Tarzan (1999 film)
Tarzan is a 1999 American animated coming-of-age[3] adventure comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the 1912 story Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, being the first animated major motion picture version of the story. The film was directed by Kevin Lima and Chris Buck (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by Bonnie Arnold, from a screenplay by Tab Murphy and the writing team of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White. It stars the voices of Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, Glenn Close, Rosie O'Donnell, Brian Blessed, Lance Henriksen, Wayne Knight, and Nigel Hawthorne.
This article is about the film. For the soundtrack, see Tarzan (1999 soundtrack). For the video game, see Tarzan (video game). For the franchise, see Tarzan (franchise).Tarzan
- Stephen Anderson
- Mark D. Kennedy
- Carole Holliday
- Gaëtan Brizzi
- Paul Brizzi
- Don Dougherty
- Ed Gombert
- Randy Haycock
- Don Hall
- Kevin L. Harkey
- Glen Keane
- Burny Mattinson
- Frank Nissen
- John Norton
- Jeff Snow
- Michael Surrey
- Christopher J. Ure
- Mark Walton
- Stevie Wermers
- Kelly Wightman
- John Ramirez
Gregory Perler
- June 12, 1999 (El Capitan Theatre)
- June 16, 1999 (United States)[1]
88 minutes[2]
United States
English
$130 million[1]
$448.2 million[1]
Pre-production of Tarzan began in 1995, with Lima selected as director[4] and Buck joining him the same year. Following Murphy's first draft, Tzudiker, White, and Dave Reynolds (who was uncredited in the final cut), were brought in to reconstruct the third act and add additional material to the screenplay. English recording artist Phil Collins was recruited to compose and record songs integrated with a score by Mark Mancina. Meanwhile, the production team embarked on a research trip to Uganda and Kenya to study the gorillas. The animation of the film combines 2D hand-drawn animation with the extensive use of computer-generated imagery, and it was done in California, Orlando, and Paris, with the pioneering computer animation software system Deep Canvas being predominantly used to create three-dimensional backgrounds.
Tarzan premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on June 12, 1999, and was released in the United States on June 16. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised its voice performances, music, animation, and action sequences. Against a production budget of $130 million (then the most expensive traditionally animated film ever made until Treasure Planet in 2002), the film grossed $448.2 million worldwide, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 1999, the second highest-grossing animated film of 1999 behind Toy Story 2, and the first Disney animated feature to open at first place at the North American box office since Pocahontas (1995). It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song ("You'll Be in My Heart" by Phil Collins). The film has led to many derived works, such as a Broadway adaptation, a television series, and two direct-to-video followups, Tarzan & Jane (2002) and Tarzan II (2005).
Plot[edit]
In the 1880s, a British couple and their infant son are shipwrecked in Equatorial Africa. The adults build a treehouse but are killed by a leopard named Sabor. Kala, a local gorilla who lost her son to Sabor, adopts the human infant and names him Tarzan; although Kerchak, her mate and the gorilla leader, objects.
After growing into a child, Tarzan begins to befriend other animals, including Kala's niece Terk and the paranoid elephant, Tantor. Tarzan finds himself treated differently because of his different physique, so he makes valiant efforts to improve himself. Several years later, an adult Tarzan rescues the gorillas by spearing Sabor, gaining Kerchak's reluctant approval.
Meanwhile, a team of English human explorers, consisting of Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, his daughter Jane, and their hunter escort Clayton, arrive on the island to study the gorillas. Jane accidentally becomes separated from the group and is chased by a baboon troop, until a curious Tarzan rescues her. After comparing her to himself, he realizes their similarities. Jane leads Tarzan back to their camp, where Porter and Clayton both take interest in him; the former in terms of scientific progress, while the latter hopes to have Tarzan lead the group to the gorillas. Despite Kerchak's warnings to avoid the strangers, Tarzan repeatedly returns to the camp. Porter, Clayton, and Jane teach him how to speak English properly, and tell him what the human world is like. Tarzan and Jane begin a romantic relationship; however, she has difficulty convincing Tarzan to lead the humans to the gorillas, as Tarzan fears Kerchak's fury.
