This movie is not really an origin story, though there are some quick flashbacks to tell that tale. Instead “The Legend of Tarzan” takes place years later where the King of the Jungle has returned to London to take over Greystoke Manor and has married Jane. Troubling news that some slave trading may be going on back in Africa gets him and the wife to return, only to discover the troubles run much deeper.
Something that has plagued David Yates from the get-go is his inability to direct action scenes. He had never directed a mainstream movie before he got the “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” job. That movie had a good script, but none of the action scenes in it were fully realized by the director. Right from the first action scene in “The Legend of Tarzan” you know this movie is in trouble. Throughout the rest of the Harry Potter movies he directed, some of the action scenes played out well, but those were more of the exception than the rule. There is plenty of action written in this movie, but Yates fails to bring the audience into them at all. There are so many directors who are able to do that, Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuarón and Mike Newell to name a few.
David Yates did have more of a penchant in directing more personal scenes, like when two actors have a good one-on-one, but for some reason he fails to ever accomplishing that in “The Legend of Tarzan.” This was a total surprise considered he has excelled at it in the past. Margot Robbie is an amazing talent whose star has been on the rise for a while now and is likely to explode later this summer with “Suicide Squad.” Shockingly, Yates does not make her look good at all. The bigger surprise came from the performance he captured from Christoph Waltz who plays the main villain in the movie. Waltz has been great at playing the bad guy, but this is one of his less memorable turns in that role. It’s hard to put that blame on a two time Oscar winner, so that again falls on the director’s shoulders. Even Samuel L. Jackson is not immune to Yates’ “golden touch.”
If there is something wrong with the script, the director needs to step up and fix it. This is a smaller complaint, but the movie takes place in Africa and every African tribe person, even those you can tell has lived in the jungle all their lives, can speak perfect English. Sometimes they will speak in their native tongue, mostly English. That’s just laziness. David Yates obviously wanted to play it safe and have these Africans speak English because it makes it easier on the audience, but sometimes you must take risks when you sit in the director’s chair, but that’s not something Yates likes to do.
Speaking of being lazy, the movie opens with lots of titles to help set the plot in motion. Everything the titles tell is later told again by the characters later in the movie, so there was no need for those titles. This can be contributed more to the writers of the movie, than Yates, but the director could have worked to fix this problem too.
Music is a very big part of any movie. It can turn an ordinary scene into an extraordinary one. It’s there to enhance a scene, not distract from it and David Yates excels at the latter. Rupert Gregson-Williams put together a pretty epic score to accompany “The Legend of Tarzan” and that’s the problem. It is often blaring and sometimes it’s just on an exterior establishing shot. You can’t help to notice it and that’s not what you want from the movie’s music.
This review for “The Legend of Tarzan” has mostly been a thrashing of it’s director, David Yates. A review should be more than that, but everything wrong with this movie falls into his lap. He can never get you to feel the danger or the threats that are supposed to be present in the story. There must be a great deal of pressure directing a big studio picture and Yates succumbs to that. It does not make one look forward to “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” this fall. Here’s what David Yates needs to do to truly prove himself as a director, go out and find an original story that he can develop. It does not have to be a big budget affair, it can be a small, personal story. Just prove you can tell a tale on your own without the help of an established title.
1/2 Sword
