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Description
Lets continue our Disney marathon with the final film of the Disney Renascence featuring a man that comes from two worlds.

In the mid-1860s, an English couple and their infant son are shipwrecked off the Congolese coast. The couple builds a treehouse but is killed by Sabor, a vicious leopardess. Kala, a female gorilla who recently lost her own child to Sabor, finds the human infant and takes him back to the jungle to raise as her own, despite the disapproval of her mate, Kerchak, who is also their group’s leader. Kala names him Tarzan. Years later, Tarzan has befriended other animals, including a young female gorilla named Terk and the paranoid male elephant, Tantor. Tarzan finds himself treated differently by the gorillas because of his appearance, making great efforts to improve himself and fit in with them. As a young man, Tarzan manages to kill Sabor, gaining Kerchak's reluctant respect. The gorilla troop's peaceful life is interrupted by the arrival of a group of human explorers from England, consisting of Professor Porter, his daughter, Jane, and their hunter-guide Clayton. The explorers are looking to study gorillas. Jane accidentally becomes separated from the group and chased by a baboon troop, with Tarzan saving her. He recognizes that she is human, just like he is. Jane leads Tarzan back to their camp, where Porter and Clayton both take great interest in him. Despite Kerchak's warnings to be wary of the humans and stay away from them, Tarzan continues to return to the camp, where Porter, Clayton, and Jane teach him to speak English as well as what the human world is really like; he and Jane also begin to fall in love. However, they have a difficult time convincing Tarzan to lead them to the gorillas due to his fear of betraying Kerchak's trust. The explorers' ship soon returns to retrieve them. Jane asks Tarzan to return with them to England, but Tarzan asks Jane to stay with him when Jane says it is unlikely they will ever return. Clayton convinces Tarzan that Jane will stay with him forever as long as he leads them to the gorillas. Tarzan agrees and leads the trio to the nesting grounds, while Terk and Tantor lure Kerchak away. Porter and Jane are excited to mingle with the gorillas, but Kerchak returns and attacks them. Tarzan holds Kerchak back while the humans escape. Kerchak accuses Tarzan of betraying the troop, making him feel conflicted and isolated. Kala takes Tarzan to the treehouse where she found him, shows him his true past, and says that she wants him to be happy whatever he decides. Tarzan puts on a suit that once belonged to his father, signifying his decision to go to England. When Tarzan boards the ship with Jane and Porter the next day, they are all betrayed by Clayton and his team of stowaway poachers. Now that he knows where the nesting grounds are, Clayton plans to seize the gorillas and return with them to England to sell them and locks Tarzan, Jane, and Porter away to prevent them from interfering. Now Taran must escape and enlist his allies to stop Clayton and help the gorillas.

Pros:
1. Tarzan is a very well developed and likeable protagonist.
2. Jane, Kala, and Kercheck are great supporting characters.
3. Porter, Terk, and Tantor are pretty good side characters.
4. Clayton is a pretty decent villain, and Sabor serves as a neat side villain.
5. Some pretty decent comedy.
6. Awesome and suspenseful action scenes.
7. Very well handled drama.
8. The vocal performances are very well acted.
9. Mark Mancina delivers an amazing score. And Phil Collins provides some pretty good songs like "Two Worlds", "You'll Be In My Heart", "Son of Man", "Trashin' the Camp". and "Strangers Like Me".
10. Stupendous and beautiful animation that contains well designed characters, extremely detailed and well crafted backgrounds, and amazing effects.
11. A very well balanced light/dark tone.
12. The story is very well written and executed.

Cons:
1. Terk can get annoying at times, and Kercheck can be unlikeable throughout the first act of the film.
2. There are a few jokes that fall flat.

Overall:
This is an amazing adaptation of the book, and an amazing film to end the Disney Renascence on.

