Oh Boy! Stephen Sommers may Direct ‘Tarzan’ Movie
Comments(2)
- By drvenkman
Warner Bros wants to make a big screen live action ‘Tarzan’ Movie with Jerry Weintraub producing. Stephen Sommers is in talks to co-write and direct the film. I think Stephen Sommers is going to ruin ‘G.I. Joe’ I have really not liked anything I have seen so far, so I am am not to excited that he may end up making a live action G.I. Joe movie that is worse than the Original Animated ‘G.I. Joe: The Movie’. The good thing is I don’t really care about a new ‘Tarzan’ movie so I don’t care who directs it. Here is what the trades report:
Warner Bros. and Weintraub have been developing “Tarzan” since 2003, when John August was hired to pen a new take on the Edgar Rice Burroughs-created character. Two years ago, the studio was negotiating with Guillermo del Toro to direct.
Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes” was written in 1912. Onscreen, the ape-man character became strongly identified with Johnny Weismuller during the 1930s in MGM’s series of features.
Warner Bros. put the character back on the bigscreen with its 1984 pic “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes,” starring Christopher Lambert. Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow also made 1998’s “Tarzan and the Lost City,” starring Casper Van Dien. In 2003, Warner Bros. TV produced a short-lived “Tarzan” skein for the WB Network.
So thats the news folks. are you excited to see a new ‘Tarzan’ movie?
Lord Greystroke, Tarzan of the Apes is Edgar Rice Burrough’s golden-boy exemplar of “natural selection” used by the author to model the arrogance and ignorance of 19th Century colonial imperialism. Burroughs, like his contemporary brethren Arthur Conan Doyle, was a staunch Darwinist, promoting the iconoclast of European white male superiority (a white man lording through the jungle) over the “darkies” of primitive Africa with unashamed abandon.
The 21st Century challenges for the Continent are, to say the least, multifaceted and multi-layered, involving both culture and ecology, the horrors of global neglect and apocalyptic famine, incurable diseases and genocidal wars—all this, while being subjected to the kinds of exploitation (blood diamonds, Draconian oil deals, Machiavellian retribution, etc.) that will skewer or sidetrack any conventional re-telling or traditional interpretation of the Tarzan motif as conceived by Burroughs.
Any attempt to produce a “great summer action movie” rated PG-13 will be an anathema in the current zeitgeist and an historical anachronism that by now belong not in the 19th Century—for that matter, not even inside the Matrix of a 1999 Disney cartoon. Except for the ignorant, Tarzan’s time has past.
wow, freeeedrick. that was a mouthful to read. anyway – i have read and enjoyed all the tarzan books from burroughs, even though after a while they all became formulated in plot and characters. but as with anything i am sure sommers will just bastardize this historical character. maybe put tarzan in space where the family crash lands on a planet – they die and leave their son to be raised by aliens?? then sommers could incorporate that hack idea of battle suits once again and put them on tarzan.