectly. And we attached the ropes to it and then got 200 or 300 local Cambodian extras to tug on those ropes. And it was going to be a one-take thing. It took days to put those blocks in. And I was leaving the following day. So we had one chance to pull this thing down. And we rehearsed them and rehearsed them. And I had four or five cameras on it and one Steadicam. camera in the middle amongst the guys and the idea was that the Steadicam was to run down the middle between the guys just at the moment the blocks were pulled out and fell to the ground and as I said we rehearsed this over and over again to make sure all the extras knew what was going to happen. At the last minute they got overexcited and when we gave the signal to pull they pulled so hard that they all fell backwards and knocked the Steadicam operator David Emmerichs flying so the shot looking between the guys is all I had of the rocks falling towards us and the frame later all you see is the camera hitting the ground and then clouds and sky so I think David was very upset that he didn't manage to get the great shot from the front and I had one take at it but that's why you have three or four cameras because I had the side angles and they work perfectly as you see so that's what ended up in the film.

With this scene with the little girl running through the temple, it is in fact actually two different girls because the first one who I shot, who does the close-up scene with Lara at the end, her work permit ran out halfway through the shoot and we had to put her on a plane and send her back to England. And so I recruited a local Cambodian girl. So it's actually two different girls running around that temple, but I don't think anyone notices. But she's in it for the glory. Whereas I'm in it for the money. Fortunately, into the belly of the beast. And out of the demon's ass. This was actually what the locals called the funeral gate of the temple, and it's where all the dead bodies were taken out of originally when it was a temple. And so before any of them would work there, we had to have the place exercised, really, by a local priest to say that it was safe to walk in and out of the tomb entrance. But this is why I chose this place is because those great trees and the way they burst out through the roofs of the temples and 400 year old prehistoric looking trees like that, you just can't simulate and you can't build on the set to that kind of detail and scale. So that's why I ended up going to Cambodia is for this realism. And I have to say it's one of the easiest and most fun places I've ever shot in the world. The people there are so welcoming and so hardworking. that I would love to go back and shoot there again. Now, when Lara falls through the hole in the ground and she's tumbling through the earth, I shot this in one of the oldest techniques possible. It's not blue screen or green screen. It's not CGI. It's literally her standing on the ground with a rolling background with three or four guys pulling these sticks and like a giant conveyor belt, I suppose, behind her head, and just a fan blowing on her. So, I mean, it's a technique I think was probably used in silent movies, but I think it still works great, and it was probably one of our cheapest effects and our cheapest rigs, and it looks... I think it looks brilliant. This, of course, is one of our bigger sets, the Cambodian tomb interior. Again, designed by Kirk Petruccelli, who did an incredible job designing this stuff. And then, of course, all the craftsmen that worked on it and the art directors, especially Les Tompkins on this one. The detail and complexity of this set is just mind-blowing. And every day we went to shoot on this set, I think the actors, the cast, the crew all thought that they were really there and they were privileged to be on something that was built to this kind of scale and this standard. It was just incredible. I also wanted to do everything for real as much as possible. So instead of doing a lot of green screen or blue screen work or computer generated stuff, almost everything in the film happens in front of the camera. So as well as this set being on a gigantic scale, it's also a mechanical set. You'll see later in the scene that, of course, the log gets released and flies across the... the room and all this stuff really did work and again as I said was built to a gigantic scale and so some of the difficulty shooting the scene was actually moving all the equipment around in such a big area and on so many different levels and it really was like being in a real gigantic tomb

These flares that are used inside the tombs are actually chemical flares that you click together like kids have at concerts and things like that and I got the brightest ones possible you could find so that they lit the cast when they held them up and I think we got through like 6,000 of them because they only lasted 15 to 20 seconds at their full brightness so every take they'd have to be handed a new flare And as I said, we got through thousands of them. This set was actually freezing cold. Although it was supposed to be set in Cambodia in the height of summer, we shot it in England. on the 007 stage, which is actually more of an aircraft hangar, really, and totally uninsulated. And it was freezing cold every day, and sometimes you could see the breath coming out of the actors' mouths, but everyone is sort of stripped down and constantly being sprayed with fake sweat to try and make them look like they're hot. But actually, the second the camera stops, everyone was throwing on puffer jackets and scarves and hats to try and keep warm. Too slow, ladies. Too slow. Come on. That's it. Count it down. The timing needs to be exact. Also, the sets were so big that we would get our own weather systems within them. So late in the afternoon, sometimes we had clouds of mist gathering in the ceilings and... Sometimes they even drop low enough to interfere with the lighting and the shots. But that's what happens when you have sets this size. They have their own little ecosystem in there. 60 seconds to go. 59, 58, 7, 6, 5, 4.

