THE LEGEND OF TARZAN

By turning Tarzan into just another superhero, David Yates" blockbuster origin story wastes one of literature"s great wild men.

“The Legend of Tarzan”

Warner Bros.

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Director David Yates (who took over the Harry Potter franchise after the fourth movie và steered it to lớn completion) certainly knows a thing or two about how to lớn make the most of a nhân vật he meets in media res, but his Tarzan is a monumental bore. The script, written by Adam Cozad & “Hustle & Flow” mastermind Craig Brewer, denies its subject anything that could be mistaken for a character arc — John is itching to lớn revisit the jungle, and then he does. Skarsgård is saddled with maybe 50 lines of dialogue, và none of them match the depth of the trenches around his abs. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps was supposedly in talks lớn play Tarzan at one point, and the role feels as though it were written to accommodate his talents.

There’s some somber talk early on about how he and Jane have recently lost a child, but that tragic footnote never takes root in the story, or expresses itself through any of the action. Jane, meanwhile, doesn’t even need saving. Smart and spunky & brimming with the can-do charisma that has helped launch Robbie into the stratosphere, this Jane is no damsel (“I’m no damsel,” she tells Rom, succinctly exhausting her nuances). But as nice as it is that the character has been updated for the 21st Century, the way this film uses her is decidedly archaic.

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Still, Jane is a virtuosic revelation compared lớn Rom, as Waltz’s shit-eating shtick is so tired that his performance dissolves in front of your eyes. Only Jackson, whose George Washington Williams is loosely based on a historical figure of the same name, manages to lớn stir any interest; there’s real weight khổng lồ the notion of a late 19th Century black man traversing the world in order khổng lồ weed out slavery wherever it rears its head, but Yates reduces him to a limp sliver of comic relief (it would be wrong to describe the film as humorless, but so few of the jokes land that it soon starts to seem that way).

Colonialist overtones aside, “The Legend of Tarzan” could easily be mistaken for any of the generic, entry-level superhero movies that have been made in the last 10 years. And make no mistake, this Tarzan is most definitely a superhero — he has extraordinary abilities (he dragged his knuckles around as a kid, altering their bone structure in a way that naturally allows him to lớn move through the trees lượt thích an ape), he engages in weightless and chaotic fight sequences with hordes of faceless henchmen, và he fights a villain who has no hope of being taken seriously amidst such a clamor of bad CG. Whatever magic brought “The Jungle Book” to life just a few months ago is missing here, as a third act stampede featuring hundreds of rampaging animals feels like a cheap copy-and-paste job.

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It’s maddening lớn see this degree of sameness plague a movie about a character as singular và iconic as Tarzan — there isn’t even that much vine-swinging! Yates, who showed so much promise with his Potter films (and returns lớn that cinematic universe with this fall’s spin-off “Fantastic Beasts & Where lớn Find Them”), fails lớn put his stamp on this one, though a plethora of gorgeous aerial shots indicate a sincere attempt to capture the splendor of the Congo.

Don’t be fooled by the lack of spandex: “The Legend of Tarzan” turns the Lord of the Apes into just another superhero, the newest movie about fiction’s greatest wild man memorable only for the dull irony of how housebroken it feels.

Grade: D+

“The Legend of Tarzan” opens in theaters on Friday.

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