The Legend of Tarzan

Dir: David Yates

2016

**

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan has graced the small screen successfully and has featured positively in radio, comics and graphic novels over the years but has only prevailed once on the big screen in my opinion in 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Disney made their version of Tarzan in 1999 which I wondered at the time would be the end of them and the less said about 1998's Casper Van Dien led Tarzan and the Lost City the better but an authentic and honest big budget, live action adaptation has been touted around Hollywood for over twenty years. Many ideas have been suggested and many writers have come and gone, a Pirate of the Caribbean style action film had been on the cards for quite some time and producers actually wanted to cast Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps in the lead role, just as competitive swimmer Johnny Weissmuller was cast in the 1930 and 1940s Tarzan films due to his unique physique. However, after watching Michael Phelps' appearance on Saturday Night Live the idea was scrapped rather swiftly. Casting suggestions after that featured all the usual suspects but I'm quite glad they went with Alexander Skarsgård in the end as although he certainly wasn't an obvious choice, he was right for the more serious version of the character that had been written which gave Tarzan a certain edge that I think worked well. The role of Jane Porter could have been played by several Actors I can think of but Margot Robbie was great and no doubt the best choice. Christoph Waltz on the other hand just phoned his performance in. The film makers relied a little too heavily on the villainous characters he'd played previously, his Captain Rom could have easily been Hans Landa or Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but just with a slightly different accent. I love Samuel L. Jackson and will watch anything he's in but his comedy companion character is utterly pointless and a little distracting, although I suppose I'm still glad he was there because I like him. I'm glad the film wasn't a full on origins story, although Tarzan and Jane's origins are explored via effective flashbacks, this is well done reworking of the fifth Tarzan book, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, which simplifies the story (removing the nonsense about the lost world of Atlantis) and includes an element of actual history. The film is full of wonderful detail though which I really appreciated. There is an early scene whereby Tarzan explains to a group of curious children that the bone structure in his hands is different from years of running on all fours and I liked his interaction with the animals in the jungle. There is also a brilliant scene where Samuel L. Jackson shoots the earlobe off a solder and delivers a wisecracking line so great I wondered why he hadn't been cast as the film's bad guy. It's a very simplistic adventure film but for once I think by keeping it simple they kept it digestible. However, the script is truly awful. A low point came when Tarzan and Samuel L. Jackson's character joke about licking the testicles of Gorilla. It doesn't work, the characters don't have the right kind of chemistry, it's not that kind of film  and it just isn't funny, although it did wake me up somewhat as it came at a rather slow and samey part of the movie. The CGI is some of the worst I've seen, from the ridiculous length and incorrect style of the CGI London streets seen at the beginning of the film to the beyond ridiculous vine-swinging scenes where one vine, presumably hanging hundreds of meters above the trees, can carry a man at least two miles. They couldn't even get the trees right, which is a big problem when making a film set largely in the jungle. The action sequences really let the film down, the effective serious side of the story was pretty much ruined as the special effects got more and more elaborate. It felt like three different films edited together but only one of them was half decent. The scenes without special effects were directed beautifully but rest of the film looked like a really cheap cartoon. It was staggering to see the level of quality drop so quickly as the film went on, I can't believe I kept with it right to the end. I really don't know what Warner Bros. were thinking but this is not how to adapt a classic and well-loved character to the big screen.