Now the giant log that swings across the tomb in this scene was entirely mechanical and I dreamt up the idea quite late in the shoot and Chris Cobalt my special effects supervisor had to come up with this design and somehow build this thing that would actually swing across the temple without hitting the set or knocking over people and look good to camera and this meant that he brought in a computer controlled system of winches so every shot the log is actually at a completely different height and a completely different trajectory and this is all worked out with a computer and it's much more complicated than it would appear And this always fascinates me that I come up with an idea like this and I just scribble it on paper. And then someone like Chris Cobalt has to work out how to actually physically pull this thing off. And he did it obviously brilliantly as usual with this mechanical system for the log. 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, Five. Four. Three. As I said, I came up with the idea of the swinging log quite late while we were already shooting. And so the set wasn't actually built with the log inside it. And so it was a late addition. And Angelina hadn't had time to rehearse jumping on this log and riding it. And so I had the stunt doubles. have a go at it and I got reports back saying that it was impossible and they couldn't stand up and all these problems with it then the day came to shoot the scene and I asked Angelina I said listen I know you haven't had a chance to rehearse this thing but will you have a go at it to see whether it's possible and as usual of course Angelina said yes of course I'll have a go I set all the cameras up and I said you know the trouble is we're going to be shooting this in about 20 minutes so she said fair enough she rolled her eyes of course but she got on the log and we let it start swinging and literally within three or four minutes she was standing up on it and something that not even the stunt doubles could do and she obviously of course didn't just stand up she did it with style and grace and I was rolling with three or four different cameras and I got the whole thing with Angelina actually surfing the log into the into the urn for the scene but as I said it's one of these things you just think up very quickly and you're not sure whether anyone's going to be able to to do and Luckily, everyone came through and we got the shot. Pure light, fire and water. It was a very dangerous thing to have on a set. It weighed a great deal, that log, and it swang backwards and forwards. Everyone was constantly having to look over their shoulder, whether they were on the camera crew or one of the cast, because that thing was big and heavy and it was always moving.

Now the creatures that come to life in this tomb, the stone monkeys, I devised really for several reasons. One was because I didn't want Lara Croft to have to shoot a lot of people or animals the way she does in the video game. And so that's why I came up with these stone creatures. And then having once designed them, we had to think about things like how would they break? How would they fall over? How would they walk? What were their movements like? And that took weeks and weeks of research and testing in the computers to see ...what would look real in a very unreal world, in a very unreal situation... ...because, of course, stone creatures don't move around... ...so no one knows what they look like when they move... ...and you can't suddenly make them out of plastic... ...so that they can stretch like skin or a human being would move. So that took a while to develop the style for these things... ...and how they moved and how they collapsed and how they broke up.

Originally I had these fast flying creatures as well that would attack them from the air that would be a sort of counterpoint to the more zombie-like movements of the monkeys but we had to cut those out in the storyboard stage and so what we're left with is these monkeys and what we call the griffins who are the almost like gorilla creatures that run on the ground. These sort of scenes are quite hard for the actors to shoot something like that sword fight with Angelina, there's nothing there. She's just faking it and having to assume and guess and take my guidance on where a stone monkey may be, where its head is, where its legs are. So it's hard enough doing a fight scene anyway, but when your opponent isn't even there, it's very difficult for the actors. It's also very difficult for the director and the camera crew because they're having to guess ...where these characters may be. I have to go around and explain to everybody what's happening... ...because at that stage it's only happening in my head and not on the set. And so each camera angle, each camera move has to take into account... ...characters that aren't really in front of the camera.

Designing the voices of these characters is also fun. As I said, the monkeys to me were more like zombies, and so they had a very low kind of guttural growl, whereas these running griffins were much more athletic and had a more squealy voice, I suppose. So the sound designers take real-life animal sounds and bend and twist them in the computer, so we get this sort of amalgamation of what an animal and a stone creature might sound like.

