It's watchable and visuals are decent but the movie as a whole is just alright. Skarsgard isn't bad and maybe it's 'cause I only know him from True Blood but I didn't buy him as Tarzan. Waltz doesn't do anything special again and Margot Robbie is fine with not much either. Did like Sam Jackson though, for some reason I didn't even know he was in this.

Visuals are fine and its not another origins story (well sort of) but this is a long borefest. It has surprisingly editing and coherence issues almost similar to BvS where everything is said in dialogues and nothing is really shown here. The legendary Tarzan call, Margot Robbie in Jane's role/costume, Waltz being villainous, Skarsgard being half naked nothing seems to click here. The story just exists and while there are some interesting bits they are never utilized and the end seems very rushed without showcasing any of Tarzan's talents aside from swimming maybe? (I didn't knew Tarzan was a fish-like swimmer).

Its a wasted opportunity as the story had potential and the cast in front and behind the camera are good/great but aside from being visually good the movie offers nothing. Samuel Jackson's character and the acting is the only good thing about the movie but really not enough to save it.

3/10

This movie is a mess, which is a shame because I was one of the few looking forward to it. I didn't think the framing device of Tarzan having to return to the jungle after eight years worked at all, and the whole diamond plot was needlessly confusing. Visually it's pretty stunning and there's some great cinematography and effects work, but the storyline is just uninteresting overall and it makes it hard to get invested here. Performance wise I found Alexander Skarsgaard bland, Margot Robbie was solid even though her role was underwritten, Christoph Waltz seemed like he was sleepwalking here (he's played this role a thousand times before), and Djimon Hounsou was awful. The only one who seems to be having any fun is Samuel L. Jackson, who is a delight and the movie is infinitely more watchable when he's on screen. C

Just over 100 years after his introduction in a magazine, Edgar Rice Burroughs' ape-raised, vine-swinging Tarzan is deeply chiseled into popular culture, represented in every medium and embodied on film by, among others, Olympic athletes and Disney animators. He was a superhero three decades before Superman. But the character can also be interpreted as outmoded, as out of step with 21st-century sensitivity: a white savior, a product of a colonial and ethnocentric vision of Africa, etc. Directed by David Yates, The Legend of Tarzan is a smart and vigorous revival. It honors the iconic brand's widely loved elements—the yodeling war cry, the communing with animals, those abdominal muscles—while also updating and complicating it, including positioning the adventure within a historical context—Leopold II of Belgium's exploitation and enslavement of the Congo—and utilizing a diverse cast, assuring heroism and honor are not exclusive to just one protagonist.

Yates stages top-notch action and suspense sequences driven in part by computer-generated animals as gorgeous and convincing as those in the most recent Planet of the Apes films. He also exhibits a joyful nostalgia for the picturesque iconography of early-20th-century adventure pulp: the freshly laid railroad, the riverboat, the savanna, the waterfall, each waiting to be leaped from, raced through, or blown asunder. This is as exciting and vivid as any big-budget summer film could hope to be. And the cast is superb. Alexander Skarsgård, of course, has the elegant visage and lengthy, muscular physique required by the role, but his Tarzan is also intriguing as a character, always slightly practiced and out-of-step when negotiating human behavior as John Clayton, estate owner and regal member of the House of Lords, but transforming into a vibrant force on his native turf. Christoph Waltz's turn as a vanilla-suited, slyly sadistic Belgian captain represents his most engaging variation on his typecast persona outside of a Quentin Tarantino film. The most valuable player, however, is Samuel L. Jackson. He is charismatic and commanding as George Washington Williams, a real-life activist, historian, and soldier presented in a fictionalized form here. His overall contribution—whether it be the plentiful sharp one-liners or an aching monologue reflecting on his soul-eroding tenure as an Indian-hunting mercenary—is a major reason why Yates' excellent film is not only a faithful and rousing iteration of Burroughs' oft-told tale, but instructive as to how it can be presented and reshaped to remain relevant and alive in a changing world.

A

I can't believe some reviews were criticizing Jackson's performance - he was easily the best part.

Also Hounsou's character was beyond pointless and was only there for that stupid fight near the end.

My grade is probably a little closer to a C+. It's not unwatchable, it's just bizarre and misguided.

I was disappointed. There's no question that the film looks and sounds good, and there are some elements of the storytelling that work, but it's a dull experience as a whole. Much of the blame for the pedestrian quality of the final product lies with the frustratingly uneven script. On one hand, the flashbacks that reveal Tarzan's origins are mostly compelling and benefit from their straightforward nature; on the other hand, the stakes in the present timeline are relatively low, and the filmmakers' approach to tackling these scenes - while impressive on a technical level on several occasions - feels disappointingly workmanlike. As far as the acting is concerned, Samuel L. Jackson walks off with every single scene in which he appears. He gets the kind of film he's in, and he milks his cool persona for all it's worth. However, Alexander Skarsgaard - great at being physically imposing during his run on True Blood - is flat in the title role, leaving barely any kind of impression in most of his scenes. Margot Robbie is fun to watch in a role that gives Jane much more agency than one might initially expect, but she's still underused. At first, I was intrigued to hear that The Legend of Tarzan wasn't going to be another origin story; however, given that the flashbacks are much more resonant than the dull affairs that take up the bulk of the film's running time, I now wish it had been.

