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Article in the latest Total Film

MAKING OFF

Those abs? Real. (Four month pre-shoot training and diet) That lush, verdant jungle? Less so. When director David Yates finally got the ball rolling on production of a film that had been passed around for years, there was one thing he was certain of - to make Tarzan and his Congo homeland feel authentic... he was going to fake it.

Having location scouted in Gabon, South Africa and Kenya, Yates was wary not only of the costs of filming in remote places, ("We looked at the numbers and it was insane,") but of the discomfort for what he saw as a romantic adventure romp - not The Revenant. "I went into the jungle of Gabon with about a half a dozen crew, for about an hour. By the time we came out we were knackered, covered in ants, sweat and things that dropped on us. I said, 'I can't bring any actors into this..." Logistics aside, aestheticist Yates wasn't sure the verisimilitude of the rainforest would even bring him the torrid look he was after. "I watched every movie you can think of that had been shot in a jungle with my production designer, Swart Craig. The really interesting thing was, when you watch one of my favorite movies, The Emerald Forest, where they went on location for months... It doesn't look great. There's no depth. There's nothing iconic or pleasing to the eye. It's a mess. It's dense." The answer to both cash and visual niggles? If you build it…

Taking over two huge sound stages at Leavesden Studios near the less-than-exotic Watford in 2014, Yates and Craig fashioned their own version of the jungle and an African village complete with hand-reared grass, multi-gallon waterfall and a quasi-community of African tribespeople (extras were workshopped for weeks and hung out creating relationships on-set two weeks before principal photography). "You have complete control," Yates enthuses later when we meet in London's Ham Yard Hotel "So what you build and design in visual effects gives you something that's much more pleasing, romantic and expressive to the eye." Though DoP Henry Braham later took six 4K cameras to Gabon to match Leavesden footage with real African vistas, Yates' jungle vision was essentially seated in London. Well, he would know about the realities of evoking gorgeous visuals having steered four Harry Potters to fruition. "Ultimately, it’s got a romantic and a heightened quality because of the way we shot it. And with the animals, our reference points were always real animals. The animators weren't watching an actor being a lion. Because an actor being a lion gives you a certain performance and a certain personality. We would watch real animals, real footage of primates and lions and crocodiles. It's that marriage between trying to find some truth, but also expressing a story so people can have a great night out when they go and see a movie."

The carefully created results were astounding to actors who had previously seen the big sets on SPECTRE, Suicide Squad and True Blood. “It was pretty incredible,” says Tarzan himself, Alexander Skarsgård, blue eyes widening when we catch up with him in LA. “They had two airport hangars – over 200 hundred yards long with jungle sets – real trees, real bushes, real soil, a river, like a mountain. It was trippy when you were in there shooting all day, and then you step outside and you’re in an industrial neighborhood in north London. And then on the back lot, they planted a whole field of African grass, a year before we shot the movie, to let it grow in with African flowers. It was incredible, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Margot Robbie, Tarzan’s Jane, is equally saucer-eyed; “They built a jungle, a 90ft boat, a river for the boat to go in, a colonial town, a waterfall that has tons and tons of water coming out every second... It was the most insane thing I’ve ever seen.”

BODY TALK

Yates was equally single-minded in his casting. Inheriting the project - told from the perspective of the feral man turned civilized and living in London as John Clayton, Lord Greystoke and only tempted back to the Congo by an invitation of King Leopold II of Belgium via nefarious fixer Captain Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz) - from a line of would-be directors that included Guillermo del Toro and Stephen Sommers, he was sure of the look and angle he was going for with this umpteenth interpretation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic creation.

"When it came to me, it was a combined script from Craig Brewer and Adam Cozad," Yates recalls. "And then I spent a year with Adam working on it - upping the romantic elements, deepening the characters. I made sure it had enough gear shifts throughout." With historical elements of slavery, genocide, colonization and a real-life character of civil war soldier and slavery abolitionist, George Washington Williams (Samuel L Jackson) added, Yates knew he'd found his king of the swingers. Though a series of would-be loin-cloth wearers were mooted (among them, according to reports; Tom Hardy, Charlie Hunnan and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps), he remained convinced by rangy Swede, Skarsgård. But despite an impressive body of indie work, he was an untested, tentpole leading man.

