Back to our regularly scheduled programming of general review, then spoiler included discussion. Although, do you really need me to avoid spoilers here? Couldn't you probably just guess what happens? Okay, fine. I'll do the song and dance here. It is what I promised to do after all.
Cody: I can sense Roy's fear. He knows I have the first word here, and it is eating him alive inside. Trust me, I have a knack for these things. I was raised by animals. Okay, not really, but I had to start with poking fun at the concept of Tarzan. I am a person who genuinely enjoys superhero movies, so I swear that will be the only time I question the underlying premise of the movie. I may be a lot of things, but a hypocrite is only sometimes one of them. Overall, I thought this was a perfectly enjoyable summer flick. Nothing special, but not completely terrible either. I've always liked Skarsgard, and he was well cast as Tarzan. Or sorry, was it John Clayton? Clayton seemed to take the name as an insult, but he sure embraced his Tarzan side. Either way, I give Skarsgard a solid B- for his performance. In fact, you know what, let's make this easy. Everybody except Samuel L gets a B- for their roles. Sam earned himself an B+, even if that was because of the decent comedic relief writing they threw his way. So which of us was right and which was wrong? Well, my expectations were met pretty closely, but I'll concede it was slightly better than I expected. Roy?
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| Sam is just Sam. Always. Never not Sam. Not on a plane, not as a slave, not with one eye, not as a Jedi |
Cody: While Margot was good, I expect quite a bit more from her as Harley Quinn. Legitimately excited to see her steal that movie. Plus it could be the on screen redemption for Robbie and Will Smith after a meh performance together in Focus. But enough about what may or may not be future COARD material. You're absolutely right about Samuel L. There may be some that do it just as well, but nobody has been themselves so successfully for so long. I'm with you on that feeling too. You know what you're going to get from Sam, and what you're going to get is fun. This wasn't a classic Samuel L. movie by any stretch, but he did stick out among mostly mediocrity. The soundtrack fit the movie fine, and was even noticeably good in spots. The directing by Yates felt pretty similar to Harry Potter, but the subject matter wasn't nearly as fun. The cinematography was choppy and somewhat hectic. Christoph Waltz was the villain, which means the villain was good, but Leon Rom could have been more. In the midst of it all, George Washington Williams, the just and moral partner of Tarzan. There to counterbalance the brutish nature of the hero by just being Samuel L. Jackson. Had he not been here, I may not have been able to keep it together until the spoiler section. Sam keeps me strong. I won't attack the plot util later.
Roy: I thought the soundtrack was excellent. I love the African vibe the movie opened up with and I found the music during the many action sequences fit perfectly. Hozier closing the movie with the superb Better Love was so good that I wanted to sit and watch the credits role just to finish listening to the song. I am obviously way more impressed with this movie than you are. So allow me to throw my cards down on the table. I thought this movie had a lot of heart in it. I cared about the characters. Especially when Tarzan squared off with one of his enemies in the movie. What I expected to be an easy situation to root for Tarzan and against a clearly evil chief turned out to be far more complicated. And that was just one instance where this movie showed heart. There were many things to like about it. I thought Christoph Waltz stayed right where his character needed to be. He was an unfeeling man who was hyper focused on his goals and nothing was going to stand in his way, especially innocent life. He was great as a puppet master who was trying to satisfy the men he was working for while accomplishing his own goals at the same time.
Cody: If you're bored and you want to see a high production value summer flick that won't leave you completely disappointed, then you can do a lot worse than Legend of Tarzan (e.g. Huntsman: Winters War). This has been A Review in 30 Words or Less, with Cody Potter. Thanks for stopping by. If you'd like to see my thoughts on Deus Ex Animal, you can find them in the spoiler section below.
Welcome to the spoiler section. Here is a mini-spoiler about what follows. Cody is going to work really hard to go full Dory on this movie, Roy is going to point out that he is full of crap. All while not caring what we ruin about this movie. You've been warned.
Roy: You know what I really liked about this movie? How it wasn't what I expected for a first Tarzan reboot. Typically one would expect that you see him as a baby and you will get a story how he grows in the jungle, finds Jane, falls in love, blah blah blah. The Legend of Tarzan begins with John Clayton as a noble in London living his life with Jane. All of the fun little bits you get from the typical first Tarzan movie were still given to us but told via flashbacks. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know the story of Tarzan. So they took the best parts and dropped them into a movie with an interesting premise that I did not see coming. I thought it was a really good move. It made the movie interesting. As opposed to what it could have been. A remake of a Disney cartoon minus the dose of Phil Collins.
