The director and producer of The Legend Of Tarzan talk to us about making the movie…
The Legend Of Tarzanswings into UK cinemas this week.
Heres how it all panned out…
Lets start with something obvious: whyTarzan?
And I read all these Hollywood scripts that they kept sending me, and none of them did that.
Thats something that Im very curious about.
Everything now is an origin story, even things that arent really origin stories.
Was there pressure to push in?
But the origin story isnt straightforward origin story, it refracts.
Is it an origin story?
DY:It gives you context, and its kinda fun.
How did you come to cast Alexander Skarsgard?
DY:I was looking at all these actors.
Alex had this quality of having a really beautiful body and also being able to act really well.
What I like about Alex is his length, his tallness, his verticality.
In reinventing Tarzan for a modern audience, I wanted this grace.
I didnt want width, he needed to have a poise.
He was actually my first choice, and I met a few other guys but I never wavered.
And somehow he brings that to his performance.
DY:The movie treads a line like that.
How do you find that?
DB:Also, flashbacks really help in there.
Youre actually contextualising, you actually establish that he really is one of them.
If it wasnt his brother, the gorilla would naturally kill him.
Its interesting that you right away mentioned the colours.
I had the feeling that the identity was very strong.
I wanted to know what you had in mind and how you worked with those colours.
What scenes did you see this morning?
Throughout the movie, there is a very careful shift.
It was always intended to support the drama, or the emotion of the scene.
When he was fighting the monkey, what was he doing really?
Was it a puppet, or was there a stand-in?
How did you do that?
DY:We had a stunt stand-in who would be the gorilla.
DB:Or a ball on the end of a stick.
We didnt do any motion capture, the apes are completely CG.
There are so many different, very high quality, digital creatures out there.
DY:You just get the best animators, which we did.
And its partly about the characters within our story, and you deliver story.
Our animals, we made them as photorealistically as we could.
DB:Even though they dont exist, because theyre giant apes.
They were pretty bloody scary.
You wouldnt find anything quite as big as Tarzans brother in the wild.
Youre aware of it, and you try and learn from other peoples mistakes.
DB:Then we try and find another day and another week.
You cant give up.
DY:We were running out of time last week, werent we?
But now, none of the animation I wish wed done differently.
Theres a scene in the trailer where Margot has to scream and she says oh, like a damsel.
I gather that Jane is quite modern.
DY:Shes feisty.
Shes quite modern and feisty, shes quite punchy.
Tell us the story about how she punched Alex.
DY:They were doing a love-making scene, and I just said could you slap Alex?
They were getting quite intense Margots very committed, and she really gets into a zone.
So I said to her Margot, I know this sounds crazy, but could you punch him?
Poor old Alex went Ow!
Where did she punch him, in the face?
DB:No, the arm.
We know him as being young, and you have to define what kind of man he is becoming.
DY:Hes a man stuck between two worlds.
But he finds real peace, and completeness, when he goes back to Africa.
DB:Which is where he met Jane.
DY:The Kuba are great, and they bring them into his bigger family.
Ultimately, its a celebration of family.
Whereas Tarzan and Jane have this huge family in Africa.
Where does Samuel L. Jackson come into it?
DY:Hes a real character.
DB:Which was genocide on a massive scale.
DY:It was the first great genocide.
Will we be hearing the famous Tarzan yell?
DB:Of course you will!
DY:We were mixing it this morning.
Does Alex do it himself?
DY:Theres an element of Alex, its made up of many elements.
DB:Alex is an element of it.
DY:The film is basically finished.
Were doing final visual effects, final mixing, its almost done-done.
What is weird is letting something go after youve lived with it for two years or more.
Thats actually hard, but in this case its quite relieving.
DY:Too much time.
DB:Were getting ready now to hand it over.
Could we go back to your digital monkeys?
One of the things that stood out was how you composed the fight scene.
DY:That was deliberate.
Basically, Akut doesnt want to kill Tarzan, he just wants to frighten him.
Because he would actually kill him, because hes such a big creature.
DB:We could have achieved it convincingly.
DY:We can achieve pretty much anything now.
Is it a joke to remind us that we know where we stand?
We know Tarzan…
DY:I love that mythic part.
Not mythic, I love that old-fashioned part of the story.
So its really about two human beings who save each other, in the totality of their lives.
I think thats beautiful, potentially, as an idea.
David Yates, David Barron, thank you very much.
The Legend Of Tarzanis in UK cinemas from July 6th.
