Unless you lived in an actual jungle growing up, you know who Tarzan is. If you”re of my generation or younger, you know him as the slightly malformed Disney character who lived his life to the soundtrack of Phil Collins. If you”re of an older generation, you had your own live-action versions of Tarzan peppering your childhood. Since 1918(!) not a decade has passed without the King of the Jungle flying again. As the unspoken law of the land*, it is time. Disney”s last Tarzan sequel came out in 2005. Looking at it this way, it makes sense The Legend of Tarzan trailer exists.
*Let”s just assume Tarzan films are some weird Cabin in the Woods thing where if we don”t produce a film every decade, eldritch beasts consume our planet.
Created in 1912, Tarzan should feel like cheesy camp. And it does. The film has a cartoonish English colonialist villain. It has Alexander Skarsgard”s Tarzan scent-marking a lion and fist-fighting a silverback gorilla. It has Margot Robbie”s Jane kidnapped to further the plot. It has uncomfortably stereotypical “natives” fighting against Tarzan and his gorilla friends. It even has a wildebeest stampede straight out of The Lion King.
Yet somehow…I like this? I like the biologically unsound gorillas swinging through the canopy. I like that Tarzan made “enemies” in the jungle. I like Jane head-butting Captain Rom (Christopher Waltz). I love that a hippo tries to eat Jane because THANK YOU hippos are terrifying and dangerous!
Okay fine, The Legend of Tarzan. You”re campy as all get out. But you embrace it. I guess I”m embracing it too.
The Legend of Tarzan swings into theaters July 1, 2016.