With the explorers' ship returning to retrieve them, Jane asks Tarzan to return with them to England, but Tarzan, in turn, asks Jane to stay with him when Jane says it is unlikely that they will ever return. Clayton convinces Tarzan to lead the humans to the gorillas in exchange for Jane staying with him forever. Tarzan persuades Terk and Tantor to lure Kerchak away, and leads the trio to the nesting grounds. Porter and Jane are excited to mingle with the gorillas, but Kerchak returns to attack the humans. Tarzan restrains Kerchak while the humans escape, disappointing Kerchak. Taking Tarzan to the treehouse where she found him, Kala reveals his true past, and says she wants him to be happy whatever he decides.
In the morning, Tarzan boards the ship, accompanied by Jane and Porter, but the three are ambushed by Clayton and his traitorous band of stowaway thugs. Now aware of the location of the nesting grounds, Clayton plans to capture and sell the gorillas for a fortune, and imprisons Tarzan, Jane, and Porter to prevent them from interfering. Tarzan escapes with the help of Terk and Tantor, and he rallies the other animals to help the gorillas fight the thugs. Clayton grazes Tarzan's arm, and mortally wounds Kerchak and pursues Tarzan across the treetops. The ensuing battle leads to Clayton inadvertently strangling himself to death with a vine. Finally accepting Tarzan as his son, a dying Kerchak names him the gorilla troop's leader.
The next day, Porter and Jane prepare to leave on the ship, while Tarzan stays behind with the gorillas. As the ship's rowboat leaves shore, Porter encourages his daughter to stay with the man she loves, and Jane jumps overboard, and a moment later, Porter opts to stay as well. The Porters reunite with Tarzan and his family, and embark on their new life together.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Disney's Tarzan was the first Tarzan film to be animated.[12] Thomas Schumacher, then-president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, expressed surprise there hadn't been any previous attempts to animate a Tarzan film, saying, "Here is a book that cries out to be animated. Yet we're the first filmmakers to have ever taken Tarzan from page to screen and presented the character as Burroughs intended." He noted that in animated form, Tarzan can connect to the animals on a deeper level than he can in live-action versions.[13]
In 1994, when A Goofy Movie (1995) was nearly finished, Kevin Lima was approached to direct Tarzan by then-studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg. He had desired to have the film animated through the Disney Television Animation division with a new animation studio established in Canada. Lima was reluctant to the idea because of the animation complexities being done by inexperienced animators. Following Katzenberg's resignation from the Walt Disney Company, Lima was again contacted about the project by Michael Eisner, who decided to have the film produced through the Feature Animation division, by which Lima signed on.[14]
Following this, Lima decided to read Tarzan of the Apes where he began to visualize the theme of two hands being held up against each other.[15] That image became an important symbol of the relationships between characters in the film, and a metaphor of Tarzan's search for identity. "I was looking for something that would underscore Tarzan's sense of being alike, yet different from his ape family", Lima said, "The image of touching hands was first conceived as an idea for how Tarzan realizes he and Jane are physically the same."[15]
Following his two-month study of the book, Lima approached his friend, Chris Buck, who had just wrapped up work as a supervising animator on Pocahontas (1995), to ask if he would be interested in serving as co-director. Buck was initially skeptical but accepted after hearing Lima's ideas for the film.[16] By April 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported that the film was in its preliminary stages with Lima and Buck directing after Disney had obtained the story rights from the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs.[17]
Writing[edit]
Tab Murphy, who had just finished work on The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), was attracted to the theme of man-versus-nature in Tarzan, and began developing a treatment in January 1995. For the third act, Murphy suggested that Tarzan should leave for England, as he did in the book, but the directors felt that it was incompatible with their central theme of what defines a family.[18] In order to keep Tarzan in the jungle, the third act needed to be restructured by redefining the role of the villain and inventing a way to endanger the gorillas. In this departure from Burroughs' novel, a villain named Clayton was created to serve as a guide for Professor Archimedes Q. Porter and his daughter, Jane.[19] In addition to this, Kerchak was re-characterized from a savage silverback into the protector of the gorilla tribe.[20]