Cody: Subtracting Phil Collins is not a promising move for any movie, so that would have been a big hill to climb. I'll give it to you here. The premise of John Clayton already being past Tarzan was an intriguing move. I followed the plot as it was developing in front of me. I got sucked in. I was, gasp, enjoying myself. But then it happened. The first moment that pulled me back to reality was when Tarzan and crew needed to board a moving train. They swung on ropes that seemed to stretch for hundreds of yards and landed on a train moving full speed ahead. I had a sense that this movie was going to leave some serious plot holes in its wake. This was the first, but it definitely wasn't the last. It's funny that you mention Dory, because I think the writers tried about as hard for realism here as others did in a movie about an animated fish. These moments kept pulling me away from a movie I was actually enjoying, and that's what ultimately left me lukewarm.
Roy: Since you threw me a bone I shall do the same. There wasn't much that bothered me about this movie. But. I couldn't even with ant stitches. Like, if I was in a giant jungle tree, and "even" was a speeding train below me there was zero chance of me making that train. After Tarzan was bitten in a fight with a gorilla, he had to close the wound. Being Tarzan, and in the jungle, one would assume he could concoct some jungle paste to lather on his wound and then it would be all better, right? Nooooope. He and our boy Sammy sat down and grabbed ants and waited for them to bite Tarzan around his wound. After this happened he would remove the bodies from the head and bam, instant ant stitches. They just tried way too hard, and they didn't need to, because this movie was entirely enjoyable. But unlike my friend, this is where my complaints end.
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| Lieutenant Colonel Akut and the Gorilla Infantry save the day |
Minas Tirith or Knights of the Vale at Winterfell, they swung the battle in Tarzan's favor. Unlike the aforementioned armies, they, ya know, can't take orders. They're animals. Even if they followed Tarzan all that way on their own volition, how would they know to sit back and wait to see if they were needed when things got really dire? I'll tell you how. Lazy writers. Deus. Ex. Animal.
Roy: First of all, deus ex animal is a bit of a leap. You said yourself in your opening remarks that this is basically a super hero movie. A point that I agree with. If you are going to watch a super hero movie you enter into a binding social contract to suspend some form of reality in order to enjoy what you are seeing. This movie was no exception. If you are going to accept the premise that a baby was raised by gorillas in the heart of the Congo and developed special abilities through this lifestyle; then by extension you have to accept that within the framework of this story, animals will have higher cognitive functions than they actually have in real life. Complaining about the animals helping Tarzan in this movie is like whining that Iron Man cannot be real because the technology he uses does not exist. Furthermore, one of us really liked Disney's real life adaptation of The Jungle Book, and the other did not. How can one person be completely fine with wolves raising a child in the jungle and animals singing to each other, but swinging on a Spider-Man like vine and using gorilla family members in a fight be too much?? Because I would like to point out, at least the animals in Tarzan didn't physically talk to each other... in English.
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| A black panther, a grizzly bear, and an Indian child just chilling in a tree as besties, about to break into song |
Cody: I had a feeling you were going to throw The Jungle Book in my face. If you didn't enjoy Christopher Walken as a singing giant Orangutan, then there's no hope for you as a human being. It was pure brilliance. Furthermore, that movie is meant for the imaginations of children. This was clearly targeted at an older audience, thus is held to a higher standard. When panthers, wolves, and bears all join forces to raise a child through song, that's an adorable children's story. However, when lions, gorillas, and men join forces to destroy an entire town and army, that's a bit ridiculous. Superheroes are impossible, that's for sure, but they stick to the general set of 'rules' laid out in the creation of that particular super hero. Spider-Man doesn't suddenly start communicating with spiders without any previous indication of that power existing. Tarzan's animal friends shouldn't be able to suddenly start following organized plans when it was previously stated he can't actually communicate with them. Consistency. That's all I'm asking for here. The writers just kept taking the easier and easier way out as the movie went on, culminating in the aforementioned animal organized water buffalo stampede. It went over the top, and I went into eye roll mode.
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| "You're 'opeless" |
Roy: You're taking the whole, "it was explained he can't communicate with the animals" thing way too literally. Could he carry on a conversation about how their day is going? No. But could he make them understand that he wanted to attack a herd of water buffalo? Yeah, I think that is easily within Tarzan's skill set. Now, if he had told the water buffalo to stampede into the town you would have a point. And the gorillas would fight for him because they considered him family. This is your "ant head stitches" moment. You're just trying too hard. However, we have been friends a very long time. And I'm not dumb enough to think that you will ever acquiesce to my superior logic. So in the words of yet another great Sam....
Cody: You're right that I'm not going to budge, but wrong that this is my ant head stitches moment. It's the cumulative effect of several ant head stitch moments that ultimately entrenched me in this position. When you're at the theater, you want to be lost in the movie. It's these plot fixer deus ex animal moments that continued to push me back out. Like I said before, you can do a lot worse than Tarzan. It wasn't bad by any stretch. It just wasn't great either. Middle of the road. Forgettable.
Roy: You know what?! You're forgettable.
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