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While there, I joined a small group of journalists to chat with producer David Barron, who previously worked with Yates on the Harry Potter films. Leavesden studios, where they filled African landscapes and let the King of the Jungle loose once again. Set after the events of his wild upbringing, The Legend of Tarzan picks up with the Alexander Skarsgard's title hero when he has built a life in England with his beloved Jane ( Margot Robbie) as Lord John Clayton III of Greystoke, and finds him pulled back to his roots thanks to the machinations of the ruthless, greedy Captain Leon Rom ( Christoph Waltz).īack in the fall of 2014, when The Legend of Tarzan was in the thick of production, I had the opportunity to visit the sets and soundstages at Warner Bros. have scrapped your standard Tarzan's well-wrought origin story in favor of an original story and a new twist on the iconic character.
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One such lull in Tarzan's enduring narrative is about to come to an end with David Yates' The Legend of Tarzan, But don't expect your momma's Ape Man because Yates and co. Ever since Edgar Rice Burroughs published his first Tarzan story back in 1912, the King of the Jungle has been swinging through pop culture in books, films and television with occasional, short-lived breaks between the iterations. This Tarzan isn’t quite the jungle VIP – but it’s got a little swing.Everybody knows Tarzan. But at least the animals are memorable – best of all is a pack of scene-stopping silverback gorillas digitally created for the movie. Skarsgård himself is fairly bland as Greystoke, delivering a po-faced Byronic spin on the character, all velvet coats and dreamy romantic stares at his belle while sitting barefooted in the boughs of trees. The most lively performances come from Christoph Waltz, preening and over-cooked as a colonial villain (an envoy of the Belgian King Leopold) and Samuel L Jackson as George Washington Williams, a real-life critic of Belgian imperialism in the Congo, who is awkwardly shoe-horned into this movie’s comic-book plot. It gives Tarzan’s other half Jane (Margot Robbie) the voice of a twentieth-century feminist – not exactly credible but very welcome – and pays some attention to the exploitation of indigenous peoples and the pilfering of natural resources. Still, it might leave you scratching your head with a few questions of your own, like: where does Greystoke buy his shaving razors in the wilds? And, more importantly, which jungle gym does he visit to work on those freakishly sculpted and very twenty-first-century abs? (Not that fans of Skarsgård will worry too much about that.)ĭirected by ‘Harry Potter’ stalwart David Yates, this ‘Tarzan’ tries hard to be more than a creaky adventure story. The film plays as an old-school historical action-adventure, with lots of animal attacks and jungle chases and plenty of distracting flashbacks to answer questions about Tarzan’s complicated backstory. It’s the 1880s and Greystoke is back in the African Congo as a trade emissary for the British government and facing down colonial skullduggery. It imagines Viscount Greystoke (Alexander Skarsgård), best known as chest-beater Tarzan, all grown-up and civilised after a childhood in the jungle raised by apes. This high-energy, big-budget new spin on the old Tarzan story is fun to watch if you take it as throwaway kitsch.