Watch Out, Indiana, Here Comes Lara Croft

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As in the game, the movie plot has Croft setting out in search of an ancient and mystical artifact: in this case, the two components of the Clock of Ages, a dusty device that tracks the alignment of the planets and may help solve the mystery of her father's death. But there are changes in the way Croft goes about her business. Far from being a full-time tomb raider, she now has a day job as a Pulitzer prizewinning photojournalist (why or when she has time to do this is unclear, but cameras and prints are scattered around Croft Manor). And rather than spending the whole movie in the game's traditional green tank top and khaki shorts, Jolie goes through 13 costume changes, including an Eskimo parka and a monk's robe. While sweating it out on the steamy, mosquito-ridden Angkor Wat temple set in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Jolie kept her irreverent sense of fun. "In some ways, it's a good job Billy's not here and I'm in a monk's costume," she said, referring to her husband, actor Billy Bob Thornton. "Otherwise we'd be out in those fields getting it on."

If there's any development that will rub Tomb Raider fans the wrong way, it's Croft's newfound pals. In the game, she operates alone. Now, perhaps, Croft has too many sidekicks. The spectral presence of her father (played by Jolie's real-life dad, Jon Voight) is a cute addition, but we could probably do without the cockney comic relief called Bryce (played by Noah Taylor, the teenage David Helfgott in Shine). At any rate, Jolie feels right at home in her strange new world. "All the reasons I'm right for this movie are all the reasons I've been told I wasn't right for things," says Jolie. "I was always told I was too dark, strange looking...In this character I can finally be more myself. And it's shocking that this is who I am. I'm like, 'My God--why does this feel so normal?'"