This hinders the CGI-filled-world building within the sloggy two hour runtime. In fact, the visual effects are murky and look laughably unfinished on more than one occasion. Instead of shooting in the Democratic Republic of Congo - on location with the beautiful vistas in the country - and contributing to the economy of the country, almost everything is so obviously shot on a soundstage with green screen that the film ends up distractingly artificial. The root of the failure of “Tarzan” starts with its fundamental production choices. Sure, it works for some films, but that’s only if the action is rousing or the emotion seems heartfelt and earned. Or that’s what the producers seem to be banking on. The film panders as if we’re only here for summer blockbuster explosions and are thus incapable of spotting all of the logical fallacies “Tarzan” continually throws out. But why does this character just so happen to be in Britain with Tarzan? There’s literally no point other than to try to find a slightly less convoluted reason there is a popular American actor in a film that has nothing to do with America.Īlso, why Tarzan decides that he should bring his wife, Jane (Robbie), to a country that he knows can become war-torn at any moment flows well with the preposterousness of it all. At all.įor example, take the American character George Washington Williams (Jackson), who encourages Lord John Clayton III of Greystoke, aka Tarzan (Skarsgard) to go back to Africa to become a diplomat for the country to prove the grotesque, racist intentions of King Leopold and Captain Rom. But because this is a summer film, the audience is supposed to just sit back, eat their popcorn and not think about anything. And from this point on, the audience is repeatedly introduced to disparate elements that on their own would make no sense. The leader of the tribe then asks Rom to bring him Tarzan, who just so happens to be an old rival of the leader’s, in exchange for all of the diamonds Rom asks for. It is here that he’s met by an army of tribal warriors who wipe out the entire army except Captain Rom, even though they clearly could have (and probably should have). But it’s a whimper.Īs the Belgian king’s right hand man, Captain Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz, doing the best he can) walks through the jungle with his army to find precious diamonds in the hopes of sustaining the Belgian government’s overspending. The film then cuts to an illogical opening scene, one that attempts to set the story off with a bang. In short, his plan is to extract all the diamonds and resources from the Congo basin and enslave all Congolese people in the process. Black lives don’t really matter in “Tarzan,” unless that black life is being saved by Tarzan.īrief introductory titles clue the audience in on the actual history behind Belgium’s King Leopold. Instead of truly focusing on the enslavement and genocide practiced toward African people, the film, in typical white male-dominated Hollywood style, produces a nonsensical plot that only seems to care about the white people at the boringly unromantic center. Too bad the film never succeeds at portraying that message. In increasingly weary times of continued violence, hate and oppression toward Black people abroad and in the United States, the decision to make a big budget franchise film that looks at the systemic injustice that helped created the divides within geopolitics is an intriguing one. To start with the positive (yes, a singular positive), the film tries to implement a message of how African colonization in the 1800s played an integral role in destroying the people, the animals and the natural beauty of the continent. Jackson and Christoph Waltz, a talented director in David Yates (the last three excellent “Harry Potter” films along with the upcoming “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) and $180 million to buy anything the crew and cast needed to assure this film’s success, “Tarzan” fails on almost every level. Despite a noteworthy cast including Alexander Skarsgard, Margot Robbie, Samuel L. “The Legend of Tarzan” is one of the most misguided blockbuster fi lms released by a major studio this year and, quite frankly, in recent memory.
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