People complain about this being "too dark/sadistic/depressing/cruel/etc".
WTF did you expect a feral man to act/look like?!!!!!
This is the closest as a real life Tarzan would look and act, and likely fare in a modern and alien (to him) world he's too old to understand or adapt to.
Feels real.
I guess it depends on what kind of Tarzan fans they are. Do they only know the monosyllabic Tarzan from the earlier movies? Do they prefer the more complex Tarzan from Edgar Rice Burroughs' original stories? Greystoke is closer to Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes than most adaptations, although it's not entirely faithful and lacks the more fantastic elements found in Burroughs' sequel novels. Greystoke is best appreciated as a more realistic reimagining of the Tarzan story. It's more of a period drama about a man struggling with his identity and place in the world than a pulp adventure.
shareLet's just say I prefer this version to the current one, even if it stars Margot Robbie (its only good point)...
share"..It's more of a period drama about a man struggling with his identity and place in the world than a pulp adventure."'
Fair description. While that's an interesting approach, it doesn't necessarily equate to an entertaining film.
I thought it was a very entertaining film. No, it's not the pulpy action-adventure most people might be expecting a film about Tarzan to be, but if you can look past that and enjoy the film on its own merits, it's a great movie.
I thought much the same thing about the 1976 film Robin and Marian when I first saw it on HBO as a kid a year or so after it came out. I really disliked it at the time. I thought it was dull and depressing. Now, with the perspective of an adult, I've really come to like it for the great movie it is. I don't wonder that I didn't take to it as a kid -- the average person, and certainly the average child, expects a Robin Hood movie to be a rip-roaring, swashbuckling adventure story, and one where Robin marches off arm-in-arm with Marian at the end of the movie. A happy ending for a heroic character. But Robin and Marian was a moody character piece, about realistic human beings who were behind the legends -- but would be the first to tell you that all the songs the troubadours are singing about them are tall tales -- getting older and coming to terms with age and loss and awareness of their own mortality. And the fact that the plucky hero doesn't always beat the odds. If you sit down to watch it expecting exciting thrills like the 1938 Errol Flynn version provided, of course you'll be disappointed. But if you can enjoy it for what it is, it's a beautiful and poignant drama. There's room for both kinds of takes on popular characters.
Actually, for genuine realism, he shouldn't have been able to learn to speak, or function normally at all in society. There are few cases of feral children, and some of the information about many of them is unreliable. But there are just enough to give us some idea that there is critical mental and social development that must take place in the first couple of years of life, and if it doesn't, the kid simply will never develop fully. Once such case is a feral child from South Africa, who was named Saturday Mthiyane, for the day he was found, and the orphanage to which he was taken. He was about five when found, and lived to age 17 (when he died in a fire). He was raised by monkeys, and never learned to speak, still walked and jumped and whooped like a monkey. He never learned to socialize with other children, would always steal from them, and refused to eat cooked food.
Or another case was Dina Sanichar, in India, in the late 19th century. He was about six when found, lived 28 years with people, and apparently also never learned to speak, and remained seriously impaired for the rest of his life. Oddly enough, he did learn to smoke, and became a heavy smoker.
There are other cases of older children -- say aged five or greater -- who spent years being cared for in the wild by animals, and they seemed to be able to reintegrate into human society and learn to speak and socialize and all the rest. But there really does seem to be a critical period in the first two or three years of life, where if the child doesn't learn human speech and human behavior from his/her parents and other people, the child simply never will. The brain just doesn't develop the right way, and after that it's too late. The damage is done.
Given the fiction Tarzan lost his parents within days of his birth, and was raised entirely by apes, he simply could never have undergone that critical early development.
Tarzan was special. FTFY!
shareI saw it at the movie theater when it came out and really liked it. I grew up on the TV showings of the Johnny Weissmuller films and reruns of the Ron Ely series in the 70s.
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