In January 1997, husband-and-wife screenwriting duo Bob Tzudiker and Noni White were hired to help refocus and add humor to the script as a way to balance the emotional weight of the film.[21] Comedy writer Dave Reynolds was also brought on to write humorous dialogue for the film.[22] "I was initially hired on for six weeks of rewriting and punch-up", Reynolds said, "A year and a half later, I finished. Either they liked my work, or I was very bad at time management."[23] One challenge the writers faced was how Tarzan should learn about his past. "When Kala takes Tarzan back to the tree house, she is essentially telling him that he was adopted", Bonnie Arnold, the producer for Tarzan, said, "This is necessitated by him encountering humans and recognizing he is one of them." As a way to explore the feelings in that scene, Arnold brought in adoptive parents to talk with the story team.[24]
Animation[edit]
The animators were split into two teams, one in Paris and one in Burbank. The 6000-mile distance and difference in time zones posed challenges for collaboration, especially for scenes with Tarzan and Jane. Glen Keane was the supervising animator for Tarzan at the Paris studio, while Ken Duncan was the supervising animator for Jane at the studio in Burbank. To make coordinating scenes with multiple characters easier, the animators used a system called a "scene machine" that could send rough drawings between the two animation studios.[25] Meanwhile, following production on Mulan (1998), two hundred animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida provided character animation and special effects animation where the filmmakers had to discuss their work through daily video conferences among the three studios.[26]
Keane was inspired to make Tarzan "surf" through the trees because of his son's interest in extreme sports, and he began working on a test scene. The directors expressed concern that Tarzan would be made into a "surfer dude".[27] In October 1996, Keane revealed the test animation to them, which they liked it enough that it was used during the "Son of Man" sequence, with movements inspired by skateboarder Tony Hawk.[28] Although Keane initially thought that Tarzan would be easy to animate because he only wears a loincloth, he realized that he would need a fully working human musculature while still being able to move like an animal. To figure out Tarzan's movements, the Paris animation team studied different animals in order to transpose their movements onto him. They also consulted with a professor of anatomy. This resulted in Tarzan being the first Disney character to accurately display working muscles.[29]
To prepare for animating the gorillas, the animation team attended lectures on primates, made trips to zoos, and studied nature documentaries, with a group of animators also witnessing a gorilla dissection to learn about their musculature. In March 1996, the production team began a two-week safari in Kenya to take reference photographs and observe the animals. On the trip, they visited Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda to view mountain gorillas in the wild, and get inspiration for the setting.[30] In 2000, Chris Buck repeated the journey accompanied by journalists to promote the film's home video release.[31]
To create the sweeping 3D backgrounds, Tarzan's production team developed a 3D painting and rendering technique known as Deep Canvas (a term coined by artist/engineer Eric Daniels).[32] This technique allows artists to produce CGI backgrounds that look like a traditional painting, according to art director Daniel St. Pierre.[32] (The software keeps track of brushstrokes applied in 3D space.)[32] For this advancement, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the creators of Deep Canvas a Technical Achievement Award in 2003. After Tarzan, Deep Canvas was used for a number of sequences in Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), particularly large panoramic shots of the island and several action sequences. Expanded to support moving objects as part of the background, Deep Canvas was used to create about 75 percent of the environments in Disney's next major animated action film, Treasure Planet (2002).
