Tarzan (1999 film)

Tarzan is the thirty-seventh animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, and released to theaters by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on June 18, 1999. It is based upon the Tarzan of the Apes series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and is the only major motion picture version of the Tarzan property to be animated. It is also the last "bona fide" hit before the Disney slump of the early 2000s making $171,091,819 in domestic gross and $448,191,819 worldwide. It is also considered by many to be the last of the Disney renaissance era (November 1989 - February 2000).

Plot summary

Off the coast of Africa, a father lowers his wife and infant son off a burning ship and then evacuates himself. They arrive on Africa and build themselves a treehouse. Meanwhile, a gorilla couple (Kerchak and Kala) lose their son to a leopard named Sabor. As they move to another nest area, Kala hears an infant crying and follows it back to the treehouse. She investigates it and sees it ransacked and the parents of the baby gone, but finds a trail of large cat-like pawprints marked across the floor. Frightened, she rears back and finds only a recent photograph of the family together. Kala hears more infantile crying, finds the human baby and adopts him. She brings him back to her people, but Kerchak doesn't like the baby because he's a human and because he doesn't want another child after they recently lost their own. Kala names the child Tarzan.

Tarzan, now ten years old, tries to fit in with the other gorillas. He made friends with a female gorilla named Terk and an elephant named Tantor. 8 Years later, Tarzan grew up into an adult is attacked by Sabor the leopard. Tarzan kills Sabor and earns the respect of Kerchak. Suddenly a gunshot is heard from far away. As the gorillas leave, Tarzan follows the sound and sees three humans: Professor Porter, his daughter Jane, and their hunter guide Clayton. Tarzan saves Jane from some angry baboons and tries to communicate with her as he can't speak English. Jane returns to her camp and finds it ransacked by Tarzan's friends. After some introductions, Tarzan and the gorillas leave and Prof. Porter and Clayton arrive.

After some time, Tarzan again returns to the camp and is introduced to Prof. Porter and Clayton. Together, the three teach Tarzan English and ask him where to find the rest of the gorillas. Tarzan leads them to Kala and Terk but Kerchak appears and is hostile to Tarzan and his company. As the others flee, Kerchak scolds Tarzan and he flees. Kala shows him the treehouse where she found him and Tarzan sees a picture of his mother, father, and himself as a baby, the same photograph that Kala had discovered when she had first arrived at the treehouse. Now knowing where he must go, Tarzan puts on his father's old formal suit and joins up with Jane, who has become infatuated with him, Porter, and Clayton. They board a ship only to find the crew captured by some thugs. Clayton reveals that he wanted to find the apes and capture them for study in England. He locks Tarzan, Jane, Porter and the crew into the hold and goes back to shore. Tantor and Terk rescue Tarzan and the others and they go off to stop Clayton.

The gorillas are attacked by Clayton and his gang and one by one they're rounded up. Kerchak is mortally wounded by Clayton's rifle but Tarzan interferes. As Jane, Porter, Tantor, and Terk free the gorillas and lock up the thugs, Tarzan and Clayton fight amongst the trees. Tarzan throws some vines at Clayton, entangling him. He starts cutting the vines with his machete and Tarzan sees one of the vines wrapping around Clayton's neck. He tries to warn the hunter but Clayton cuts the last vine and plummets to the floor, his neck snapped by the vine, resulting in a death by hanging. A dying Kerchak apologizes to Tarzan for doubting him and makes him leader of the gorillas.

Tarzan says goodbye to Jane and Porter as they board the ship, but Jane decides that she loves him and returns, later followed by Porter.

Major changes from book to movie

The film is based on Tarzan of the Apes (1912) an adventure novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Changes from book to movie include:

Kala, Tarzan's adoptive mother, lives.
The apes, called "Great Apes" in the novel, are gorillas in the film. In the book, gorillas are enemies of the great apes.
Clayton is changed from a basically sympathetic but flawed character to an irredeemable villain.
Tarzan's parents, marooned in the novel, are shipwrecked in the movie.
Tarzan's main antagonists are lions in the book, leopards in the film. This in fact is more realistic and accurate: Leopards are the main predators of the African forest (where the story takes place), while lions are denizens of the plains.
In the book, Tarzan's human mother dies of natural causes while his father is killed shortly afterward by Kerchak; baby Tarzan is saved from Kerchak when Kala seizes the infant and flees. In the film, a leopard is responsible for the deaths of both of Tarzan's human parents, and Kala exhibits amazing heroism to save baby Tarzan from the predator.
In the book Tarzan kills Kerchak in a battle for supremacy over the apes. In the movie Kerchak is shot by Clayton.
A male Great Ape named Terkoz, Tarzan's enemy in the book, becomes Terk, a female gorilla, Tarzan's best friend, in the movie.
Native African humans, who play a major role in the book, are absent from the movie.