C

This is already a very undervalued movie, just as Sky Captain and The Lone Ranger were.

It's watchable, it's got a couple of decent scenes, but yeah, it doesn't work on the whole. I think the biggest problem is that Jackson and Skarsgaard have more sexual chemistry than Robbie and Skarsgaard do. That's where the framing device hurt the movie. It works because we don't want to see another origin story, but it undercuts the romance. We see them meet, he protects her, he lies in bed seeing her as an angel, and then it just kind of peters out. Thanks flashbacks!

And I don't know if it was Skarsgaard or just the way Tarzan was written, but isn't he supposed to be just a little bit charming?

C+

So I'm kind of surprised by the many meh reviews. I really enjoyed this. Great visuals, sound and cinematography. The actors were all great for their roles. My only quibbles are that it got a little slow at times, I didn't like how the Djimon Hounsou storyline ended up playing out, and I felt that Samuel L. Jackson's part, while important to the story and providing nice one-liners, should have been dialed back just a touch. I little Sam Jackson can go a long way.

A-

Sumptuous production values but the movie itself is kind of a snooze. Alexander Skarsgard seems to have spent all of his prep time developing an insane 600-pack rather than delivering a competent performance, which is a shame because I usually really like him. Margot Robbie and Samuel L. Jackson do their best to inject some charismatic energy into the proceedings, though. C

The Legend of Tarzan

What a bore! It is overly spliced, with too much obvious CG, with a whole bunch of uninteresting characters in a painfully dull story which can be summed up as "Me Tarzan, Me rescue Jane". Christoph Waltz yet again typecast as the softly-spoken villain. Margot Robbie trying her best, bless her, but not appearing beautiful or wise or strong, just dreadfully dull. Then we come to Alexander Skarsgård, the most boring person on the planet. His body isn't even impressive. If he walked on all fours for years (mimicking his foster-gorillas) he would have huge arms and shoulders, not pretty boy actor-that-has-had-a-personal-trainer-for-a-few-weeks arms and shoulders. Pathetic.

Samuel L. Jackson was fun, as were some of the tribal members, and it's always nice to see Jim Broadbent. And I enjoyed how many and how often the film uses animals; leopards, lions, wildebeest, crocodiles, hippos, and obviously, gorillas (just a shame 95% were CG-fucking-I). The film is a definite miss on a technical level as well as a narrative one. The fight scenes were a mess. Mostly using up-close camera techniques to hide the inability of the actors. There was some atmosphere in some parts, and that genuinely was cool, but it went nowhere, and the film tended to repeat jungle battles and swings and saves almost until the anticlimactic finale. I couldn't wait for it to end.

D+

I thought this was a lot of fun.

However, I've gotta wonder - does Christoph Waltz really have only one performance in him? I mean, hey, kudos for winning two Oscars despite being a one-trick-pony, but still...

Oh yeah Waltz really need to do something different or do something else in his villainous roles, he seems to be getting too comfortable .

The Legend of Tarzan is an old-school adventure movie that we see so rarely these days. I'm glad the producers took a chance on this out of fashion genre because it was very enjoyable. The movie's success hinged on it's smart screenplay which didn't wallow back into yet another origin story, but instead flashed forward straight to the Greystoke era. The colonial pillaging of Africa is a story that is unfortunately still relevant today. I thought Margot Robbie suited the role of Jane, but I was skeptical of Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan (see his 1st Hollywood movie role below). Fortunately he did fine. I'm happy to see it's reasonable success at the box office, because I'd love to see some more entries in this incarnation of Tarzan. *A-*

Which one is he in the clip? I cannot see him. And why would you be skeptical of his ability just from that one bit-part role? All actors have to start somewhere.

Here's an extended clip of Zoolander's gas fight scene which shows much more of Skarsgård:



Seeing him in that role just didn't scream out to me: "Now there's our next big screen Tarzan!" I'm happy that my initial impression was mistaken.

Is that your first thought whenever you see someone in a film that hasn't already made it? Are you always on the lookout for the next big screen Tarzan?

But yes, he isn't screaming "Tarzan" to me either.

Don't tell me that didn't cross your mind when you first saw Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead?!?

Pegg was already an established star when he made Shaun of the Dead.

Sure, on British TV, but I imagine that 999/1000 people first became aware of him as Shaun.

Yeah, but you didn't ask the other 999 people. You asked me whether that crossed my mind when I first saw Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead.

I am eternally grateful that I don't know you IRL.

You must know me enough to state "Sure, on British TV", and therefore deduce that I knew Pegg before he appeared in Shaun of the Dead.