"Finding a really good actor who also had a great body, who wasn't the wide, square, big-necked..." Yates shakes his head. "I didn't want to do a Tarzan that was all about width and muscle and couldn't get through a door. I wanted a Tarzan that had grace, poise, elegance and verticality. Every time I sat down with an actor I'd go, 'God, this is a great actor. Wouldn't he be great?' but I just couldn't see them in the role. For me, it started with Alex, and we stuck with him."

After much deliberating, the studio asked for a screen test to convince them of Skarsgård. Yates shot three key scenes, edited them together, sent them to the suits - while Skarsgård set off on a month-long trek with Prince Harry to the South Pole for Walking with the Wounded. He was aware of the chance Yates was taking, and what the $185m budget role could do for his career. "Obviously it's very exciting to do a huge movie because hopefully people will actually go see it - which is sometimes tough with a tiny indie."

When he returned to a tiny Russian base with ancient dial-up internet, Skarsgård read his emails and discovered he'd have to get even fitter than a South Pole trek required. After all much of the film is dedicated to shirt-free flexing. "We didn't want Tarzan to look like a bodybuilder," he says now, "It was important to be agile and flexible, which I'm not A big part of the training was just being able to touch my toes!"

But let's not be coy. Much of the attraction of a Tarzan film is the appreciation of a topless male in peak condition (as Waltz points out, "sex certainly has a big role to play. Why would Alexander have to take his shirt off right away?"). A point not lost on co-star, Margot Robbie, well used to playing eye candy. "It's a role-reversal," she laughs, a twinkle in her eye. "And one that I was reveling in, wearing more clothes than him, getting to eat whatever I want. It was so, so lovely."

Having come off The Wolf of Wall Street and Suicide Squad playing sex objects, Robbie was keen to enjoy her downtime while filming in her adopted home city of London. More specifically, enjoying British pints. "A good friend of mine was the trainer on the film for me," she confides. "He was doing his absolute best to keep me in line and get in shape. I was like a naughty school kid. I would just run off and go to the pub. He would be like, `Margot, what's the point of this workout?' I was like, "It's the 19th Century. If she's got a bit of weight on her, it was probably a good thing." I'm not going to look thin just for the sake of it No, she should have a woman's body. So yes, I was very defiant for selfish reasons. I just wanted to go everywhere and try every pub!" And like her Harley Quinn persona in Suicide Squad, Robbie was just as keen to ensure Jane wasn't depicted as a classic wimp - at one point in the film telling Waltz's baddie contemptuously that she won't scream 'like a damsel'. "The way that John's physically very strong, I wanted her to be incredibly emotionally strong. I didn't want to be a babbling mess, I wanted her to be fiercely independent, incredibly defiant."

POTTER PRESSURE

It's this kind of modernization that the cast and Yates hope will swing Tarzan into the 21St Century to fight alongside superheroes in the multiplex -having previously been accused of racism and misogyny over a public consumption lifetime of 26 books and numerous films and IV shows since Burroughs' first tale, Tarzan Of the Apes in 1914.

"Instead of all those old movies where it's about taming the beast," says Skarsgård, who grew up watching old Weissmuller movies with his dad, Stellan, "it's about releasing the beast. It's that interesting dichotomy, being a human being and an animal at the same time." Waltz feels that the historical elements are what makes this version sing. "Did I watch any of the movies prior to this? No. I'm not a film historian. It's surprisingly accurate, historically, that the Belgian king pretended to be a charitable benefactor to this African nation, giving some form of independence, making the people self-reliant and educated. But the long and the short of it was he wanted to ruthlessly exploit the natural resources. Nothing that we're not familiar with in this increasingly fucked-up world."

"Once you've swung through the jungle a few times, you've kind of swung through the jungle a few times," admits Yates. "But introducing an audience to the politics of the Congo in 1858? It's quite interesting - and surprising." But don't let that put you off... "We still do some really cool fighting. He fights a gorilla. He fights a train full of solders. He saves Jane at the last minute. He's able to communicate with the animals..."