The original idea for this six-armed stone character sequence... ...was that, obviously, it comes to life... ...and then starts slowly pursuing Lara... ...across the ladder and through the tomb. And the idea was that she lets loose with both guns... ...and, of course, soon runs out of ammunition... ...and you think she's done for, and so does the statue... But then, of course, she presses the button on the back of her pack... ...and a whole new tree of clips drops out... ...and she's suddenly got all the bullets she could need. She then pounds those bullets into him again and again... ...and runs out of that ammunition. In the meantime, she's shot off one of the creature's faces... ...and he appears to be obliterated. But, of course, he just spins his head round and he's got a whole... brand-new fresh face which smiles at her and is about to go in for the kill when she gets the idea of kicking the log

This jungle is actually shot in Windsor. It was winter again and we had to wait for the frost to melt on the undergrowth before we could shoot that sequence to match the Cambodian steamy jungle.

And this is Angkor Wat, and the authorities there let us build this village right in front of the temple itself. I've tried to make it look like there's a river and a large lake or whatever. There's actually a very small ornamental pond in front of the temple. But by using a wide-angle lens and not showing the edge of the water, which is literally where the camera is, it looks like she's paddled up the river and made it to this Cambodian village in front of the temple. And then, of course, you have to fit in with other restrictions like the fact that there were these beautiful pink water lilies that bloomed on that pond, but they only opened for two hours in the morning. So I had to devise a schedule where all my wide shots were in this two-hour period just so that I could have these pink water lilies blooming for Lara to paddle her canoe through. Ah, Lady Croft, how are you? Alive. And kicking, I hope. And you? Superlative. Of course, I digress. You have my half of the triangle. And you have my father's clock. Listen, my dear, without each other we are quite useless at this point. We should re-evaluate our positions. The only disadvantage of shooting in that jungle, of course, is that every day we'd come in and a special snake guy used to have to go around with a long stick and get all the snakes out of Powell's tent. that had moved in in the night and then set up home in some of the cushions and the chairs and things. And so that was the downside of shooting in the jungle. But on the other hand, it does look beautiful and it sounds beautiful. And it was a great experience being there. Here it comes. Hide, everybody. Look out. It's some sort of machine. Bryce. Bryce, it's me. Hello? Bryce, it's Lara. I found the temple. Ran into Mr. Powell. Did you get the clock? No. But I got the first piece. Oh, beautiful. Smashing. Seems I'm level pegging with Mr. Powell. Well, won't he just want to kill you now? No, silly. His problem is that he needs the piece that I have. Until then, I'm his new best friend. What about the other half? The final alignment is in 66 hours and 53 minutes, and we've still got no idea where the second piece is in. He's going to tell me where the second piece is. He will? Bryce, trust me, pack for Venice. Pack for where? Hello, Lara? Bye, then. Now, this is a real blessing with these Buddhist monks. They're not acting, they don't really... think of this as anything to do with the film really they just are actually blessing Angelina and they blessed the film crew and the film itself so we were well protected when we were out there. This is another testament to Peter Menzies great lighting. I ran out of time in shooting this scene in Cambodia so all the shots of Angelina were really done in Angkor Wat temple but the reverses of the monk were shot in Pinewood Studios. I don't think anyone can really tell the difference. The matching in the lighting is brilliant, and also the set builders and art directors did a great job matching as well. This scene was quite a bit more surreal in the original concept in the script, and the monk actually metamorphosized into her father, and they both levitated and moved around the temple before going back to reality. But again, this was... simplified for the final film and this is the version as it exists now. The lamps behind the monk were actually oil lamps originally and I wanted to copy real Buddhist oil lamps but unfortunately there was something wrong with our design and they all caught fire and our poor monk nearly went up with them and so did our set so with 20 minutes to spare I had to substitute all the oil lamps for candles. And that's what ended up in the scene. The whole thing was shot in literally 20 minutes. Good evening. You're with the Illuminati. Make a pardon. It's no such thing. It's just a bedtime story.

