The Legend of Tarzan arrived in 2016 with a strange assignment: take a character who had been a Saturday-matinee staple for a century and make him feel urgent again. Warner Bros. gave the film to David Yates and handed him Alexander Skarsgård in the title role, Margot Robbie as Jane, Samuel L. Jackson as an American who suspects the worst, and Christoph Waltz as the villain. The result runs 109 minutes and lands at 4.4 of 10.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
A Berlin Conference and a Debt-Ridden King
The Legend of Tarzan opens in 1884–1885, at the Berlin Conference, where King Leopold II of Belgium claims the Congo Basin. Five years later, deep in debt from stripping the Congo Free State, Leopold sends his envoy Léon Rom to find the diamonds of Opar.
That expedition ends badly. Warriors led by Chief Mbonga kill Rom’s men. Mbonga then offers Rom a trade: diamonds, if Rom delivers Tarzan.
So the film’s plot is not a jungle adventure. It is a kidnapping scheme dressed as a diplomatic invitation, and the man at the center of it has already left the jungle behind.
John Clayton, Earl of Greystoke
The man once called Tarzan is now the Rt Hon. John Clayton, Earl of Greystoke. He lives in Britain with his American wife, Jane. His parents survived a shipwreck only to die in Africa. Their baby was adopted by the Mangani, a race of apes.
That is the backstory, delivered as history rather than flashback. The film keeps its focus on a grown man who has learned to hold himself still.
Leopold invites John to visit Boma. The Prime Minister, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, and the American envoy George Washington Williams explain the stakes: Leopold is defaulting on his loans, and a visit from John — whose exploits as Tarzan made him a celebrity — would secure Britain’s influence in the Congo.
John refuses and walks out of the meeting.
George Washington Williams Makes His Case
George follows him. He tells John he suspects Leopold is sanctioning slavery. He wants John to come to the Congo as a credible witness, someone whose word carries weight.
John agrees. John, Jane, and George travel to the Congo, dodging Rom and his corrupt financier Mr. Frum along the way. They are welcomed by the Kuba village of Clayton and Jane’s youth.
Then Rom arrives at night. His men capture the villagers and kill Chief Muviro. John is taken prisoner. Wasimbu, the chief’s son, is taken with other young men to serve as porters.
George gets John out. But Jane and the captive villagers are loaded onto Rom’s steamship. Rom, it turns out, arranged the invitation from Leopold in the first place — not to honor John, but to hand him to Mbonga.
It is a clean reversal, and it is the best idea in the script: the hero’s fame is the trap.
Skarsgård, Waltz, and the Weight of the Role
Skarsgård described his approach plainly. “This is about a man who’s holding back; and slowly, as you peel off the layers, he reverts back to a more animalistic state and lets that side of his personality out,” he said.
He trained four months before filming and gained 24 pounds. Part of that work was movement training with choreographer Wayne McGregor. You can see the intent on screen. Skarsgård moves like a man who has been taught to sit properly and is waiting for permission to stop.
Waltz plays Captain Léon Rom as an iron-fisted, government-driven, fighting-adept Belgian official. He is not a wild-eyed villain. He is a bureaucrat with a sword, and Waltz is good at making procedure feel like menace.
Jackson’s George Washington Williams is an American entrepreneur and a veteran of the Indian Wars. He is the film’s conscience and its engine, the man who pushes John back toward the place he fled.
Robbie’s Jane is written as feisty and devoted, and she gets less to do than the part deserves. Djimon Hounsou’s Chief Mbonga wants revenge against Tarzan for the death of his son, which gives the film a second antagonist with a real grievance.
A Casting History Worth Remembering
The road to this cast was long. Producer Jerry Weintraub once wanted swimmer Michael Phelps for the title role, seeing him as the heir to Johnny Weissmuller, the actor who famously played Tarzan and was also a competitive swimmer. Weintraub reportedly changed his mind after watching Phelps host Saturday Night Live for two minutes.
Henry Cavill, Tom Hardy, and Charlie Hunnam were early contenders. On November 14, 2012, Skarsgård was cast — Yates’s choice. Yates liked that Skarsgård was born in Sweden but built a career in America, saying he “has this wonderful quality of not quite belonging to one or the other.”
Jessica Chastain was wanted for Jane. Margot Robbie and Emma Stone were eyed, and Robbie won the part on January 18, 2014. Emma Watson, Sarah Bolger, Georgina Haig, Lucy Hale, Lyndsy Fonseca, Eleanor Tomlinson, Gabriella Wilde, Lucy Boynton, and Cressida Bonas were all considered.
Hounsou was set for Mbonga on June 4. Osy Ikhile joined on June 17. Casper Crump was cast as Captain Kerchover. The first trailer, in December 2015, revealed Jim Broadbent was in the film.
What $356.7 Million Actually Buys
The Legend of Tarzan grossed $356.7 million worldwide against a budget of $180 million. Principal photography began June 21, 2014, at Leavesden Studios in the United Kingdom and wrapped four months later. It premiered at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on June 29, 2016, and opened in the United States on July 1, 2016, through Warner Bros. Pictures.
Reviews were mixed. Metacritic sits at 44 of 100.
The box office number is the interesting one. Our read is that a film this expensive, with this much visible craft, did not fail commercially. It failed artistically, which is a different and more frustrating outcome.
Where the Film Goes Wrong
Here is the problem, and it is not the cast. The Legend of Tarzan has a strong premise — the hero’s celebrity used as bait — and then spends its middle section on a rescue that never generates real tension. John is captured. John is freed. Jane is captured. The film keeps resetting the board.
The Mangani backstory, the Berlin Conference, the diamonds of Opar, Mbonga’s dead son: these are four separate engines pulling in four directions. The film never decides which one it is about.
Ranked by what actually works:
- Skarsgård’s physical performance, which commits fully to the animalistic reversion he described.
- Waltz’s Rom, a villain whose power comes from paperwork rather than spectacle.
- Jackson’s Williams, the only character with a clear reason to be in every scene.
- The Kuba village sequence, which has real warmth before Rom arrives.
- The steamship pursuit, which is competently staged and emotionally weightless.
The tagline is “Human. Nature.” That is a clever piece of copy. It is also a promise the film cannot keep, because it never lets the two sides genuinely collide. John Clayton in London and Tarzan in the jungle are played as a before and after, not as a conflict.
The Legend of Tarzan’s Real Problem
The Legend of Tarzan is a 2016 fantasy, action, and adventure film with a 109-minute runtime, a genuinely good cast, and no idea what to do with them. It is not a disaster. It is a shrug, and at this budget a shrug is worse.
Yates brings scale and a clean eye. Skarsgård brings a body and a stillness. Waltz brings the best kind of villain — the kind who does not need to raise his voice. None of it coheres, because the script by Stuart Beattie, Craig Brewer, Adam Cozad, and John Collee treats the Congo as a backdrop and Leopold’s crimes as a plot device.
The slavery investigation that pulls John back to Africa is the film’s most serious idea. It is also the one it handles most timidly, kept safely in the background while the movie chases diamonds and revenge.
What is worth watching here is Skarsgård, who understood the assignment better than the film did. What is not worth watching is everything built around him. The Legend of Tarzan plays like a franchise starter that never got its franchise, and the 4.4 of 10 is not harsh. It is accurate.
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