Movie Review: The Legend of Tarzan

The Legend of Tarzan sees Swedish clay-figure Alexander Skarsgård play "Africa's favourite son," which, in our socially conscious and politically ‘woke’ times, is like casting Iggy Azalea as hip-hop's ‘chosen one’.

Of course, that is Tarzan as author Edgar Rice Burroughs defined him: a blue-blooded and white-skinned (did we mention swole?) child of English aristocrats, raised by apes in deepest Africa. He’s tamed by the love of a good woman, Jane (Margot Robbie), and returned to high society to claim his title: Lord John Clayton III of Greystoke. Invented in the early 1900s, Tarzan is one of our enduring literary icons.

But you know what else came from the early 1900s? A bunch’a racist junk. Director David Yates and his screenwriters have tried to rescue Tarzan from the shackles of the period from whence he came with their 2016 blockbuster, establishing him as a friend of tribesmen, liberator of slaves and enemy of colonialists.

The effort is noble in that it’s the most human depiction of Tarzan’s African brethren to date. Still, it’s a movie that is already apologising for its existence from the first frame, seemingly aware that its “white saviour” motif is as problematic as it is hoary. (The opening scene comes with text explaining how colonial powers took advantage of the Congo for financial gain; the subtext being, “Yeah, sorry about that.”)

Here, John and Jane are summoned to the Congo by Belgium’s broke King Leopold; an invitation orchestrated by Leopold’s moustache-twirling emissary Léon Rom (Christoph Waltz, in Klaus Kinski’s ivory-white suit from Fitzcarraldo). He’s brokered a deal with the vengeful Chief Mbonga (Djimon Hounsou) to deliver Tarzan for execution, in exchange for precious jewels to clear Belgium’s debts. Mbonga, it seems, is not aware of Leopold’s enslavement of tribesmen across the continent.

A raid on John and Jane’s jungle home, however, results in the kidnapping of Jane instead, inspiring John to follow in hot pursuit, shirtless, having re-embraced the name Tarzan. (He leaves on his capri pants, in place of a loincloth, because that’s just good sense.)

Robbie is spunky, as per usual, though she spends much of the picture in chains (no matter how frequently Jane disputes being a damsel). Waltz, meanwhile, does precisely as he was hired to do, which is be threatening and articulate.

Weirdly, it’s Skarsgård who makes the smallest impression, despite him being a hugely charismatic, empathetic and often funny leading man (based on True Blood, What Maisie Knew and The Diary of a Teenage Girl). At least he’s not the first charming actor to be crushed under the weight of one of Burroughs’ leaden characters. (Pour one out for John Carter’s Taylor Kitsch.) He nonetheless leaves you wondering what magic the wickedly entertaining Hounsou might have brought to the role, in a heavily-rebooted version of the tale.

Skarsgård is likely just reacting to David Yates’ sleepy pacing, which, besides a few cartoonish, CGI-powered sequences of vine-swinging elation, focuses on a foot-slog through the jungle after a creeping riverboat. Donald Trump would call this kind of chase ‘low energy’.

You’d think Samuel L Jackson - as George Washington Williams, a grizzled American Civil War veteran Tarzan brings along for the ride - would offer some spark, but nope. Rather, you wish his war vet from Hateful Eight might emerge (hell, we'd even take his distasteful figure from Django Unchained) to shake the feature from its slumber.

Ultimately, the otherness and exotic minimisation of the African people in the DNA of Burroughs’ text can't be swept under the rug of this modern film's slave-freeing plot.

The biggest twist to the screenplay comes when the final credits reveal Craig Brewer - previously of the electric Hustle and Flow and Black Snake Moan – as the screenwriter. Where was that incendiary dude? The humour - what little there is, anyway - comes in the form of Tarzan razzing Washington (in one instance, by insisting that he was about to submissively kiss an advancing ape's testicles). Blake Snake Groan, more like.

2.5/5

The Legend of Tarzan is now in cinemas.