The Legend of Tarzan

After seeing the two most recent “Planet of the Apes” entries and this year’s “The Jungle Book”, I had high hopes for “The Legend of Tarzan”. Ultimately, I’m left disappointed by this new adaptation while acknowledging that for the most part, it’s exciting and there’s a lot to like in it.

For a number of years, the man once called “Tarzan” (Alexander Skarsgård) has been living in London with his wife Jane Porter (Margot Robbie), happy to embrace the civilized life and the name of John Clayton III. Back in Africa, the Belgian government is desperate for money and makes a deal with Tarzan’s old enemy, Chief Mbonga (Djimon Hounsou): if Belgian envoy Léon Rom (Christoph Waltz) can deliver Tarzan, he will have all the diamonds required to keep the country under subjugation.

The film makes a mistake from the beginning by focusing on too many stories. I would have chosen either a tale of Tarzan coming back to the jungle to fight an old enemy, an origin story or an action adventure with ties to real-world history that explores the “Reality vs. Myth” of Tarzan,  “Beowulf” style.  “The Legend of Tarzan” attempts to juggle all three. You get used to this idea of Tarzan living up to the legend that he is, then the picture will flashback to his origin story. Just as you’re comfortable in that groove, it moves onto this epic tale about slavery and armies of mercenaries. In a way, it teases you. You see that we have the technology to render realistic human-animal interactions, to show the Lord of the Apes swing through the air effortlessly and to display it all in glorious 3D.
Unfortunately, there’s hardly any time to breathe it all in before it moves on to something else. The picture feels bloated.
As the movie plays out, you’ll be able to look past the flaws and latch onto what it does well, making you that much hungrier for more adventures of this classic hero. The action is well handled. I never thought I’d see a live-action Tarzan battling gorillas and surfing through trees in a credible way. I’ve now been proven wrong. It all feels credible and a large amount of this is due to the talented cast. I thought that Alexander Skarsgård did particularly well as a man that dances the line between savagery and civilization but is still able to control himself and unleash his jungle skills at the right time to get a one-up on his opponents, whatever shape they might take.

I wondered how this picture was going to handle material that came from the early 20th century and was set even earlier, in an age where white men were considered the saviours of Africa, where blacks were seen as an inferior race of barbarians and jungles were a dangerous place to be mowed downs so monarchs could gather up their riches. This film is a reversal of the sentiment present during the colonization of Africa but at the end of the day Tarzan – a white man – is still the hero. This is a “white savior story”. Until they make the easy “fix” and either make either Tarzan black or of mixed race, that’s what there’s stories are. There’s no doubt in the minds of the filmmakers or the audience that the Europeans coming to Africa are the real savages. There’s time spent addressing the mistreatment of blacks at the hands of white oppressors, African tribesmen and women are shown as courageous, intelligent and noble. Even Chief Mbonga is given a character arc (not a deep one, but he does change as the plot progresses). I also appreciated the fact that real-life historical figures are inserted into the film. Chief among them is George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson who provides some comic relief in his own way), who provides plenty of heroics of his own.

I felt that the film was mostly hitting its marks, until the ending. I won’t give it away but let’s just say that it’s so big, so action-packed and so intense that it would’ve fit better in a superhero film than in a Tarzan movie. I know it sounds like an odd complaint, but I would’ve preferred something smaller, a chase through the jungle as Tarzan rips through the trees to stop fearsome Mbonga from enacting his revenge or preventing the gorillas that raised him from being captured by big game hunters. There’s no doubt that Tarzan is a superhero in the sense that he’s strong, fast, capable of swinging through trees like no one else and can speak to animals, but they take it too far by the time the film wraps up. It makes you think back to the flaws you overlooked, like a side plot involving Tarzan and Jane struggling to have children, and say “yeah, that was just kind of bad”.

In terms of looks, and on the big screen,  “The Legend of Tarzan” works enough that I can give it a mild recommendation. The 3D is well utilized (it make me realize that I didn’t actually gain much from wearing those glasses in Independence Day: Resurgence) and when it works, you’ll be very entertained. I’m sure someday we’ll get a definitive live-action version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ work. This isn’t it, but until that film comes around,  “The Legend of Tarzan” will do. (3D Theatrical version on the big screen, July 12, 2016)