Rating:
9/10 (Amazing)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. Disney's Tarzan was the first Tarzan film to be animated. Thomas Schumacher, the President of Walt Disney Feature Animation, expressed surprise that there weren't any previous attempts to animate a Tarzan film, saying, "Here is a book that cries out to be animated. Yet we're the first filmmakers to have ever taken Tarzan from page to screen and presented the character as Burroughs intended." He noted that in animated form, Tarzan can connect to the animals on a deeper level than he can in live action versions.
2. Following work on A Goofy Movie in late 1994, Kevin Lima was approached to direct Tarzan by studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg who desired to have the film animated at a Canadian-based satellite television animation studio, in which Lima was reluctant to do because of the animation complexities being done by inexperienced animators. Following Katzenberg's resignation from the Walt Disney Company, Lima was again contacted about the project by Michael Eisner, who decided to have the film produced through the Feature Animation division by which Lima signed on. Following this, Lima decided to read Tarzan of the Apes where he began to visualize the theme of two hands being held up against each other. That image became an important symbol of the relationships between characters in the film, and a metaphor of Tarzan's search for identity. "I was looking for something that would underscore Tarzan's sense of being alike, yet different from his ape family", Lima said, "The image of touching hands was first conceived as an idea for how Tarzan realizes he and Jane are physically the same." Following his two-month study of the book, Lima approached his friend, Chris Buck, who had just wrapped up work as a supervising animator on Pocahontas, to ask if he would be interested in serving as co-director. Buck was initially skeptical but accepted after hearing Lima's ideas for the film. By April 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported that the film was in its preliminary stages with Lima and Buck directing after Disney had obtained the story rights from the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
3. Tab Murphy, who had just finished work on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was attracted to the theme of man-versus-nature in Tarzan, and began developing a treatment in January 1995. For the third act, Murphy suggested that Tarzan should leave for England, as he did in the book, but the directors felt that it was incompatible with their central theme of what defines a family. In order to keep Tarzan in the jungle, the third act needed to be restructured by redefining the role of the villain and inventing a way to endanger the gorillas. In this departure from Burrough's novel, a villain named Clayton was created to serve as a guide for Professor Archimedes Q. Porter and his daughter, Jane. In addition to this, Kerchak was re-characterized from a savage silverback into the protector of the gorilla tribe.
4. In January 1997, husband-and-wife screenwriting duo Bob Tzudiker and Noni White were hired to help refocus and add humor to the script as a way to balance the emotional weight of the film. Comedy writer Dave Reynolds was also brought on to write humorous dialogue for the film. "I was initially hired on for six weeks of rewriting and punch-up", Reynolds said, "A year and a half later, I finished. Either they liked my work, or I was very bad at time management." One challenge the writers faced was how Tarzan should learn about his past. "When Kala takes Tarzan back to the tree house, she is essentially telling him that he was adopted", Bonnie Arnold, the producer for Tarzan, said, "This is necessitated by him encountering humans and recognizing he is one of them." As a way to explore the feelings in that scene, Arnold brought in adoptive parents to talk with the story team. Another issue was the inherent and overt racism in the original Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan. The writers consciously chose to not include any African characters in order to avoid this topic.
5. Brendan Fraser auditioned twice for the title character before portraying the lead role in George of the Jungle. Tony Goldwyn auditioned for the title role as well, and according to co-director Kevin Lima, Goldwyn landed it because of "the animal sense" in his readings, along with some "killer baboon imitations". For the signature Tarzan yell, Lima and Buck desired the traditional yell, although Goldwyn faced difficulties with providing the yell stating "It's really hard to do, physically." Co-star Brian Blessed ultimately provided the yell.
6. Terk was originally written as a male gorilla, but following Rosie O'Donnell's audition, Terk was re-characterized as a female. Furthermore, Woody Allen was initially cast as the neurotic elephant Tantor. However, Katzenberg persuaded Allen to leave the project for DreamWorks Pictures' Antz and in exchange, the studio would distribute his next four films. Agreeing to the deal, Allen departed from Tarzan in 1996 and was replaced by Wayne Knight.
7. The animators were split into two teams, one in Paris and one in Burbank. The 6000-mile distance and difference in time zones posed challenges for collaboration, especially for scenes with Tarzan and Jane. Glen Keane was the supervising animator for Tarzan at the Paris studio, while Ken Duncan was the supervising animator for Jane at the studio in Burbank. To make coordinating scenes with multiple characters easier, the animators used a system called a "scene machine" that could send rough drawings between the two animation studios. Meanwhile, following production on Mulan, two hundred animators at the Feature Animation Florida satellite studio provided character animation and special effects animation where the filmmakers had to discuss their work through daily video conferences among the three studios.
8. Keane was inspired to make Tarzan "surf" through the trees because of his son's interest in extreme sports, and he began working on a test scene. The directors expressed concern that Tarzan would be made into a "surfer dude", but when Keane revealed the test animation to them they liked it enough to use it in the film during the "Son of Man" sequence, with movements inspired by skateboarder Tony Hawk. Although Keane initially thought that Tarzan would be easy to animate because he only wears a loincloth, he realized that he would need a fully working human musculature while still being able to move like an animal. To figure out Tarzan's movements, the Paris animation team studied different animals in order to transpose their movements onto him. They also consulted with a professor of anatomy. This resulted in Tarzan being the first Disney character to accurately display working muscles.
9. To prepare for animating the gorillas, the animation team attended lectures on primates, made trips to zoos, and studied nature documentaries, with a group of animators also witnessing a gorilla dissection to learn about their musculature. In 1996, the animation team went on a two-week safari in Kenya to take reference photographs and observe the animals. On the trip, they visited Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda to view mountain gorillas in the wild, and get inspiration for the setting. In 2000, Chris Buck repeated the journey accompanied by journalists to promote the film's home video release.
10. To create the sweeping 3D backgrounds, Tarzan's production team developed a 3D painting and rendering technique known as Deep Canvas (a term coined by artist/engineer Eric Daniels). This technique allows artists to produce CGI background that looks like a traditional painting, according to art director Daniel St. Pierre. (The software keeps track of brushstrokes applied in 3D space.)[18] For this advancement, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the creators of Deep Canvas a Technical Achievement Award in 2003.
11. In 2000, the film was released on VHS and DVD. A 2-Disc Collector's Edition was released later that year. In 2005, Disney released the Tarzan Special Edition on DVD. In 2014, Disney released the Tarzan Special Edition on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD.
12. The film spawned two direct to video sequels: Tarzan and Jane in 2002, and Tarzan II in 2005.
13. A TV series based on the film titled The Legend of Tarzan aired from 2001 to 2003. Three unaired episodes from the series were used for the stories in Tarzan and Jane.
14. The film also spawned several video games. A direct tie-in for PlayStation, Nintendo 64, PC, and Game Boy Color, a Disney Activity Center for PC, Tarzan Untamed for PS2 and Nintendo GameCube, Tarzan Jungle Tumble for PC, and Tarzan: Return to the Jungle for Game Boy Advance. Tarzan's home, "Deep Jungle", is a playable world in the Disney/Square Enix video game Kingdom Hearts released for PlayStation 2 in 2002. The world was originally meant to return in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, but ultimately did not appear and has not appeared in any subsequent Kingdom Hearts games due to Disney losing the rights to Tarzan.

