The Problem With Tarzan

okay so we need to talk about Tarzan um I'm kind of shocked and amazed that we have to go here but here we are so last month I made a video talking about how Disney music works more or less and in that video I blamed Phil Collins for ending the Disney Renaissance the decade between 89 and 99 where Disney had an amazing run of animated feature films and people went ballistic in the comments section I even got a request on my patreon page to kind of address how I threw Phil Collins under the bus and well here we are even though in that last video I'd lazily threw up the text it wasn't a musical to try and briefly explain my position because like the whole video is about how Disney has always look to musical theater for inspiration and I'm not really gonna go into it you can just go check out that video if you want to know more but the backlash to that comment is really emblematic of the entire problem with Tarzan people got really upset about me complaining about Phil Collins but not Tarzan let me ask you a question how is it that a film with the largest budget out of any of the Disney Renaissance films that had great reviews by critics as opposed to some other Renaissance films turned a great profit and even developed new technologies for animation you can go check out bread swords video and Treasure Planet if you're curious about deep canvas technology but how is it it's something with all that success was the film that ended the Disney Renaissance think about it why is it that Jane is never included in a Disney Princess ensemble you're probably thinking it's cause well she's not a princess right well neither is Megara or Esmerelda but you see people talking about them all the time why don't they still Tarzan merge with all the other Disney stuff at Hot Topic why is it so hard to find something that's Tarzan themed why is it that Clayton isn't remembered as one of the big bad guys like Ursula or Gaston or scar why is it that everyone loses their minds over these new live-action Disney remakes but not a single person cared or even saw the live-action Tarzan remake back in 2016 why does no one care about Tarzan cuz not even Disney cares about Tarzan and you want to know how I know that because that 2016 live-action remake wasn't even made by Disney it was made by Warner Brothers so here's the thing Tarzan's like a really great film the visuals are spectacular the animation is great I love the characters the writing is fantastic I really like what the composer mark mancinas did with a score like adding this little love light motif for Jane and Tarzan [Music] and yeah I even like the Phil Collins songs in their own right but there's this critical fundamental aspect of Tarzan that completely failed and it's why Tarzan hasn't really been able to stand the test of time when you compare it to the other Renaissance films so in my last video I talked about how Disney music is so popular because it follows the tradition of musical theater and how Howard Ashman the brains of the operation knew all these techniques and consciously made choices that would have these films closer emulate a traditional music theater style and he ultimately made Disney a ludicrous amount of money and because these films were designed as musicals it's really worth looking at these films more like you would a traditional musical because like yeah you can just look at these like they're straight films but if you do then you're gonna kind of miss out on some of the nuance that made these films so great for example there's this old adage in musical theater an ancient proverb if you will when the emotion becomes too strong for speech you sing and when it becomes too strong for song you dance this is how and why you find people who market themselves as a triple threat these are performers who are trained actors trained singers and trained dancers which is more or less critical to any leading roles in any musical you've got to be able to do all three you can very easily find examples of this in traditional theater pick any musical and people are talking until they're overcome with emotion and break out into song and when the intensity of the song isn't enough they break out into dance not accomplishing this transition smoothly comes off as jarring and it's not only something that can feel kind of cheesy but doing this incorrectly is the go-to move when people want to make fun of musicals so beautiful beef net [Music] don't see it's okay you know let's just walk now I mentioned this in my last video but the animators at Disney commended Ashman for his ability to seamlessly transition from spoken word to song you wouldn't even realize it was happening we had dialogue in the script parts like not enough we will back that vamp up under the earlier dialogue so he won't be speaking over that musical vamp so you make the transitions between the sung stuff and the dialogue stuff as seamless as possible and you don't even realize that you've gone from sort of a scene where characters are just interacting naturally suddenly they're singing but but the change just happens kind of without even noticing it well that's the whole point that's what good musical theater would do bad musical theater is just breaking out into song because you feel like it with absolutely no preparation having this smooth transition won't immediately make your musical fantastic and at the same time I'm sure you're gonna find great examples of people just jumping into song I'm sure of it but the idea behind transitioning between these varying tiers of emotional intensity is to organically express how a character's emotional intensity will change over time so let's take a look at a clear example let's use under the scene it opens with Sebastian talking to Ariel well you get your head out it acknowledged and back in their water where it belong then we get a vamp underneath Sebastian talking to Ariel Sebastian that breaks out in a song but it's a solo to seaweed [Music] and as the song builds and builds we get more voices