Why all the hate?
Having just watched this, I utterly fail to understand why there is such negativity about this film. For an animated project not made by the big names of Hollywood animation studios, it looks beautiful; of course it's not perfect,no animation ever conceived so far has been flawless, but as a visual and symphonic rendition of Edgar Rich Burroughs book, it does, in my opinion rather well. With its motion capture based animation style, the result is a rather well- visualised world with character animation that is sometimes approaching reality, even if facial animation can at times be inconsistent. As far as the animals go, for the most part, they too are well done, if not the best.
The main problem as I see it, is the story, of course it makes little sense at first, an American company chasing after the semi-science legend of the meteor that decimated the dinosaurs, but then weren't such legends the centrepiece of a lot of post-colonial literature, and even film? As implausible as it is, it could be argued to have as much factual basis as El Dorado, or Atlantis. The Indiana Jones films have derived their popularity from implausible historical fact and fiction, so why does such a story serve as the target of such ridicule?
Animation is just not the exclusive playground for kids and young adults, we know this, and perhaps part of the backlash is because of this production's comparison to Disney's Tarzan. I think Tarzan remains a testament to one of Disney's best in-between animations, as it tries to bridge the 2d and 3d worlds that have become a Disney staple with the likes of the modernised princess fairy tales. In a world where there is no spoken dialogue until the humans show up, perhaps the somewhat jarring presence of a narrator could put some people off, as it is, in some ways an older style of storytelling, replaced now by a voiceover by the character in the form of a recollection, or background buildup. Far from the human characters being emotionless, I felt a lot of what was done had a deliberate subtextual meaning; the stereotypical over commercialised American family serves to indicate how a generation would perceive a Tarzan story nowadays, or even the 'gross' prospect of leaving the urban jungle for the real thing. Again it is story that seems to fail, in that Clayton's sudden motivation to go after what I would have thought to be fool's gold seems rather implausible, as is Jane's I love you, it's all rather fast, unless we consider that the temptation of unfound potential riches still exerts a powerful pull, calling to man's arrogance and hubris as well as the Western perception of Eastern dominance, which we now call racism, but was, back then, normal. Even now, does not exploitation occur in the interests of one side to the detriment or benefit of the other?
All in all, an undeservingly savaged film that in some ways stays true to the source material and touches on conventional themes, at least in my view.
Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici
By the power of truth I, while living, have conquered the universe