Description
Lets continue our Disney marathon with the final film of the Disney Renascence featuring a man that comes from two worlds.

In the mid-1860s, an English couple and their infant son are shipwrecked off the Congolese coast. The couple builds a treehouse but is killed by Sabor, a vicious leopardess. Kala, a female gorilla who recently lost her own child to Sabor, finds the human infant and takes him back to the jungle to raise as her own, despite the disapproval of her mate, Kerchak, who is also their group’s leader. Kala names him Tarzan. Years later, Tarzan has befriended other animals, including a young female gorilla named Terk and the paranoid male elephant, Tantor. Tarzan finds himself treated differently by the gorillas because of his appearance, making great efforts to improve himself and fit in with them. As a young man, Tarzan manages to kill Sabor, gaining Kerchak's reluctant respect. The gorilla troop's peaceful life is interrupted by the arrival of a group of human explorers from England, consisting of Professor Porter, his daughter, Jane, and their hunter-guide Clayton. The explorers are looking to study gorillas. Jane accidentally becomes separated from the group and chased by a baboon troop, with Tarzan saving her. He recognizes that she is human, just like he is. Jane leads Tarzan back to their camp, where Porter and Clayton both take great interest in him. Despite Kerchak's warnings to be wary of the humans and stay away from them, Tarzan continues to return to the camp, where Porter, Clayton, and Jane teach him to speak English as well as what the human world is really like; he and Jane also begin to fall in love. However, they have a difficult time convincing Tarzan to lead them to the gorillas due to his fear of betraying Kerchak's trust. The explorers' ship soon returns to retrieve them. Jane asks Tarzan to return with them to England, but Tarzan asks Jane to stay with him when Jane says it is unlikely they will ever return. Clayton convinces Tarzan that Jane will stay with him forever as long as he leads them to the gorillas. Tarzan agrees and leads the trio to the nesting grounds, while Terk and Tantor lure Kerchak away. Porter and Jane are excited to mingle with the gorillas, but Kerchak returns and attacks them. Tarzan holds Kerchak back while the humans escape. Kerchak accuses Tarzan of betraying the troop, making him feel conflicted and isolated. Kala takes Tarzan to the treehouse where she found him, shows him his true past, and says that she wants him to be happy whatever he decides. Tarzan puts on a suit that once belonged to his father, signifying his decision to go to England. When Tarzan boards the ship with Jane and Porter the next day, they are all betrayed by Clayton and his team of stowaway poachers. Now that he knows where the nesting grounds are, Clayton plans to seize the gorillas and return with them to England to sell them and locks Tarzan, Jane, and Porter away to prevent them from interfering. Now Taran must escape and enlist his allies to stop Clayton and help the gorillas.

