3 Short Paragraphs: The Legend of Tarzan

2016, David Yates (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) -- download

I knew little of this movie but that Margot Robbie was a breathless, sweaty Jane, and Alexander Skarsgård was a shirtless, ripped Tarzan. So, something for everyone. What I didn't know was that the movie was basically a sequel to all the modern Tarzan movies that never existed. Its like Yates went to the table with this movie as a reboot slash sequel slash homage to a popular franchise that never existed. What have we had from the Rice Borough stories in the past 30 years? A handful of incredibly bad movies with beefcakes (Caspar Van Diem, Christopher Lambert and Miles O'Keeffe) that you would not heard of, and that Disney cartoon. The last one was the best.

The movie begins with Lord Greystoke in England, after the Tarzan years, living his Lord-ship with his American (???) wife Jane. They are being encouraged to head back to Africa, the Congo, either as an envoy for Belgium (which has just taken control of the Congo) or for America, which has suspicions that Belgium is making slaves of the Congolese people to help pay of debts. Its a convoluted story worthy of a Bond script. What is happening behind the scenes is that Belgium can collect a massive amount of diamonds from a tribal leader, if they bring Tarzan back to Africa so he can extract revenge.

The movie is actually rather successful in its use of flashbacks, to remind or introduce us to what Tarzan was. It is not successful in dispensing with the White Saviour trope, though it tries. We live in an age where I am not sure we can take a Tarzan Lord of the Apes seriously. Only a white man can come along and make friends with the animals AND the black locals, and save them from other white men? I get that stories from past ages are rife with the social constructs that existed at the time, but I am challenged of what their places are in today's story telling. But putting that challenge, this movie looks so good, a truly epic looking view into an Africa long gone.