Sophie Turner Is In Talks For Lara Croft And I Cannot Think Of A Worse Choice

(THR) Sophie Turner is closing in on the highly coveted role of British archeologist Lara Croft in Amazon MGM Studios and Crystal Dynamics’ adaptation of adventure video game Tomb Raider.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is writing and exec producing the live-action series, which received a series order in the spring and will stream on Amazon’s Prime Video. Turner, best known for playing Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones, is in talks to play the lead role, previously portrayed by Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander in feature film adaptations of the video game series.

There are a few things that make Tomb Raider such a cool property. The first is exactly what makes Indiana Jones cool: archeology adventures. Discovering ancient secrets, exploring in the jungle and using badass methods to kill the bad guys that are trying to beat you to the artifacts. It's a winning formula! But the second most important factor is the character of Lara Croft. Croft is a hot, intimidating, badass that has a level of physicality that makes her believable as a stand in for Indy, Nathan Drake etc. You know who does not have that aura at all? Sophie Turner. 

She's best known from GoT and what was the most "badass" moment for Sansa Stark? Changing her hair color? After that, her big action role is Jean Grey in the new X-Men movies, specifically the two TERRIBLE ones in 'X-Men: Apocalypse' and 'Dark Phoenix'. Not only was she not badass in her portrayal of one of the strongest mutants in X-Men lore, but she was barely present. 

Nothing about previous work suggests to me that she is a good pick for this role. To play devil's advocate to myself, though, 

Alicia Vikander was a perfect fit but that movie wasn't great either. Maybe the winning formula is to cast the modern Angelina Jolie and just embrace the silliness of the first two movies. Were they perfect? Absolutely not, BUT they were undeniably entertaining. They also helped introduce us to two of the future biggest action stars in Daniel Craig and Gerard Butler.