‘Tomb Raider’ on HBO: How Does Alicia Vikander’s Oscar Follow-Up Rate Among Her Peers?

HBO’s Saturday night premiere on November 24 is Tom Raider, the re-booted adaptation of the video game series which sees Alicia Vikander step into the role originally played by Angelina Jolie. The first Tomb Raider movie came out in 2001 and was the first movie Jolie signed onto after winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Girl, Interrupted. And when the film was met with poor reviews, a familiar refrain emerged about Oscar curses and that actresses who win Oscars are often doomed with their next project.

Of course, there isn’t much of a curse about it, unless you count the wild disparity in leading roles between men and women as a curse. Which of course it actually is, just not literally. No, the problem with Oscar-winning actresses flopping with their follow-up films is that there just isn’t any room for actresses to level up. There certainly wasn’t 10 or 20 years ago. What’s somewhat curious about Alicia Vikander following the same path Jolie did in 2001 is that, at least theoretically, she should have more choices in front of her.

Let’s take a look at the recent history of Oscar-winning actresses:

• Angelina Jolie: Wins Best Supporting Actress for Girl, Interrupted in March of 2000. Begins filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in July of 2000. The reviews are brutal (currently 20% on Rotten Tomatoes), but the film does great box-office ($130+ million domestic) and goes on to get a sequel.
• Halle Berry: Wins Best Actress for Monsters Ball in March of 2002, at which point Die Another Day had already begun filming. Her next fully new projects (not counting X-Men 2, for which she was contractually obligated) were the psychological thriller Gothika and the superhero disaster Catwoman, for which she won a Razzie.
• Charlize Theron: Wins Best Actress for Monster in February of 2004, then begins production on director Karyn Kusama’s Aeon Flux in August. The film is a massive disaster, critically and commercially, and while Theron gets bailed out by her Oscar-nominated indie North Country that same year, Kusama’s career ends up in the dog house for a long time.
• Alicia Vikander: Wins Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl in February of 2016, then gets announced as the new Lara Croft in April of that same year.

While the reviews for the newest Tom Raider certainly kinder than they were for Jolie in 2001, the 51% is still rotten. And its paltry $57 million take at the box office is decidedly not encouraging (though it should be noted that a robust foreign box-office has it up to $270+ million, which puts a sequel on the table.

And while it’s true that Vikander had her breakthrough roles in costume dramas like A Royal Affair, Anna Karenina, and The Danish Girl, she’s actually been the most fun to watch in genre fare like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Ex Machina, so while it was good to get Theron, Berry, Jolie out of their own action flops, Vikander might actually be the one to make this work.

Where to stream Tomb Raider