acquire and oh would you look at that there are fish dancing it's a giant ensemble dance number now this is in essence just a perfect example of how to do it and you can see this everywhere in Disney like right here Simba's talking he's talking over a vamp and then he breaks into song and the set changes and although it's highly stylized you can see how this is an interpretation of a dance number it doesn't necessarily interrupt your suspension of disbelief you can still believe that these are animals Lumiere opens the number by talking and is almost immediately joined by music with deepest pride he breaks into song be guest be our guest put our service to the test and we finish with again a giant ensemble dance number this is more or less our cut-and-dry musical theater formula but what's so important about this formula is that it demonstrates the intensity of how the character feels you the audience form a deeper emotional connection with these characters because you can better understand and experience how they feel through the medium of a musical theater as Sebastian has overcome with his love for living under the sea and wanting to keep Ariel away from the surface world a song builds and builds we get a better emotional understanding of how he feels about the sea and his desire to keep Ariel safe same with Simba and his desire to be king in lumière finally being able to host a guest this formula is critical to utilizing the language of musical theatre to communicate emotional information that you might not otherwise be able to get across to an audience if you were just making a non musical film we don't just get to see Ursula trying to sell Ariel on signing this contract we can feel it we get a better emotional understanding of her motivations and intentions same with scar and his plans same with the horrifying creepiness of Frollo and really nothing communicates who what and why Gaston is the way he is better than his song [Music] this translates to any and all characters but especially the protagonist that titular I want song is them showing the audience their feelings motivations and who they are as a character it's an opportunity for the audience to form a visceral connection with our main character through a means that otherwise isn't available in traditional film they're expressing themselves with an emotional intensity that is otherwise not possible with just the spoken word within the context of this musical theater system they don't just want something it's who and what they are as a character and you feel that the characters actually run out of words can't express themselves anymore and it has to come out in song you get to a certain point where the crab has to convince the mermaid not to go up above the water and change your life so he has to sing under the sea and she has the same part of your world because she wants to go up to dry land so badly so in the Little Mermaid Ariel wants to be where the people are and she sings it to us in Beauty and the Beast Belle wants something more than this provincial life and she sings it to us in Aladdin Aladdin wants people to look closer and find out that there's so much more to him and he sings it to us and the Lion King Simba wants to be the main event like no King was before and he sings it to us and Pocahontas she wants to be free to explore once more just around the Riverbend and she sings it to us and Hunchback of Notre Dame Quasimodo wants to spend a single day out there and he sings it to us and Hercules Hercules wants to find where he belongs and he sings it to us in Milan she wants to her outward appearance be a reflection of who she feels she is inside and she sings it to us in Tarzan he wants to know more about the strangers like him and Tarzan doesn't sing it to us Phil Collins does this is without a shadow of a doubt a colossal issue like yes you can look at the lyrics and say sure this is an I want song the lyrics are explicitly saying what Tarzan wants I want to know can you show me I want to know about the strangers like me but it's delivered by Phil Collins disembodied voice making him a narrator songs simply on the soundtrack is if the narrator is saying something as if the narrator's staying alive staying alive who is singing I've been fed believe you take it seriously looking at a structure whose singing goddess is God out there who's singing that is the narrator's voice who's singing that is the filmmaker making a comment compare that to something like Hercules where yeah there are narrators but we get to see them the muses had some kind of tangible characterization but in Tarzan since the narrator's voice isn't given any kind of representation in the story a lot of the emotional weight provided by the music doesn't stick to the narrative now you can't form an emotional connection with Tarzan's wants and desires the same way you might be able to with someone like Hercules or Mulan because on that same deep emotional level it doesn't really feel like it's Tarzan that has these wants we don't get and I want song we get a he wants song and the part that is the most infuriating about this is that it was done on purpose when talking about the music one of the directors Kevin lima said this I did not want Tarzan to sing I just couldn't see this half-naked man sitting on a branch breaking out in song I thought it would be ridiculous which like okay I'm sorry were we to assume that this film wouldn't be ridiculous because you have a monkey wearing a boot like a crown leading a swarm of monkeys with an umbrella you have an elephant that is aware of and concerned by water sanitation we're supposed to believe that your main character who spent his whole life in the jungle just shaves for the hell of it there's a woman in the opening of this film who is shipwrecked and stranded somewhere in the jungles of Africa but somehow happens to maintain perfect ringlets in her hair there is a scene in this film where our eighth man catches a victorian-era woman by the feet he doesn't just catch her by his feet