IN June 2001, just as the video-games heroine Lara Croft was making her debut on cinema screens, a US publication sought to answer some “burning questions” about her.

The first question – how did Angelina Jolie, the star of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, measure up to the “cartoonish upper proportions” of Croft, the multilingual, aristocratic archaeologist, in the way she was marketed?

The answer: Jolie used padding to increase her bust size. The film’s director, Simon West, went so far as to say: “The main decision was whether to shoot above the breasts or below the breasts. They’re such a big thing to frame around.”

There was no doubt that in the million-selling video games and the film Croft was a ground-breaking, kick-ass heroine. Alicia Vikander, who plays Croft in the newly-released film, Tomb Raider, grew up playing the video games and saw Jolie play Croft. “It meant a huge amount back then,” she says, “to finally see a woman lead that kind of action film.”

But the early Croft marketing certainly played up her physical attributes. “I wasn’t a big fan of the way she was marketed then,” Rhianna Pratchett, who was the lead writer of the video games, said. “It wasn’t so much the sexualisation aspect that bothered me – it was pretty ubiquitous in the 90s – but the way she was being solely aimed towards male gamers.” However, she conceded, “that method of advertising undeniably worked in helping Lara become a household name.”

It was also inevitable that some reviews of the 2001 film would mention the attributes and sex appeal of Croft/Jolie. One reviewer described her as a “major babe”, albeit one with phenomenal hearing. One magazine noted her fighting skills but added that Jolie “sports perhaps the most strikingly engineered bosom since Jane Russell.” A third reviewer said Jolie's “formidable sexuality has been carefully packaged for the cyber-role made flesh. She is dominant, and in control. Hair tied back. Weaponry strapped to gorgeous legs. Lips big and smouldering like a fire-damaged Dali sofa. Huge breasts monolithically immobile, as if encased in some new brand of hi-tech assault sports bra.”

The Croft franchise has now been rebooted and the new, Vikander-starring film has already led to talk that this is a Croft film for the #timesup generation. In the film – as in the 2013 and 2015 video games, on which it is based – there is much less focus on the sexual aspect and more on her back story.

Alicia Malone, of the film site Fandango.com, has said that though the Jolie incarnation was a symbol of female empowerment, “the Lara Croft character was overly sexualised, with her small costume and exaggerated breasts reducing her to an object for male pleasure.”

“It’s more of an origin story,” Vikander herself explains in an interview with Refinery 29, a media suite focusing on young women. “I love the fact that she’s much more of a real girl, with a reality which is much closer to ours.”

She has also said of Croft: "On one level she is trying to finding her footing in the world, which we all try at some point, but this is also an action-adventure, so it's about her becoming a hero."

The Croft video game was developed by a Derby gaming company, Core Design, and published by Eidos. She was never seen as a sex symbol, however: the designers saw her as strong and independent. Marketing advice was offered to the effect that female characters wouldn’t sell games, but this was shown to be well wide of the mark.

Tomb Raider came out in 1996. Gaming magazines praised its innovations and, to date, it has sold a reported seven million copies worldwide. Gamers couldn’t get enough of Lara. One top English footballer blamed his sluggish on-field performances on the fact that he had stayed up late, playing the game.

The Prodigy rock group similarly blamed their obsession with Croft for the delay in recording a new album. Lara even appeared on the cover of The Face magazine in 1997. She genuinely had become huge business.

Several bestselling Croft sequels followed (you could even buy Tomb Raider III merchandise in Marks and Spencer] before The Times reported in March 2000 that Jolie was in talks with the Paramount studio for the lead in the film adaptation “after a five-year search to find the right actress.” The director, Simon West, it added, had had a “brief flirtation with casting Posh Spice, Victoria Adams," but concluded that Jolie “had the right combination of ‘beauty and brains’ to play the role.”

The film took $274.7 million globally and $131m in the US. It was the highest-grossing video game adaptation, but lost that title to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, whose worldwide takings were $336m. The 2003 Croft film sequel, Cradle of Life, performed less well than the first film, taking $156m globally and $65m in the US.

By the time of the first Croft movie there was already a debate as to whether Croft was a feminist. One US professor in 2001 argued that Croft was an example of “light feminism, girl power – where else are you going to find a game where guys don’t mind playing a girl?”

To others, however, Croft was a mere “feminist caricature for blokes”. Or as one hacker put it: “The problem with Lara is that she was designed by men for men. How do I know this? Because Lara has thin thighs, long legs, a waist you could encircle with one hand and knockers like medicine balls.”

Germaine Greer was also sceptical. “How many women,” she asked, “do you know with broad chests and narrow waists like hers? Men should wake up to the fact that women have big bums. Whatever these characters are, they’re not real women.”

But that was then and this is now. The first reviews of Vikander in Tomb Raider have shown how much Croft has evolved. As the online culture site Consequence of Sound said last week: “In both the 2013 game reboot and the new film, Lara Croft has been upgraded from a busty, impossible sex symbol to a lithe, agile fighter – all broad shoulders and washboard abs.”

Vikander’s Lara, it adds, is no superhero. “She feels every punch, kick, and bit of shrapnel buried in her abdomen. Of course, this vulnerability makes her victories feel even more pronounced – Vikander’s Lara is more athlete than aristocrat, an Indiana Jones for the CrossFit set. Gone are the short shorts and computer-enhanced bosom: this Lara is practically costumed, muscular and deeply driven to survive.”