Pros:
1. Tarzan is a very well developed and likeable protagonist.
2. Jane, Kala, and Kercheck are great supporting characters.
3. Porter, Terk, and Tantor are pretty good side characters.
4. Clayton is a pretty decent villain, and Sabor serves as a neat side villain.
5. Some pretty decent comedy.
6. Awesome and suspenseful action scenes.
7. Very well handled drama.
8. The vocal performances are very well acted.
9. Mark Mancina delivers an amazing score. And Phil Collins provides some pretty good songs like "Two Worlds", "You'll Be In My Heart", "Son of Man", "Trashin' the Camp". and "Strangers Like Me".
10. Stupendous and beautiful animation that contains well designed characters, extremely detailed and well crafted backgrounds, and amazing effects.
11. A very well balanced light/dark tone.
12. The story is very well written and executed.

Cons:
1. Terk can get annoying at times, and Kercheck can be unlikeable throughout the first act of the film.
2. There are a few jokes that fall flat.

Overall:
This is an amazing adaptation of the book, and an amazing film to end the Disney Renascence on.

Rating:
9/10 (Amazing)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. Disney's Tarzan was the first Tarzan film to be animated. Thomas Schumacher, the President of Walt Disney Feature Animation, expressed surprise that there weren't any previous attempts to animate a Tarzan film, saying, "Here is a book that cries out to be animated. Yet we're the first filmmakers to have ever taken Tarzan from page to screen and presented the character as Burroughs intended." He noted that in animated form, Tarzan can connect to the animals on a deeper level than he can in live action versions.
2. Following work on A Goofy Movie in late 1994, Kevin Lima was approached to direct Tarzan by studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg who desired to have the film animated at a Canadian-based satellite television animation studio, in which Lima was reluctant to do because of the animation complexities being done by inexperienced animators. Following Katzenberg's resignation from the Walt Disney Company, Lima was again contacted about the project by Michael Eisner, who decided to have the film produced through the Feature Animation division by which Lima signed on. Following this, Lima decided to read Tarzan of the Apes where he began to visualize the theme of two hands being held up against each other. That image became an important symbol of the relationships between characters in the film, and a metaphor of Tarzan's search for identity. "I was looking for something that would underscore Tarzan's sense of being alike, yet different from his ape family", Lima said, "The image of touching hands was first conceived as an idea for how Tarzan realizes he and Jane are physically the same." Following his two-month study of the book, Lima approached his friend, Chris Buck, who had just wrapped up work as a supervising animator on Pocahontas, to ask if he would be interested in serving as co-director. Buck was initially skeptical but accepted after hearing Lima's ideas for the film. By April 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported that the film was in its preliminary stages with Lima and Buck directing after Disney had obtained the story rights from the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
3. Tab Murphy, who had just finished work on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was attracted to the theme of man-versus-nature in Tarzan, and began developing a treatment in January 1995. For the third act, Murphy suggested that Tarzan should leave for England, as he did in the book, but the directors felt that it was incompatible with their central theme of what defines a family. In order to keep Tarzan in the jungle, the third act needed to be restructured by redefining the role of the villain and inventing a way to endanger the gorillas. In this departure from Burrough's novel, a villain named Clayton was created to serve as a guide for Professor Archimedes Q. Porter and his daughter, Jane. In addition to this, Kerchak was re-characterized from a savage silverback into the protector of the gorilla tribe.
4. In January 1997, husband-and-wife screenwriting duo Bob Tzudiker and Noni White were hired to help refocus and add humor to the script as a way to balance the emotional weight of the film. Comedy writer Dave Reynolds was also brought on to write humorous dialogue for the film. "I was initially hired on for six weeks of rewriting and punch-up", Reynolds said, "A year and a half later, I finished. Either they liked my work, or I was very bad at time management." One challenge the writers faced was how Tarzan should learn about his past. "When Kala takes Tarzan back to the tree house, she is essentially telling him that he was adopted", Bonnie Arnold, the producer for Tarzan, said, "This is necessitated by him encountering humans and recognizing he is one of them." As a way to explore the feelings in that scene, Arnold brought in adoptive parents to talk with the story team. Another issue was the inherent and overt racism in the original Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan. The writers consciously chose to not include any African characters in order to avoid this topic.