but he supports her entire weight by interlocking his toes with hers and carrying her by her foot with his feet all while also supporting the weight of a swarm of some kind of rabid primate while also swinging through the jungle on a vine I think we passed ridiculous a while ago but what's more frustrating is that that's the whole point what's not ridiculous about a crab singing to a bunch of talking fish or a candelabra putting on a dinner show with a bunch of dancing cutlery or a couple going at Mach 17 without suffocating or freezing while singing and being able to hear each other on a carpet what's not ridiculous about lyon hamlet or three gargoyles from a medieval cathedral playing poker and singing on a piano or literally anything from Pocahontas the absurdity is what makes these films work seriously animation already requires a greater suspension of disbelief you have to believe that the drawings you're watching are moving and are in some way alive and with that more abstract sense of what is and is not real it's easier to sell people on characters breaking out into song and dance which is the critical language of musical theater Howard saw the animation as a way of keeping musicals alive because there's an inherent stylisation and animation music may have more license in many ways the vehicle of animation serves to amplify the emotional intensity provided by musical theater the cartoons make the singing better in terms of the story which is why the live-action remakes will never be as good as the animated originals so yeah there's really no reason to not have a scene where Jane's trying to teach Tarzan in English and as they start to understand each other more and more they start singing and you can feel some kind of connection between them because at the moment the vibe is that Jane's just really into country boys and finds a half-naked dude in the jungle starts drawing fan art of them and they gets all excited about planning her group cosplay when he agrees to go home with her and then decides to abandon her entire life to live in the jungle for a few weeks before she dies from some kind of infectious disease that's foreign to her immune system it goes by kind of quick and we don't really get a great sense of her motivations or really anything about her as a character so not only did the director our guest directors completely missed the boat on how and why these films were so astonishingly successful when it came to making Tarzan but they thought that they could just replace all of the intricate lattice work of what made these smells work in the first place with a really popular musician there's just a lot going on in this film it serves to undermine what made this Disney formula work in the first place and it never really seems to answer the problems that it creates even just the visual presentation is rough when it comes to these musical numbers they're mostly just played over some kind of montage which more or less turns the musical numbers into music videos that interrupt the flow of the narrative and then there's a tradition of music as background which has been involving music video sensitive to it to it in place music songs simply on the soundtrack is if the narrator is saying something and that's not to say that montages don't work necessarily you just look at one last hope from Hercules err I'll make a man interview from Milan both montages although both centering around our main character are from the point of view of one of the supporting characters in both instances these numbers serve to bring us emotionally closer to fill in Lee shin respectively but when you take that montage style and add that disembodied voice to it it just feels way more like a music video than a tune from a musical like if you like Phil Collins great if you like his songs in this film great there's nothing wrong with that and to be clear on its own I like the music that Collins wrote for Tarzan as well but these songs and the way that they're presented in this film brutally incapacitate the musical and emotional connection you make to the characters in the story take you'll be in my heart for example it opens with kala Tarzan's gorilla mom singing to him just take my hand and this is great this is like damn near perfect we're kind of getting this like baby mine moment from Dumbo this is a wonderful visceral connection it almost immediately cuts to Phil Collen singing which I can't play because the YouTube copyright bot is not my friend right now but cutting from kala singing to Phil Collins completely strips all the emotional connection you're making with this situation and this by definition isn't bad it's just okay alright let's just let's compare to something else let's look at can you feel the love tonight from The Lion King most of the song is sung by either Nala Simba or a choir but even when Nala and Simba are singing we don't see their characters mouths moving they aren't really like we aren't seeing them sing but check out how this number opens I can see what's happening what and they don't have oh it opens with Timon singing the lyrics to a Pumbaa who is responding by just talking this is our in universe transition to this song and the tune ends the same way it begins to moan finishes the song which anchors all of the emotional content within the context of the film and the characters [Music] but we never come back to kala and Tarzan going to sleep I mean we do but we never cut back to call us singing to Tarzan and having kala close the number so that big musical moment just kind of seeps away into the ether instead of staying in his mother-son moment or look at this scene here where the gorillas performed trash in the camp now this tune might be the biggest problem of the entire film so right off the bat the first thing you notice is that this isn't Phil Collins in fact this is the only number in the whole film that isn't performed by Phil Collins at all at the same time this is the only song that prominently an exclusively features characters from the cast