Deep Canvas

To create the sweeping 3D backgrounds, Tarzan's production team developed a 3D painting and rendering technique known as Deep Canvas. This technique allows artists to produce CGI background that looks like a traditional painting. For this advancement, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the creators of Deep Canvas a Technical Achievement Award in 2003.

After Tarzan, Deep Canvas was used for a number of sequences in The Lost Empire, particularly large panoramic shots of the island and several action sequences.

Expanded to support moving objects as part of the background, Deep Canvas was utilized to create about 75% of the environments in Disney's next major animated action film, Treasure Planet, though the results were less stunning, due to the film's tighter painting style which could have been accomplished without such advanced software. Deep Canvas was designed to accomplish a very loose, brushstroke-based style without hard edges, but Treasure Planet's backgrounds were more hard-edged and clean.

Deep Canvas was finally used in a more natural setting in restrained doses for Disney's final two traditionally animated theatrical releases, Brother Bear and Home on the Range.

An advanced version of Deep Canvas technique was originally planned to be used in Angel and Her No Good Sister, a Disney animated feature which features bluegrass music. However, since the project was cancelled, it is unknown if Deep Canvas will be used on any of the new projects given the Disney/Pixar merger and the software Disney will have acquired as a result.

Sequels

A TV series spin-off, The Legend of Tarzan ran on Toon Disney in 2001. It was followed by a direct-to-video sequel, Tarzan & Jane, released in 2002. Tarzan II, a direct-to-video midquel, was released on June 14, 2005.

A Broadway musical produced by Disney Theatrical began previews on March 24, 2006 which an official opening night slated for May 10 of the same year.

Awards

Tarzan won the following awards:

1999 Annie Award in the Technical Achievement in the Field of Animation category (for the Deep Canvas process).
2000 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for the song "You'll Be in My Heart" by Phil Collins.
2000 Academy Award for Best Song for the song "You'll Be In My Heart" by Phil Collins.
2000 Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

Trivia

Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung and Sandra Ng provided the voices of Tarzan, Jane and Terk respectively in the Cantonese version of the film.
Wakin Chau sang all the songs in both the Cantonese and Mandarin versions of the film.
The teapot and cup that are seen in the scene where Terk and the other animals mess up the camp are of the same design as Mrs. Potts the teapot and her son, Chip the teacup, from Beauty and the Beast.
One of the toys that falls out from Professor Porter's pockets when he is turned upside down by an ape resembles Little Brother, the dog from Mulan.
The treehouse in Disneyland's Adventureland, was renamed Tarzan's Treehouse in 1999 (it originally was the Swiss Family Treehouse).
Tarzan's home, Deep Jungle, is also a playable world in the Disney/Square Enix video game Kingdom Hearts. Sora, Donald Duck, and Goofy had to work with Tarzan to save his world from the Heartless and Clayton. It didn't re-appear for Chain of Memories or Kingdom Hearts II.
Minnie Driver largely ad-libbed the breathless speech in which Jane tells her father and Clayton about meeting Tarzan for the first time.
Tarzan has been adapted from its book many times over the years and is second only to Dracula in the adaptation chart.
William Cecil Clayton, the character in the book on whom the film's Clayton is (loosely) based, is Tarzan's cousin; Tarzan's birth name is John Clayton, Earl of Greystoke.

Voice cast

Actor	Role(s)
Tony Goldwyn	Tarzan
Minnie Driver	Jane Porter
Rosie O'Donnell	Terk
Glenn Close	Kala
Brian Blessed	Cecil Clayton
Lance Henriksen	Kerchak
Wayne Knight	Tantor
Nigel Hawthorne	Professor Archimedes Q. Porter
Alex D. Linz	Young Tarzan
Taylor Dempsey	Young Tantor

External links

Tarzan at the Big Cartoon Database

Disney animated features canon | 1999 films | Best Song Academy Award | Best Song Academy Award nominees | Films based on the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs

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