Illuminati. The people of the light. Have you brought my triangle? No, of course you haven't. You've hidden it somewhere. Well, you can keep the triangle you have. This scene, of course, is back in Greenwich, outside London, even though it's supposed to be set in Venice. And it's... late at night, obviously, and so it's quite a different lighting look to the first time we were in this room. And we shot this in the middle of the night, I think, because of the size of the windows in this building was so great that we couldn't tent the whole building to make it look like night, so we had to wait for the real night. And there's always a downside with shooting at night, because although it's very quiet, there's no aeroplanes, there's no traffic, there's no telephones ringing, everyone is working at four o'clock in the morning. And to try and be creative and diligent about your craft and how the scene is going and the performances, it's very much harder at three, four, and five o'clock in the morning than it is during the daytime. But hopefully the night scenes are just as good as the day scenes. You're lying. No. No, he mentored me in the Order. It was truly an honor. I don't believe you. My father was not with the Illuminati, you would have told me. He had a great many secrets. Not from me. Especially from you. I know what you want, Lara. Oh, I doubt it.

This is a great scene for me because you have two wonderful actors... ...who are just giving the best possible reading of this scene. And literally I have to stand back and let them get on with it. I just shoot it very simply... ...knowing that these guys, it's like a champion tennis match really... ...and all you want to do is sit back and watch. So I don't tend to do a lot of flashy camera moves... or angles in this kind of thing, maybe just to introduce it and to exit it, but ostensibly it's an actor's scene, and these are two very fine actors, so I just let them get on with it, really. Would it make it easier for you, on more familiar ground, if I killed you now? Will you reconsider?

Now this scene was one that was actually originally cut out. It was one of two scenes that I cut out of Alex's apartment in Venice. But after the one and only test screening that we had, the audience were actually asked for more of Alex in the film, so I reinstated this one. The other scene involved Lara coming in in the middle of Alex having a poker game with some of his more disreputable friends. And she confronts him and lays down the law to him, but she also retrieves the first half of the triangle that she supposedly hid in his apartment in this scene. So it explains where the triangle went while she was talking to Powell in Venice. Hello, Alex. I suppose you think I'm a greedy, unscrupulous sellout and do just about anything for money. Yes, that's right. Again, this is one of those classic scenes where you have a male nude actor and you have to arrange the furniture and the camera angles. very strategically, so you don't see anything you're not supposed to see in a PG film. We may not be able to remain friends. Always a pleasure. Now for a cold shower. I think we're in big trouble. All this way. Thank you. Everyone thought that I'd specially installed these enormous red drapes in this scene. as some bold color statement. In fact, these were just what we found there already hanging in the Royal Air Force helicopter hangar. And I hadn't art directed this or brought them especially at all. They just happened to be what the Royal Air Force had in that particular building of theirs. Ah, Lady Croft. What a nice surprise.

Well, time to save the universe again then, is it? Absolutely.

Well, one Tomb Raider is good, two, better. I couldn't afford to take the helicopters to Iceland, so when you see them taking off after they've dropped off their passengers, that shot is actually taken in England on Salisbury Plain, and then the opposing shot, when they're walking away from camera, is in Iceland, and just the sound effect of the helicopters carries over the cut, and so you feel that the helicopters have taken off over their heads, but actually they're in two completely different countries. So this shot is in England on Salisbury Plain. And this shot is in Iceland by the Iceberg Lake. and it's just a sound effect that carries you across the cut. We take all doggies, da? Macho US greenback, da? This is where great prop people come in when you're in the middle of nowhere and you want to build an Inuit village and they have to come up with tents and dead fish and dogs and sledges and things like that. And I had a great prop master with Terry Wells who put all this together and built this, what I thought looked like a very atmospheric Inuit village in the middle of Iceland.