so this tune has the potential to be our one and only song in this whole film that can actually function as a traditional Disney tune within the structure of the narrative and what do we get well listen to the lyrics [Music] there are no lyrics the only tune that even tries to follow the musical theater formula the Disney formula and it somehow prise open all of the issues with this film this number is somehow simultaneously the most Disney sounding song in the whole film while also being the least Disney sounding song in the entire Disney Catalog Collins's work excluded why did these gorillas get the only piece of music that wasn't written are performed by Collins what made these characters so special why are these characters suddenly and diegetic Lee performing music are gorillas just musical creatures in this world which again is in direct contrast to the entire point of what Ashman said made these animated films work you're already having to sit there and believe that animals and rocks can talk singing isn't that much of a stretch so not only does this number not seem to fit within the tone of the film because it's the only tune not performed by Collins but it also throws away the only opportunity that this film has to develop any kind of traditional musical characterization or motivation a la musical theatre again if you like this piece of music great I get it stuck in my head all the time but why is this piece of music here what is the purpose of this tune what does it accomplish what are you learning about the gorillas or tanta or the humans and why was it so important and emotionally significant that it needed its own musical number Howard said if you can take a song and you can remove it from the script and the script still makes sense you you haven't done your job powerfully at almost every twist and turn this film serves to undermine and invalidate what made the Disney formula work so well it's so bizarre to see it had a success of a Disney Renaissance film but completely missed the point on what made them so successful they took this formula that had made Disney an extraordinary amount of money almost completely ignore the nuance of it and just replaced it all with Phil Collins so at a glance you kind of get the impression that maybe one of the directors was just a giant Phil Collins fan and wanted him in the movie but this film is such an unbelievable deviation from the Renaissance pattern that you can't really help but think that they did all of this on purpose because like Kevin lima was the director for the goofy movie which immediately gives him sainthood in my book and Chris buck went on to co-direct frozen like the frozen so it's not like these guys are bad directors or anything they know what they're doing they know what's up so like benefit of the doubt here maybe they saw where the film industry was going like it had been a whole decade of these movies maybe people were just getting tired of the musical structure at the same time Pixar was gaining major traction with films like Toy Story and a bug's life that were explicitly non-musical no singing nothing so maybe the directors sought to undermine the Disney formula as a means of transitioning into a new era of Disney films because none of the films after tarzan were musicals not until princess in the frog in 2009 a decade later so they replaced all the music of a traditional Disney film with music from a very successful musician and so now almost two decades later people really love the music by Phil Collins but no one really cares about Tarzan no one wants Tarzan on a shirt because they never formed the same emotional connection with him that they did with the other Disney characters no one includes Jane and a Disney Princess lineup because she didn't get her own song not even a love song no one puts Clayton in with the fun Disney Villains like Ursula or Gaston or scar because he doesn't have his own musical number and no one batted an eye at this live-action remake so when you complain about the music in Tarzan everyone gets upset because they all like the music which is totally fair I'm not saying that you shouldn't but the fact that you don't get the same connection between the music and the characters like you do with the other Disney films is why the music is remembered so well but the film isn't I like Tarzan I like this movie and I like the music that Phil Collins wrote but together it misses what made the Disney Renaissance well the Disney Renaissance the directors got away with making a successful Disney movie without making a successful Disney movie it feels like a Disney movie without feeling like a Disney movie that's how it ended the Renaissance despite being a massively successful film and that is the problem with Tarzan [Music] thanks for watching I like to make my patrons from making these videos possible as an extra special thank you to Andrew Luke if and Matt claritin Doctorow Donovan Hodges DJ now Anandi Hayden Elsa Jordan Adams Karen rose now Who am I Enzo Bluto and gumball if you like this video be sure to subscribe and check out the other videos on my channel follow me on Twitter and twitch to have your musical questions answered live and if you really like what I'm doing then consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all I got now thanks for watching

Channel: Sideways

Views: 408,958

Rating: 4.6139226 out of 5

Keywords: Tarzan, Phil Collins, Phil, Collins, Disney, Musical, Musical Theater, Ashman, Howard Ashman, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Live Action Remake, Renaissance, Disney Renaissance, The Lion King, Hercules, Mulan, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Jungle Book, West Side Story, Triple Threat

Id: rMJ8FyQiM4Y

Length: 20min 40sec (1240 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/CluelessNuggetOfGold]

I somehow find myself watching every video on this sub and being happy I did it. Wish it was more active

[u/The_Vizier]

There's a live action tarzan remake??

[u/reformingindividual]

classic