SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Experimenting a different approach to tell the story of a well-known character from the literatures is commendable, but God, who suggested it to be an unimaginative thick borefest?
The story is drappy & takes itself too seriously! Nothing but a bucket full of dipshit. Who cares about the topics of slavery, politics or wars in a Tarzan film? This is a movie that tries to be scholarly than it never needs to be & swings across like a pretentious, overly dramatized buzzkill! Why almost every motion picture has to be dark unnecessarily? To copy off Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy vibe? When did movies stop having fun?
Named as The Legend of Tarzan, the makers did not even try to spell the character out for us, let alone fleshing him out! But, it's totally requisite for him to take his shirt off to brawl with a gorilla & remain so afterwards. Hell, Jane (Margot Robbie) has more passable moments than the man of the picture. None gives two cents worth of attention for Jane's feelings or her interactions with the tribal natives. And one can say the same about the rest of the pseudo characters too. You get to care about no one. Samuel L. Jackson stars, because well… he is Samuel L. Jackson. One does not know who & why his persona (Dr. Williams) is around since King Leopold II didn't invite him to seek for Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgård), as opposed to what he claimed.
While the screenwriters have attempted to write scenes of the origin fairly interesting to watch, it finds little connection with the main storyline, before being hampered down by the civilization counterpart. One should be rewarded if able to locate a shrewd of intelligence in the script. Jungle occupants speaking fluent English, parting ways to seek help in a forest & Captain Léon Rom (Christoph Waltz) still having Jane captive even after achieving his mission are few of the many idiotic scenes. Why do you need to tuck slow fillers within gaps to extend the runtime? Why?
Cinematography? Has trouble being consistent in its style. Background music? Lazy, sometimes sluggish & ridiculous. Visual effects? Subpar, especially seen through the ostrich. Stunts? Loser fed.
If at all there are vindications for the ticket money spent on this garbage, it's the production design first of all. The fog, the forest & the tombs are eye candies. But even then, it induces a consciousness of fakeness throughout. You could easily tell it all belongs to a movie studio set. Humor dissipates yet stands out at parts. Younger Jane's aging effect's deliciously executed. Tarzan's communication with the wild animals & their recruitment for the climax storm are great to watch.