I came across this German teaser for the new TARZAN 3D starring Kellen Lutz and I thought, huh, wouldn’t this be bigger news? Apparently not seeing as there is not a single blip on any radar about this film even getting a DVD release in the States. That could be due to the fact that fully motion-captured movies have not been that great in recent years (ahem, MARS NEEDS MOMS). Even Robert Zemeckis has left them behind.
This new TARZAN 3D looks like it is a fully German production from director Reinhard Klooss. It looks nice, but nowhere near the level we have seen with BEOWULF or THE POLAR EXPRESS. The characters don’t have the dead-eye/uncanny valley effect we saw in the Zemeckis films. This trailer almost has a cell-shaded quality to it.
Plot: While in a remote part of Africa exploring a mineral cache in a mysterious cave, entrepreneur JOHN GREYSTOKE and his wife ALICE are killed in a tragic helicopter crash, leaving their three-year-old JOHN, JR. to fend for himself. Rescued by KALA, a gentle ape, the traumatized child is brought up by a band of mountain gorillas as one of their own, learning the ways of the wild as he grows into a strong and indepdendent young man known as TARZAN. At 14, Tarzan first encounters another human: JANE PORTER, a pretty and intrepid teen visiting Africa with her naturalist father. His contact with a creature so like himself leaves him unsettled and yearning for more.
The gorilla tribe’s longtime leader dies and is succeeded by a brutal silverback named TUBLAT, who settles an old score by driving Tarzan out of the group. As Tarzan wanders alone, he stumbles on the wreckage of the helicopter, where he unknowingly triggers a signal to his late father’s company. CLAYTON, a ruthlessly ambitious executive at Greystoke Industries, hires Jane and her father with a greedy scheme that will destroy the entire ecosystem. Jane, hoping to derail the plan, reconnects with Tarzan and becomes a target for both Clayton and Tublat. Facing deadly challenges from man and beast, Tarzan must use his jingle intuition and his human intellect to save his home and the woman he loves.
A spectacular animated safari into a vibrant and exotic landscape, TARZAN 3D is a gorgeously rendered, action-packed journey through a magnificently imagined world.
That plot synopsis is pretty much the story in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, verbatim. I can’t see this being anything other than a standard adaptation, but the 3D does give it a nice little boost in terms of international sales, but the background animation looks lacking compared to what we get from Pixar or Dreamworks. So, we may see it over here someday. What do you think? Does TARZAN 3D look any good?
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