Of course Tarzan (aka Tarzan the Untamed ) hasn’t been released yet, so how can we grade it, you ask. Well, I answer, there have many, many choices made, and many of those choices are known, and so yes, on a slow Saturday night with a little quiet time on my hands, I feel like it’s absolutely possible to issue a report card on Tarzan — with the caveat that like in school, when you’d get those “six week grades” that were not the real final grades, this is just a preliminary progress report.
One note: I am going to specifically exclude the marketing a) because there hasn’t really been any, and b) I would like to address that separately, and substantively.
For now I want to think about what we can say about how the producers have done, based on all that we know, which may not seem like much but is enough to get a good idea about some things.
The Cast — Ranking Both “Buzz” and “Chops”
The cast has to do two things — generate buzz, and delivery performances. This cast has one excellent source of buzz — and that is Margot Robbie as Jane. As far as buzz goes, she has landed at the top of the heap. I mean — really at the top, she is NUMBER 1 on the IMDB Starmeter which is astonishing when you consider she doesn’t have a movie out now. She moved up from 6 to 1 in the last week … why? Because of the buzz coming out of Comic-con San Diego over Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn, her character, and because she’s such an incredible Marilyn Monroe/Grace Kelly presence, which came across amazingly at Comic-con. That’s the buzz piece of it. What about chops? Anyone who saw Wolf of Wall Street knows she’s got chops.
Here’s a screen shot from IMDB Pro showing her Starmeter ranking of #1. Gotta love that!
The supporting cast is also excellent and deliver both acting chops and buzz, starting with Christoph Waltz who is a genius, two time Oscar winner, and one of those rare supporting actors who is actually so good that he motivates people to go see the movie. Samuel Jackson, Djimon Hounsou, and John Hurt are all “names”. Alexander Skarsgard as Tarzan is the one question mark. I would not have chosen him, but then I wouldn’t have chosen a blonde Daniel Craig as James Bond and look how that has turned out. And Yates wanted Skarsgard from the beginning — he was his first choice, which means he has something very specific in mind and believes Skarsgard is right for it. So top to bottom, the Tarzan cast is intriguing and buzzworthy and in the minds of those who follow films closely before they come out — this looks like a happening package. Grade A for Buzz and A for Chops.
Director
Prior to the release of Tarzan, David Yates seems to me to be an excellent choice as director. He has the chops as his Harry Potter films indicate, and the cast that he put together for this movie is a dream cast, given the kind of movie it is (i.e. Action Adventure which does not lend itself to getting people like Margot Robie and Christoph Walz). Also he took the project and accepted the “adult supervision” that hammered the budget down to $100M in order to get a greenlight. So I give Yates A for Buzz; A for Chops; and A+ for Fiscal Responsibility.
Producer
It’s billed as a Jerry Weintraub Production and there is no doubt that although there were half a dozen producers, he is “the” producer. And he is about as experienced as they come in Hollywood — his credits go all the way back to Nashville in 1975 and include the Oh God!, the Karate Kid franchise, and the Oceans 11 franchise. My only concern about Weintraub would be that he is in his late 70’s (born 1937) and might be over the hill, or at least perceived that way …. but judging from the casting and director choices, and other evidence of “adult supervision” of the production (something that was lacking in John Carter), I feel that Weintraub is a big positive at least in terms of marshalling a great package and keeping it buttoned down in terms of budget and other reality factors. Unfortunately, his contribution has ended due to his tragic death.
As for the other producers — nothing there to get excited about, or to feel confident about when it comes time to keep WB Marketing on its toes during the promotion. But this is just about production …
Grade B+ (bordering on A-).
Script
With Tarzan, we don’t know much, but here’s what we do know, via the official synopsis which is all that has been released as of this writing:
It has been years since the man once known as Tarzan (Skarsgård) left the jungles of Africa behind for a gentrified life as John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke, with his beloved wife, Jane (Robbie) at his side. Now, he has been invited back to the Congo to serve as a trade emissary of Parliament, unaware that he is a pawn in a deadly convergence of greed and revenge, masterminded by the Belgian, Captain Leon Rom (Waltz). But those behind the murderous plot have no idea what they are about to unleash.
We also know that the setting is “Victorian” England and we know, intriguingly, that some fascinating real historical characters (Leon Rom, who was the inspiration for Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, and Christopher. Grade A
The Studio
Warner Brothers is undoubtedly a better home than Disney for Edgar Rice Burroughs adventures. Whereas with Disney there was always pressure to extract the hormones from it and render the material suitable for 10 year olds, Warner Brothers has no such problem and thus the natural order of things can assert itself, instead of the studio asserting a somewheat neutered version.