Tarzan

**Tarzan** is a 1999 animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was written by Tab Murphy, Bob Tzudiker and Noni White. It is based on the story Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

See Also: Tarzan Franchise

## Plot

In the late 1880s, an English couple and their infant son are shipwrecked off the Congolese coast. The adults build a treehouse but are killed by Sabor, a leopardess. Kala, a female western gorilla who recently lost her own child to Sabor, finds the human infant and takes it back to the jungle to raise as her own, despite the disapproval of her mate, Kerchak, the leader of the gorilla troop. Kala names him Tarzan.

Years later, Tarzan begins to befriend other animals, including a young female gorilla named Terk and the paranoid male elephant, Tantor. Tarzan finds himself treated differently because of his different physique, so he makes great efforts to improve himself. As an adult, Tarzan manages to kill Sabor with a crude spear he made, gaining Kerchak's reluctant respect.

The gorilla troop's peaceful life is interrupted by the arrival of a team of human explorers from England, consisting of Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, his daughter, Jane and their hunter escort Clayton. The explorers are looking to study gorillas. Jane accidentally becomes separated from the group and chased by a baboon troop, with Tarzan saving her out of curiosity. He realises that she is human, just like he is. Jane leads Tarzan back to their camp, where Porter and Clayton both take great 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 be wary of the humans, Tarzan continues to return to the camp, where Porter, Clayton and Jane teach him to speak English properly as well as what the human world is like. He and Jane begin to develop feelings for each other. However, the English explorers have difficulty convincing Tarzan to lead them to the gorillas due to Tarzan's fear of Kerchak.

The explorers' ship soon returns 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 they will ever return. Clayton convinces Tarzan that Jane will stay with him forever as long as he leads them to the gorillas. Tarzan agrees and leads the trio to the nesting grounds while Terk and Tantor lure Kerchak away to avoid having him attack the humans. Porter and Jane are excited to mingle with the gorillas but Kerchak returns and attacks the humans when he sees them. Tarzan is forced to hold Kerchak at bay while the humans escape. Kerchak accuses Tarzan of betraying the troop and Tarzan runs off from his family in fear. Kala takes Tarzan to the treehouse where she found him, shows him his true past and says that she wants him to be happy whatever he decides. Tarzan puts on a suit that once belonged to his father, signifying his decision to go to England.

When Tarzan boards the ship with Jane and Porter the next day, they are all ambushed by Clayton and his traitorous band of stowaway thugs. Clayton actually hopes and plans to capture and sell the gorillas for a fortune now that he knows where the nesting grounds are and locks Tarzan, Jane and Porter away to prevent them from interfering. Tarzan manages to escape with the help of Terk and Tantor, and he returns to the jungle. Clayton fatally shoots Kerchak and battles Tarzan across the treetops, although Tarzan Tarzan spares his life. After Tarzan traps Clayton with vines, Clayton angrily attempts to free himself but falls from the tree with a vine tangled around his neck, hanging and killing him. Kerchak, with his dying breath, forgives Tarzan, finally accepts him as his son and names him the new leader of the gorillas. The rest of the gorillas are freed after scaring away the rest of Clayton's men.

The next day, Porter and Jane prepare to leave on the ship while Tarzan stays behind with the gorillas. As the ship leaves shore, Porter encourages his daughter to stay with the man she loves and Jane jumps overboard to return to shore; Porter shortly follows her. The Porters, now gifted with the ability to hear what animals are saying, reunite with Tarzan and his family embark on their new life together.

## Cast and Characters

* Tony Goldwyn as Tarzan
	+ Alex D. Linz as Young Tarzan
* Minnie Driver as Jane Porter
* Glenn Close as Kala
* Lance Henriksen as Kerchak
* Brian Blessed as Clayton
* Nigel Hawthorne as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter
* Rosie O'Donnell as Terk
* Wayne Knight as Tantor
	+ Taylor Dempsey as Young Tantor
* Frank Welker as Sabor
* Erik von Detten and Jason Marsden as Flynt and Mungo
* Lily Collins as Baby Ape

## Sequels

### Tarzan & Jane

The film was released on July 23, 2002 as a direct-to-video sequel. It uses three unaired episodes of the film's corresponding television series, The Legend of Tarzan.