In the current climate where Deadpool's post-modern potty mouth and the Avenger's animosity reigns BO supreme, re-booting a literary character with no real super-powers (apart from super-large hands) is something of risk. Especially if you're a director coming off a run of critically and commercially acclaimed franchise movies. Yates admits a self-imposed pressure to repeat the Harry Potter magic "You go, 'Should I make that interesting beautiful, nuanced drama script I really love? Or do I need to prow m myself I can make an arena picture on my own terms?' So [Tarzan] was me saying to myself, 'I've got to try and make a big movie that a lot of people might want to see'. It felt like it was spun together in a fresher way than most of the scripts I was reading about cities being blown up. I was getting a bit tired of that stuff - even though people love it. And there's still a lovely drama script I can do the next year or the year after or in four years' time..." Or indeed, if usual tentpole plans come to fruition, a sequel to this - should it be a success. "If we get enough people coming to see the movie, we've got an outline for To mon 2," Yates admits, one that features bringing back a cutting room floor appearance by John Hurt as Tarzan's grandpa. "I'll let you know in July," says the pragmatic Skarsgård. "I want to do one where he's older and not fit, so I'm still Tarzan but I can relax a bit!"

One thing's for sure, if Tarzan doesn't do the business, Yates certainly has a good fall-back, one that that involves plenty of critters, exotic worlds and preternaturally gifted protagonists. "I showed Jo Raveling the first cut of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them yesterday," he admits (he was editing Tarzan while prepping on Beasts). "And she was so excited and moved. You don't have time to think about [the pressure of success on Tarzan]. You just go for it, and then you just hope that people respond…”

The "Evil Spirit" trailer just showed again about 1/2 hour ago on History Channel during "Roots: A History Revealed".

Some new posts from the Box Office Theory forums:

I'm not feeling the buzz I was expecting. Lowering my predict to 31/85

This movie looks really good to me. (expect for Christoph Waltz, who after seeing in several films I realized he plays the same role every single time) I don't see this doing Pan numbers. but I have to admit the buzz is not where I would like it to be. I guess reviews may save or break it. hoping it can still cross $100m.

I think best case scenario is an Edge of Tomorrow type performance

This damn trailer was in front of the last five movies I've seen

Saw an extended preview for this and Warcraft tonight. Tarzan sought to save elephants and Warcraft promoted a free game trial, lol. I don't get the hate. Cast seems strong enough and looks like a fun adventure.

The Total Film article has a bunch of new stuff in it.  Thank you.....they had a good article back in January too -- this adds a lot to it.

Magazine round-up courtesy of Skarsjoy.

Looks like there's some kind of "Tarzan "Experience", with a jungle involved.  Seems like it might be an event of some sort.

I'm curious what that will be. The marketing is heating up now, it seems, considering the concerns. I'm hoping we'll see a first clip soon. Has anyone heard any word about the special preview IMAX were advertising on Facebook? Will it appear online or is it a cinema-only thing? I'm guessing that's the 3:05 minute trailer that was rated a few weeks back.

I'm a little confused by Margot Robbie's quote in the article above when referring to Jane with I hate her.  I couldn't get into her head.  Before she said Jane is the closest character to her own personality.  I bet she was really talking about Harle  Quin.  That's kind of a big mess up.

These quotes are out of context.Alex is talking about dressing in drag for the Diary of a Teenage Girl opening and Margot is talking about HarleyQuin as you suspected.

Quote from Will Streckfus on June 4, 2016, 12:04 pm

I'm a little confused by Margot Robbie's quote in the article above when referring to Jane with I hate her.  I couldn't get into her head.  Before she said Jane is the closest character to her own personality.  I bet she was really talking about Harle  Quin.  That's kind of a big mess up.

The quote is tweaked a bit, but it's at the end of the Vogue interview, and appears to be referencing her character from Wolf of Wall Street. The quote from Alex has nothing to do with Tarzan, but describes his experience dressing in drag for last year's San Francisco premiere of Diary of a Teenage Girl. Odd quote choices for that little blurb.

I saw the last few seconds of an ad at the end of of a midday SportsCenter (ESPN) yesterday, was on when I walked into our breakroom.

@Shining Wizard, on the BO theory forums, how many of those quoted have a good prognostication record? Are they actually serious about educated guesses, or just pulling numbers out of their heads?