Another rumble in the jungle

Unlike most Tarzan screen productions, which are about his jungle upbringing, the latest cinematic version opens in Victorian England. Xu Fan reports.

Tarzan, the lord of the apes, may have never swung from branches in a Chinese forest. But now, thanks to China's booming movie market, he was in Beijing last week saying "I love China" in Mandarin.

To promote Warner Brothers' upcoming major release, The Legend of Tarzan, Alexander Skarsgard and Australian actress Margot Robbie, playing Tarzan's wife Jane, showed up for a two-day promotional tour in Beijing last week.

The film will open in mainland theaters in 3-D, IMAX 3-D and DMAX on July 19, around 20 days after its North American debut.

"It's a novel take, very different from previous Tarzan movies," Skarsgard tells reporters.

Unlike most Tarzan screen productions, which are about his jungle upbringing, the latest cinematic version opens in Victorian England in the 1880s.

Tarzan, or more accurately the aristocrat John Clayton III, has been living in London with his wife Jane for eight years, before he heads to Africa to investigate Belgium's enslaving of the Congo, unaware that he is entering a trap.

What follows, however, could then remind many fans of their favorite bedtime story.

From swinging off vines and jumping off cliffs to punching a gorilla, possibly the first superhero in modern times returns to a familiar routine on the big screen.

Still, Skarsgard, popular in China for his vampire-themed TV series True Blood, likes the film's timeline.

"People will be quite surprised to see Tarzan drinking tea with a British prime minister in London in the opening scenes. But for a tale that is known around the world, it's a refreshing change," he says.

Saying that the film - despite being set around 140 years ago - is relevant to modern audiences, Skarsgard explains that human beings long to "return to the wild".

The son of renowned actor Stellan Skarsgard, he says his first memory of Tarzan is from watching TV with his family as a young boy in Stockholm.

"My father was always a huge fan of Tarzan. So, when I was young he introduced me to Tarzan movies. As a result, I was very excited when I heard about the project," he says.

The $180 million movie, directed by the man who made the last four Harry Potter films, David Yates, was filmed mainly on two sound stages around London, which had 6,500 tropical plants and a huge waterfall driven by diesel pumps, and in West Africa's Gabon.

All the animals, including the elephants, ostriches and apes, were computer-generated.

"I've spent years in Africa on the big screen, but in fact that I've never been to Africa," Skarsgard says, adding that most of his previous movies were independent and small-budget productions. Speaking of the challenges he faced while doing the movie, he says that in one sequence where Tarzan wrestles a gorilla, which is raised with him in the jungle, he had to fight with a stunt man wearing a "gray pajama".

"It was a bit tricky," the 40-year-old veteran says.

For another scene, where Tarzan encounters an elephant, which was once his close friend, and has tears in his eyes, Skarsgard used a tennis ball to enact the scene.

Skarsgard spent eight months training to build his sculpted physique for the film.

"Every muscle is there for a reason. Wild animals cannot waste energy on excess muscles," he says.

For the film, Skarsgard also had to work on getting to know actress Margot Robbie.

Revealing how they worked that out, Robbie says: "We met six months before the filming began. As the director wanted the Tarzan couple to have a natural chemistry on screen, we started hanging out immediately."

Known for her role in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, Robbie says the new Tarzan film gives her the opportunity to play a "tougher" Jane than in most Tarzan versions made in past decades.

Despite being an upper-class lady in Victorian England, her independent and tough personality makes Jane more relatable to modern audiences, says Robbie.

"Tarzan is an orphan raised by a gorilla mother, and the first female human he meets is Jane," says Robbie. "So, he needs her more than she needs him."

But the question for Warner Brothers, which earned less in China last year than its Hollywood rivals Universal and Disney, is whether Chinese audiences need Tarzan.

The answer is not clear yet, but Tarzan has surprisingly found a niche in China's summer screening schedule typically dominated by domestic titles.

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 07/14/2016 page7)