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Pre-release box office tracking indicated that Tarzan was appealing to all four major demographics noticeably for the first time for a Disney animated film since The Lion King (1994).[58] The film was given a limited release on June 16, 1999,[1] and its wide release followed two days later in 3,005 screens. During the weekend of June 18–21, Tarzan grossed $34.1 million ranking first at the box office, beating out Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and The General's Daughter (1999).[59] At the time, it also ranked second behind The Lion King (1994), which had earned $40.9 million, as the highest-earning box office opening for a Disney animated film.[60] By August 1999, the domestic gross was projected to approach $170 million.[61] Ultimately, the film closed its box office run earning $448.2 million worldwide.[1]
Critical reaction[edit]
Rotten Tomatoes reported that 89% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 106 reviews, with an average score of 7.6/10. The critical consensus reads that "Disney's Tarzan takes the well-known story to a new level with spirited animation, a brisk pace, and some thrilling action set-pieces."[62] Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 from top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 79 based on 27 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[63] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[64]
Entertainment Weekly compared the film's advancement in visual effects to that of The Matrix, stating that it had "the neatest computer-generated background work since Keanu Reeves did the backstroke in slow motion". They elaborate by describing how the characters moved seamlessly through the backgrounds themselves, giving the film a unique three-dimensional feel that far surpassed the quality of previous live-action attempts.[65] Roger Ebert gave the film his highest rating of four stars, and he had similar comments about the film, describing it as representing "another attempt by Disney to push the envelope of animation", with scenes that "move through space with a freedom undreamed of in older animated films, and unattainable by any live-action process".[66] Awarding the film three stars, James Berardinelli wrote: "From a purely visual standpoint, this may be the most impressive of all of Disney's traditionally animated features. The backdrops are lush, the characters are well realized, and the action sequences are dizzying, with frequent changes of perspectives and camera angles. No conventional animated film has been this ambitious before."[67] Desson Howe, writing for The Washington Post, claimed the film "isn't up there with Aladdin, The Lion King and The Little Mermaid, but it's easily above the riffraff ranks of Hercules and Pocahontas".[68] Todd McCarthy of Variety proved to be less amused by the animation, claiming it was "richly detailed and colorfully conceived, but the computer animation and graphics are often intermingled and combined in ways that are more distracting in their differences than helpful in their vividness".[69]
Lisa Schwarzbaum, who graded the film an A−, applauded the film as "a thrilling saga about a natural man, untainted by the complications of 'civilized' life, who can anticipate changes in the air by sniffing the wind — swings because the Disney team, having sniffed the wind, went out on a limb and kept things simple".[70] Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle admired the film for tackling "meanings of family relationships and ideas about society, guardianship and compassion" and "cunning and greed and the ultimate evil", as well as remaining faithful to Burroughs's original novel.[71] Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times wrote that the "story unfolds with dangers as well as warm humor; a jungle jam session called 'Trashin' the Camp' is especially hard to resist. We may have seen it all before, but when it's done up like this, experiencing it all over again is a pleasure."[72] Janet Maslin, reviewing for The New York Times, similarly opined that "Tarzan initially looks and sounds like more of the same, to the point where Phil Collins is singing the words 'trust your heart' by the third line of his opening song. But it proves to be one of the more exotic blooms in the Disney hothouse, what with voluptuous flora, hordes of fauna, charming characters and excitingly kinetic animation that gracefully incorporates computer-generated motion."[73]
The Radio Times review was not positive, stating the film "falls way short of Disney's best output" and featured "weak comic relief". The review concluded, "Lacking the epic sweep of Mulan or The Lion King, and laced with feeble background songs from Phil Collins (inexplicably awarded an Oscar), this King of the Swingers may be merchandise-friendly, but it's no jungle VIP."[74] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune, while giving the film three stars, wrote that Tarzan "lacks that special pizazz that the string of Disney cartoon features from The Little Mermaid through The Lion King all had". He found faults in the film's removal of all African characters, lack of romantic tension between Tarzan and Jane, and the songs by Phil Collins, comparing them unfavorably with Elton John's "showstoppers" for The Lion King. He wrote "depriving the characters of big numbers weakens the movie".[75]
Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly gave the soundtrack a B−, stating that it was awkwardly split between Collins's songs and the traditional score, was burdened by too many alternate versions of the tracks, and in some instances bore similarities to the scores of The Lion King and Star Wars.[76]