5. Brendan Fraser auditioned twice for the title character before portraying the lead role in George of the Jungle. Tony Goldwyn auditioned for the title role as well, and according to co-director Kevin Lima, Goldwyn landed it because of "the animal sense" in his readings, along with some "killer baboon imitations". For the signature Tarzan yell, Lima and Buck desired the traditional yell, although Goldwyn faced difficulties with providing the yell stating "It's really hard to do, physically." Co-star Brian Blessed ultimately provided the yell.
6. Terk was originally written as a male gorilla, but following Rosie O'Donnell's audition, Terk was re-characterized as a female. Furthermore, Woody Allen was initially cast as the neurotic elephant Tantor. However, Katzenberg persuaded Allen to leave the project for DreamWorks Pictures' Antz and in exchange, the studio would distribute his next four films. Agreeing to the deal, Allen departed from Tarzan in 1996 and was replaced by Wayne Knight.
7. The animators were split into two teams, one in Paris and one in Burbank. The 6000-mile distance and difference in time zones posed challenges for collaboration, especially for scenes with Tarzan and Jane. Glen Keane was the supervising animator for Tarzan at the Paris studio, while Ken Duncan was the supervising animator for Jane at the studio in Burbank. To make coordinating scenes with multiple characters easier, the animators used a system called a "scene machine" that could send rough drawings between the two animation studios. Meanwhile, following production on Mulan, two hundred animators at the Feature Animation Florida satellite studio provided character animation and special effects animation where the filmmakers had to discuss their work through daily video conferences among the three studios.
8. Keane was inspired to make Tarzan "surf" through the trees because of his son's interest in extreme sports, and he began working on a test scene. The directors expressed concern that Tarzan would be made into a "surfer dude", but when Keane revealed the test animation to them they liked it enough to use it in the film during the "Son of Man" sequence, with movements inspired by skateboarder Tony Hawk. Although Keane initially thought that Tarzan would be easy to animate because he only wears a loincloth, he realized that he would need a fully working human musculature while still being able to move like an animal. To figure out Tarzan's movements, the Paris animation team studied different animals in order to transpose their movements onto him. They also consulted with a professor of anatomy. This resulted in Tarzan being the first Disney character to accurately display working muscles.
9. To prepare for animating the gorillas, the animation team attended lectures on primates, made trips to zoos, and studied nature documentaries, with a group of animators also witnessing a gorilla dissection to learn about their musculature. In 1996, the animation team went on a two-week safari in Kenya to take reference photographs and observe the animals. On the trip, they visited Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda to view mountain gorillas in the wild, and get inspiration for the setting. In 2000, Chris Buck repeated the journey accompanied by journalists to promote the film's home video release.
10. To create the sweeping 3D backgrounds, Tarzan's production team developed a 3D painting and rendering technique known as Deep Canvas (a term coined by artist/engineer Eric Daniels). This technique allows artists to produce CGI background that looks like a traditional painting, according to art director Daniel St. Pierre. (The software keeps track of brushstrokes applied in 3D space.)[18] For this advancement, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the creators of Deep Canvas a Technical Achievement Award in 2003.
11. In 2000, the film was released on VHS and DVD. A 2-Disc Collector's Edition was released later that year. In 2005, Disney released the Tarzan Special Edition on DVD. In 2014, Disney released the Tarzan Special Edition on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD.
12. The film spawned two direct to video sequels: Tarzan and Jane in 2002, and Tarzan II in 2005.
13. A TV series based on the film titled The Legend of Tarzan aired from 2001 to 2003. Three unaired episodes from the series were used for the stories in Tarzan and Jane.
14. The film also spawned several video games. A direct tie-in for PlayStation, Nintendo 64, PC, and Game Boy Color, a Disney Activity Center for PC, Tarzan Untamed for PS2 and Nintendo GameCube, Tarzan Jungle Tumble for PC, and Tarzan: Return to the Jungle for Game Boy Advance. Tarzan's home, "Deep Jungle", is a playable world in the Disney/Square Enix video game Kingdom Hearts released for PlayStation 2 in 2002. The world was originally meant to return in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, but ultimately did not appear and has not appeared in any subsequent Kingdom Hearts games due to Disney losing the rights to Tarzan.