### Tarzan II

The film was released on June 14, 2005 as a direct-to-video sequel. The film is set one year after the events of the first film.

## Television Series

### The Legend of Tarzan

The series premiered on September 3, 2001. It carried on where the film left off.

## Production

### Development

Disney's Tarzan was the first Tarzan film to be animated. Thomas Schumacher, the President of Walt Disney Feature Animation, expressed surprise that there weren't 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.

Following work on A Goofy Movie in late 1994, Kevin Lima was approached to direct Tarzan by studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg who desired to have the film animated at a Canadian-based satellite television animation studio, in which Lima was reluctant to do 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. Following this, Lima decided to read Tarzan of the Apes where he began to visualise the theme of two hands being held up against each other. 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 realises he and Jane are physically the same." 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, to ask if he would be interested in serving as co-director. Buck was initially sceptical but accepted after hearing Lima's ideas for the film. 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.

### Writing

Tab Murphy, who had just finished work on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 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. 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 Burrough's novel, a villain named Clayton was created to serve as a guide for Professor Archimedes Q. Porter and his daughter, Jane. In addition to this, Kerchak was re-characterised from a savage silverback into the protector of the gorilla tribe.

In January 1997, husband-and-wife screenwriting duo Bob Tzudiker and Noni White were hired to help refocus and add humour to the script as a way to balance the emotional weight of the film. Comedy writer Dave Reynolds was also brought on to write humorous dialogue for the film. "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." One challenge the writers faced was how Tarzan should learn about his past. "When Kala takes Tarzan back to the treehouse, she is essentially telling him that he was adopted", Bonnie Arnold, the producer for Tarzan, said, "This is necessitated by him encountering humans and recognising 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. Another issue was the inherent and overt racism in the original Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan. The writers consciously chose to not include any African characters in order to avoid this topic.

### Casting

Brendan Fraser auditioned twice for the title character before portraying the lead role in George of the Jungle. Tony Goldwyn auditioned for the title role as well and according to co-director Kevin Lima, Goldwyn landed it because of "the animal sense" in his readings, along with some "killer baboon imitations". For the signature Tarzan yell, Lima and Buck desired the traditional yell, although Goldwyn faced difficulties with providing the yell stating "It's really hard to do, physically." Co-star Brian Blessed ultimately provided the yell. Terk was originally written as a male gorilla but following Rosie O'Donnell's audition, Terk was re-characterised as a female. Furthermore, Woody Allen was initially cast as the neurotic elephant Tantor. However, Katzenberg persuaded Allen to leave the project for DreamWorks Pictures' Antz and in exchange, the studio would distribute his next four films. Agreeing to the deal, Allen departed from Tarzan in 1996 and was replaced by Wayne Knight.

### Animation

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 co-ordinating scenes with multiple characters easier, the animators used a system called a "scene machine" that could send rough drawings between the two animation studios. Meanwhile, following production on Mulan, two hundred animators at the Feature Animation Studo satellite studio provided character animation and special effects animation where the filmmakers had to discuss their work through daily video conferences among the three studios.

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" but when Keane revealed the test animation to them they liked it enough to use it in the film during the "Son of Man" sequence, with movements inspired by skateboarder Tony Hawk. Although Keane initially thought that Tarzan would be easy to animate because he only wears a loincloth, he realised that he would need a fully working human masculature 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.

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 masculature. In 1996, the animation team went on 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. In 2000, Chris Buck repeated the journey accompanied by journalists to promote the film's home video release.

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). This technique allows artists to produce CGI background that looks like a traditional panting, according to art director Daniel St. Pierre. (The software keeps track of brushstrokes applied in 3D space). 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% of the environments in Disney's next major animated action film, Treasure Planet (2002).

