The King of the Media Jungle: Tarzan’s Century of Influence
Modern adaptations have attempted to navigate this. Greystoke ignored it. The Legend of Tarzan (2016) clumsily tried to invert it by making the villain a Belgian and casting black actors (Samuel L. Jackson, Djimon Hounsou) as heroic allies. Some contemporary works offer a post-colonial reading: Tarzan as a critique of civilization, showing that the "savage" is often more humane. TARZAN XXX.3gp
More critically, and later Hugh Hudson’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) sought to deconstruct the myth. Greystoke was a serious, almost tragic biopic. It starred Christophe Lambert (as a gritty, barely verbal Tarzan) and Sir Ralph Richardson. This version emphasized the horror of being torn between two worlds, concluding with Tarzan rejecting British aristocracy to return to the jungle. It won an Academy Award for makeup but was a sobering, non-commercial counterpoint to the Disneyfied version to come. The King of the Media Jungle: Tarzan’s Century