I had these three amphibious landing craft which were about 50 years old and quite decrepit and on land could actually only run for about 15 minutes because their cooling systems had been taken out years ago. I had the camera crew and camera equipment on one of them and Angelina, Noah Taylor, myself and about 12 husky dogs were on another one and we were going through the middle of these icebergs and of course the one we were on broke down and I soon realized that the only thing keeping these things afloat was the engine running pumping out hundreds of gallons of water every minute and as soon as the engine stopped they became what they were trucks trying to float on water and ours slowly began to sink and water started to come over the deck and Angelina and Noah were discussing the view at one end of the boat and looking out and seemed not to have noticed our predicament while I and the driver were searching around trying to find hydraulic oil in one of the lockers to try and get the engine started again and I was just calculating how long we would survive in that water before the rescue boats would come and catch us and how long it would take to unhook twelve husky dogs when we managed to get the engine started again and it rose up out of the water and I don't think Angelina or Noah still to this day knew just how close we were to taking a swim in that water. When I scouted the glacier months before it was all covered in beautiful white snow and very easy to get around on skidoos but when we came back months later that had all melted and it was down to the perma-ice which was full of crevasses and very dangerous and treacherous to move about so it was quite hard to shoot those sequences out on the glacier because it was such a treacherous terrain and quite a few times our vehicles got stuck and started sinking. These tunnels were one of our most economical sets in the whole film. They're in fact a tiny circular set. Every shot of the sledges traveling through is achieved by sending them over the same piece of tunnel over and over again. Just by changing the camera angle, it looks like a never-ending labyrinth, but it is actually a very small set. And again, John Fenner, the art director, did a brilliant job of making this look like a huge complex of tunnels, when really it's about the size of a tennis court.

This is another of Kirk Petruccelli's amazing sets. Originally, this was to be set in Venice, as there were to be three pieces to the triangle hidden in three different tombs. To ease the budget, this was cut down to just two tombs, and I merely combined the idea of this planetary orrery machine with an icy tomb that I had set in Siberia. Chris Gobolt again enhanced this set by the use of steam, water, bubbles, atmosphere, Everything that would make the set come alive. So although it was obviously a very beautiful and dramatic and gigantic set... ...it really needs to have life put in it... ...with all these separate effects that Chris puts in. Holy shit. It's a time storm. Time is broken here. Must find the eye! All of you, hurry! We're running out of time! This series of stunts where people are actually climbing on the machine was incredibly dangerous. Each of the rotating arms weighs over three tons, and it took Simon Crane, my stunt coordinator and second unit director, quite a while to work out a route that would not lead to disaster for the actors and the stunt players. It's begun. Chris Cobalt was responsible for the construction of this giant mechanical machine, and it really is a totally working mechanical device. Again, it's one of those incidences where I think up this idea very quickly and scribble a few things on a piece of paper, and then he has to go away and actually work out how to build this thing full scale, make it work and make it safe. It was incredibly dangerous working on this orrery set because if you're standing in the wrong place, you will get hurt, and so it was constant vigilance by everyone so that the stunt people and the actors and the camera crew were always safe. The art director on this set was John Fenner, and he built a beautiful model of it first so I could work out all of my camera angles and block out the action. The set is actually only a semicircle, so all the shots had to be designed not to reveal this and to give the impression of a complete cavern.

Each one of those balls represents a real planet. But to this day, no one could ever remember which planet was which ball. So in the end, we used to just point up and say the little brown one or the big red one or the green one. And that's how we identified them. Again, this was another huge set that had its own weather system in there. And sometimes we actually had to stop filming because a fog would move in from the heated water and the freezing cold air that was so thick that you couldn't actually see across the set. So sometimes we couldn't shoot wide shots in the morning when the air was very cold and we had to wait for the afternoon for the atmosphere to heat up. I should cut a piece.

Enough of this twaddle. Come on, come on!

In this upcoming sequence of throwing the knife, there's another secret puzzle piece, I suppose, hidden in the film that anybody that wants to go through it and collect all the hidden messages that I put throughout the film, this is a good spot here. There's one right in this sequence.

This scene was originally a little longer. The idea was that Lara was keeping Alex alive underwater by breathing into his mouth. Powell laid out his deal up top in the short moments that Lara came up to fill her lungs. In the script stage, I had notes from people saying that this was impossible as she would be breathing carbon dioxide into him. I tried to explain that this would mean an end to the CPR business or the kiss of life. But in the end, I had to go to the trouble of finding out the actual percentage of oxygen in a human's exhaled breath to prove the point. Incidentally, it's 21% in the air around us and 16% in our outgoing breath. Of course, in Los Angeles, it's probably a lot lower. No more bubbles. You show me how to complete the triangle, we can change his fate. If you deliver me the power of God, I will spare him. It's only a little trip back in time. But I'm pretty sure you figured out the answer to the, um, problem. And then, of course, there's the loss of your father. I can change that. You had better be ready for this.