## Release

On June 12, 1999, the film premiered at the El Capitan Theater with the cast and filmmakers as attendees followed by a forty-minute concert with Phil Collins performing songs from the film. On July 23, 1999, Disney launched a digital projection release of Tarzan released only in three theatrical venues including Walt Disney World's Pleasure Island multiplex for three weeks. Although Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and An Ideal Husband were given earlier digital projection releases despite being shot on photographic film, Tarzan was notable for being the first major feature release to have been produced, mastered and projected digitally.

### Marketing

Disney Consumer Products released a series of toys, books and stuffed animals for Tarzan, partnering with Mattel to produce a line of plush toys and action figures. Mattel also produced the Rad Repeatin' Tarzan action figure but discontinued it after complaints regarding the toy's onanistic arm motions. Continuing its advertising alliance with McDonald's, its promotional campaign began on the film's opening day with several toys accompanied with Happy Meals and soda straws that replicated the Tarzan yell. Disney also worked with Nestle to create Tarzan themed candies, including a banana-flavoured chocolate bar. In early 2000, Disney partnered again with McDonald's to release a set of eight Happy Meal toys as a tie-in for the film's home video. They also offered Tarzan themed food options, such as banana sundaes and jungle burgers.

### Home Media

On February 1, 2000, the film was released on VHS and DVD, as well as on LaserDisc on June 23, 2000 only in Japan, marking Tarzan the last Disney animated feature to be released on the latter format. The DVD version contained bonus material, including the "Strangers Like Me" music video, the making of "Trashin' the Camp" featuring Collins and 'N Sync, and an interactive trivia game. A 2-Disc Collector's Edition was released on April 18, 2000. It included an audio commentary track recorded by the filmmakers, behind-the-scenes footage and supplements that detailed the legacy of Tarzan and the film's development. Both editions were placed in moratorium on January 31, 2002 and placed back into the Disney Vault. On October 15, 2005, Disney released the Tarzan Special Edition on DVD. Tarzan's first Blu-ray edition was released throughout Europe in early 2012 and on August 12, 2014, Disney released the Tarzan Special Edition on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD.

## Reception

### Box Office

Pre-release tracking indicated that Tarzan was appealing to all four major demographics noticeably for the first time for a Disney animated film since the release of The Lion King. The film's limited release was on June 16, 1999 and the wide release followed on June 18, 2999, in 3,005 screens. During the weekend of June 18 to 21, Tarzan grossed $34.1 million ranking first on its opening weekend beating out Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and notibly grossing higher than Mulan and A Bug's Life in their respective box office weekends and ranked second in Disney animated box office openings behind The Lion King, which earned $40.9 million. By August 1999, the domestic gross was projected to approach $170 million. Ultimately, the film closed its box office run with $448.2 million worldwide.

On home media, the film was the most successful of 2000 with retail revenues of $268 million.

### Critical Reaction

Rotten Tomatoes reported that 89% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 105 reviews, with an average score of 7.56 out of 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. Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 from top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 79 based on 27 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

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. 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". 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 realised and the action sequences are dizzying, with frequent changes of perspectives and camera angles. No conventional animated film has been this ambitious before." 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". Todd McCarthy of Variety proved to be less amused by the animation, claiming it was "richly detailed and colourfully 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."

Lisa Schwarzbaum, who graded the film an A-, applauded the film as "a thrilling saga about a natural man, untainted by the complications of civilised 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." Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle admited 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 Burrough's original novel. Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times wrote that the "story unfolds with dangers as well as warm humour; 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 ove again is a pleasure." In similarity, Janet Maslin, reviewing for The New York Times, 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."

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), the King of the Swingers may be merchandise-friendly but it's no jungle VIP." 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 unfavourably with Elton John's "showstoppers" for The Lion King. He wrote "depriving the characters of big numbers weakens the movie."

Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly gave the soundtrack a B-, stating that it was awkwardly split between Collins' 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.

## Awards and Nominations

 2000
 Best Original Song - Motion Picture
 Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media
 Best Soundtrack Album