Every so often they see fit to give him a gun to shoot, but for the most part, he's as much an observer of the glory of the king of the apes as the rest of us. Indeed, through most of the film, it is Jackson's thankless job to do all the stunned reacting to Tarzan's bevy of impressive powers. Once in the jungle, Tarzan is nothing short of a shirtless superhero, laying waste to entire convoys of soldiers with nary a scratch, and whipping through the high jungle canopy like Spider-Man swinging through Manhattan, all the while leaving Williams, mouth set permanently to full-agape, in the dust. Along the way, he is helped and befriended by Williams, who proves a deft shot, even if he can't quite keep up with Tarzan's relentless, vine-aided pace.īy this time, the film, directed by longtime Harry Potter veteran David Yates, truly loses its sense of grounding. When Tarzan and Jane return to the extremely hospitable tribe with whom they used to live, Rom baits the jungle lord and makes off with Jane, setting off an extended chase through the jungle Tarzan once lived and breathed in. Naturally, Jane accompanies them, and before too long they become ensnared in the not-so-elegant trap put together by Leopold's appointed henchman Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz), a man so evil he spends the entire film draped in fine, white-linen suits. Jackson), convinces him that Leopold might be enslaving the natives to carry out his plundering and they might need his help. Tarzan hesitatingly takes the opportunity, but only after an American operative, George Washington Williams (Samuel L. This all changes when he is given a royal invitation by King Leopold of Belgium - busy trying to reap and bleed all he can out of the Congo before his kingdom goes bankrupt - to return to his native land.

The Legend of Tarzan finds the reformed jungle lord, John Clayton III (Alexander Skarsgard), already out of the bush and living in royal comfort with wife Jane (Margot Robbie) back at his family estate, satisfied, it would seem, with a life of privilege and dull execution. Back in 1918, it also was more or less in keeping with the prevailing politics of the time, but now, nearly a century later, there is simply no excuse: It's a celebration of the worst kind of Anglo exceptionalism.

On the one hand, you can understand why filmmakers have always stuck to this part of the story: The tricky, overtly racist colonial politics of the character - a white man is named king of the jungle in Africa and comes to be feared, adored and respected by the natives of the Congo - are an inherent part of the mythos, as much as Superman's escape as a baby from a dying Krypton. for sequences of action and violence, some sensuality and brief rude dialogue 79 Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Margot Robbie, Samuel L.

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