Unhook your laser sight. Do it.

This scene was quite different originally. On entering time itself, or the fourth dimension, as we called it, everything became very surreal. Lara found herself in what appeared to be her home, being led around by herself as a child. Pal too was there, and a battle of wills ensued, even to the point of Pal physically changing into her father, and then setting fire to the library.

This was a very emotional scene for Angelina and John, and they modified the dialogue to be even more personal and relevant to their real relationship. I briefly tried some unusual camera angles and moves, but in the end realized it had to be kept very simple. In the editing stage, I also experimented with strange atmosphere and sound effects to make it sound like we were in the fourth dimension or inside time. But again, I stripped it back to the basics just to let the scene play itself. Only that which would inspire you and keep you safe I love you so much. But I've missed you. And I've missed you. I know why you came here. Why you took the power of the light. But this must not happen. Why? Why can't we use the power just this once? Why can't you stay? We can't change time. But time was stolen from us. And it's not fair. No, it's not fair. But you have stolen time itself. And you must give it back. You must destroy the Triangle. Suddenly I feel so alone. You're never alone. I'm with you always, just as I've always been.

This scene originally was where Powell met his final end. Lara simply turned the knife around and time started again and it shot into him and that was the end of Powell. But it was felt that Lara should do something more energetic to finish him off. So the fight scene that follows this one was added.

Paul's chief henchman was played by Robert Phillips and I actually discovered him driving a cab in central London and I just loved the way he looked and the way he sounded and so I offered him a part in the film and that's him there with his machine gun. I also love the shot of Julian, Ryan, Tut and Noah running down the tunnel in slow motion with their machine guns and I actually had them fire them off and spray bullets everywhere in the orrery but that later got cut out. But Julian, Ryan, Tut did some brilliant comedy in the film and a lot of great gags and scenes that didn't make it to the final version, but I think he is a very funny actor and added a lot to the film. He seemed particularly concerned that I shouldn't The picture of Lara's mother in the watch is actually a photograph... ...of a girl that worked in the art department on the film. Lara, no! The place is coming down! This is insane! Get them out of here. You just hurry.

Now, for the fight scene between Lara and Powell... ...I deliberately went for a street style of fighting. I didn't want martial arts or flying through the air or running up walls. I wanted it to be as real as possible. And Lara, of course, is a human being, and so is Powell. She would want to get things done as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And so that's why we ended up with this very, I suppose, gritty and real street fight style. The hardest thing in this fight was to get Ian Glenn to actually kick hard, really, because he was so reluctant to kick a woman, a fellow actor or stuntperson, that we actually had to do quite a few takes before he would kick hard enough that it looked realistic. Thank you.

Now, this final destruction of the Orrery set took about three days to prepare. I had about 14 cameras, I think, and we placed them in all different positions, up in the arms, in the planets, under the waterfall. We had to dig them in, protect them. Then we had to rehearse it over and over again. And it took about three days just to get the cameras in position and work out where and when the effects were going to happen. And literally on the last day, At about 20 past midnight, we finally rolled cameras, and the whole sequence only took eight seconds to occur, but time is stretched out by running slow motion and using all these multiple angles. Again, we're using this incredibly small series of tunnels Again, by changing angles and constant cutting, you feel like she's travelling through this great underground network, but it is actually a very small set and we're just going round and round in circles with these dogs. Again, this was one of my earliest ideas for the film. I thought, wouldn't it be great to see Lara Croft barefoot water skiing, as it were, but with dogs on ice and... This is how it ended up. So this is something I thought would never happen in the film, actually, seeing Lara Croft in a dress. But it soon became apparent that we needed to open up the character at the end. She needed to have changed in some way. She was quite emotionally shut down at the beginning of the film. She'd missed her father since she was a young child and didn't really even admit to it. So she wasn't a very warm person to start with and this dress, I suppose, was kind of a symbolic image that would represent that she was open to new ideas and maybe even a little more emotional, a little bit warm and a little bit more friendly. In the end, I think Lara Croft came across as a very strong, proactive, positive person and... She seemed to end up being quite a good role model for girls and women. And it's rare for an action hero to be a woman anyway in Hollywood. And to have someone that was also leading the story and in control, I think made her very attractive to women and girls.