Stephen Sommers Directing 'Tarzan'
Filed under: Action, Classics, Deals, Warner Brothers, Scripts, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels
There's an interesting trend going on in film right now -- everyone is grabbing up classic characters of pulp and adventure literature right and left. We've got Conan, Sherlock Holmes, John Carter, and now Tarzan. There's a sociological study in here for an aspiring student.Tarzan has seen many a reboot, and there's always whispers of someone wanting to make a new version. This current project has been floating around since 2003 (the same year Warner Bros tried to bring Tarzan to television and the modern city), and once boasted Guillermo del Toro's name. Now, according to Variety, it has landed in the hands of Stephen Sommers, who is cowriting a script with Stuart Beattie. Beattie boasts some impressive credits, like Pirates of the Caribbean and Collateral, so the Lord of the Apes might be in quite capable hands.
But Sommers' movies tend to fall a bit short of expectation, to put it kindly. And I mean it kindly, from someone who does actually own Van Helsing -- I could write a long defense as to why, but it really just comes down to liking Hugh Jackman and David Wenham a lot. But, in my defense, I reportedly audibly booed the ending when I saw it at the theater, though I can't remember if it was because they so visibly CGI'd pants on a naked post-werewolf Jackman, or the floating head of Kate Beckinsale. I think it was the floating head, but knowing me, it may have been the pants.
So, while I want to think about how cool a new Tarzan movie could be, what hot dude they'll put in a loincloth, how feisty Jane will be, I can't. Because I'm picturing the whole thing saddled with the same CGI Sommers has used since The Mummy, a jungle peppered with apes that can stretch their jaws for miles. Am I wrong, readers?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-03-2008 @ 9:36AM
Maria Stahl said...
"...so visibly CGI'd pants on a naked post-werewolf Jackman...but knowing me, it may have been the pants."
LOL! Oh Elisabeth, you kill me. :o)
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9-03-2008 @ 9:40AM
Riley Freeman said...
one of 2 things will happen.
either they go for a kids movie (personally i believe thats what tarzan is )
or they will copy the dark knight and try and make it dark.
either way im not interested in it and i used to be a fan. i watched it when it had its little series on tv. but tarzan is a past thing i feel. it had its time to me.
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9-03-2008 @ 11:08AM
Petro1734 said...
Me Petro think Tarzan be ok, but have same worry as girl, Liz. Me hope don't suck, potential for fun.
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9-03-2008 @ 11:05AM
Julie said...
Poor Tarzan has been done to death, and never turns out well. Maybe everyone should just leave well enough alone?
And, as I recall, it was the talking head. I remember you ranting about it. I'm not sure we new about the CGI pants until later...lol
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9-03-2008 @ 12:07PM
John Rivers said...
They need to cameo Cheeta and give him the recognition he deserves.
www.mecheeta.com
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9-06-2008 @ 6:15PM
alex said...
Its seems th movement behind getting Cheeta the Chimp a BAFTA and ideally a part in the new Tarzan movie is growing. As a huge Cheeta fan this is the least he desrves. I am amazed and trully pleased that so many people are now showing their support at www.mecheeta.com.
9-03-2008 @ 12:53PM
MadMax said...
Guillermo DeToro would have been the perfect director for Tarzan. Sommers not too much. They should go back to the novel and and not the prior movies. It could make for an exciting film.
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9-15-2008 @ 3:18PM
Frederick Richardson said...
Lord Greystroke, Tarzan of the Apes is Edgar Rice Burrough's golden-boy exemplar of "natural selection" used by the author to model the arrogance and ignorance of 19th Century colonial imperialism. Burroughs, like his contemporary brethren Arthur Conan Doyle, was a staunch Darwinist, promoting the iconoclast of European white male superiority (a white man lording through the jungle) over the “darkies” of primitive Africa with unashamed abandon.
The 21st Century challenges for the Continent are, to say the least, multifaceted and multi-layered, involving both culture and ecology, the horrors of global neglect and apocalyptic famine, incurable diseases and genocidal wars—all this, while being subjected to the kinds of exploitation (blood diamonds, Draconian oil deals, Machiavellian retribution, etc.) that will skewer or sidetrack any conventional re-telling or traditional interpretation of the Tarzan motif as conceived by Burroughs.
Any attempt to produce a "great summer action movie" rated PG-13 will be an anathema in the current zeitgeist and an historical anachronism that by now belong not in the 19th Century—for that matter, not even inside the Matrix of a 1999 Disney cartoon. Except for the ignorant, Tarzan’s time has past.
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