MovieChat Forums > The Legend of Tarzan (2016) Discussion > Skip this and watch The Jungle Book inst...

Skip this and watch The Jungle Book instead...

posted 8 years ago by laplante-co-672-297856
14 replies | jump to latest

By coincidence, two movies came out this year that featured characters raised by animals in the jungle. The Jungle Book got it right... This one, not so much.

What was wrong with this movie? Well...

• CGI (sexless!) gorillas, elephants, etc. (To be fair I have yet to see a movie with convincing CGI animals.)
• CGI landscapes and oceans, complete with mismatched lighting sources. (See The Finest Hour for another awful example of this...)
• CGI gnus and ostriches. Not once did Samual Jackson look like he was sharing the same space as them. (See Peter Jackson's King Kong for a similar failure...)
• Gorillas swinging through trees. They don't. Even grade school kids know this.
• Gorillas all looked the same so I couldn't tell the gorilla characters apart. Except for...
• Cliché angry/evil one/scarred-eyed animal (gorilla). See Koba (Planet of the Apes), Shere Khan (The Jungle Book), 2005 King Kong, Scar (The Lion King), etc
• Spiderman vine-swinging.
• Dubious physics. The train scene with the impossibly long vines that paralleled the train was downright funny but I don't think it was intentional. Vines behave as ARCS so they should have landed on the train immediately, or plowed into the ground beside it.
• Samual Jackson talking in modern day tones and language. That 'licking his nuts' buddy joke they shared was completely out of time. Kept waiting for him to reference 'these m*f*k*g ostriches/gorillas/whatever'.
• Tarzan. Moody, totally lacking in charisma. Nice eight-pack though.
• Clubbing viewers over the head with the 'evil/exploitive white man' trope... the tusk scene, the dead flamingos scene, the massacres of natives and gorillas...
• Making Christophe Waltz uninteresting -- well except for the rosary/garrote bit which seemed more like something from a James Bond movie
• Goofy plot points such as the 'crododile mating call'... with a garrote around his neck(!)

Probably more to list but I've got my day ahead of me.

[–] johnnyelizabethton 8 years ago

You immediately lost any credibility that you might possibly have had when you referred to "gorillas."

There are no gorillas in this movie. Go back and watch it again carefully and don't miss the explanation.

[–] laplante-co-672-297856 8 years ago

Yeah, I recall that... which might have been okay with me except that the director/producer has clearly made them gorillas in everything but name. Gorillas don't climb trees or swing because of their size, not so much their geometry. Orangutans are the same. (Application of the cubic scaling law...)

Something more closely resembling a baboon, a gibbon, or similar would have been more believable.

However, I admit that I didn't read the original book so I don't know how Burroughs described them.

Therefore, I will concede this point in the spirit of "allowances must be made for the movie" but that doesn't negate or diminish all my other criticisms.

See The Jungle Book instead.

[–] SceneIt22 8 years ago

Those weren't gorillas. It was explained in the movie.

[–] A_Man_of_Iron 8 years ago

Clubbing viewers over the head with the 'evil/exploitive white man' trope... the tusk scene, the dead flamingos scene, the massacres of natives and gorillas...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State

[–] laplante-co-672-297856 8 years ago

Awful stuff, yup.

My comment about *the movie* was more about the fact that not one single white guy -- except for Tarzan and Jane -- was portrayed as anything more than evil and scheming, or self-serving.

And, every animal and native in the movie, is portrayed as good and benevolent. Any violence they perpetrate is justified based on a higher moral purpose, or because of misunderstandings.

Tarzan, btw, fulfills the role of the white saviour, another Hollywood trope.

I get it -- it's just a movie for entertainment purposes -- but some nuances might have made it great rather than just another adequate but forgettable Tarzan movie.

Anyway, thx for the link, it was an eye-opener...

[–] LeMarchand 8 years ago

Not seen TJB, but aren't all the animals CGI as well?

Also you're complaining about realism/physics yet recommending a film that has singing animals?

No tears please, it's a waste of good suffering.

[–] laplante-co-672-297856 8 years ago

Not seen TJB, but aren't all the animals CGI as well?

Yes, but the quality of CGI is much better. Two scenes especially jumped out at me:

i. King Louie -- re-imagined as a gigantic Australopithecus and voiced by a menacing Christopher Walken -- has some amazingly subtle facial expressions;

ii. A chill Balou (Bill Murray) wakes up. He's on his stomach, his head resting on the ground. He doesn't move his head, but his eyes track an industrious little animal walking past him to his annoyance.

That said, overall I don't think CGI has completely nailed down the subtleties of eyes and texture yet.

Also you're complaining about realism/physics yet recommending a film that has singing animals?

Both movies are similar in that they came out in the same year and feature a boy that was raised by animals in a jungle environment. Both are based on works of fiction.

I think that JB did a much better job of meeting its expectations so it's on that basis that I recommend it over Tarzan. I didn't even want to watch JB but enjoyed in spite of myself. On the other hand, I did want to see Tarzan but, in the end, found it a slog to get through.

[–] IndianaDave 8 years ago

Well said!!

[–] signlady 8 years ago

The 1994 Jungle Book made the new one completely unnecessary & ridiculous - to me the new jungle book was horrible.
The only redeeming factor in renting that flop was garnering a Redbox credit ...

This Tarzan flick was 'ok'.
Nothin' to write home about but it was sure better than the new jungle book.

I was a little disappointed because it seemed like Christoph is losing that wonderful accent ...

It looked like Jackson had a guenuine good time making this movie ...

[–] cableaddict 8 years ago

those CGi-mates sure LOOKED like gorillas.

[–] cableaddict 8 years ago

those CGi-mates sure LOOKED like gorillas.

[–] BigBadDolemite 8 years ago

I agree and don't quite get the hate for Tarzan or the love for the Jungle Book. Both movies were ok, and benefited aesthetically from big budgets. Neither storyline was special or particularly interesting but they told a fairly workable story.

[–] LeMarchand 8 years ago

So, I have now seen TJB. Have to say, given the love showered on it, I was disappointed. CGI was generally good, but I can't say that I thought it was consistently better than TLoT. Plot-wise, it did little for me (I even dropped off for a while around the middle).

No tears please, it's a waste of good suffering.

[–] Johanesse (477) 8 years ago

I thought both movies were equally good. I expected to dislike "The Jungle Book", but it blew me away. But I as good as it is, it's still had it's flaws (the song numbers were extremely jarring).