At screenrant.com, there is an article entitled “Every Single Tarzan Movie (in Order of Release),” with commentary provided by authors Shawn S. Lealos and Angel Shaw.  When they get to Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, they note that this was the first Tarzan movie to receive Oscar nominations, saying, “This 1984 film is widely considered one of the best of the Tarzan movies.”

If so, I don’t share that opinion.  Although a movie should always be judged on its own merits, it is impossible to watch a Tarzan movie without comparing it to the novel or other Tarzan movies. In comparing the book with a movie version, there is the question of fidelity to the original story and fidelity to the spirit of the novel, which are not quite the same thing.  This movie fails on both counts.

At first, it appears that we may be watching a Tarzan movie that follows the story in the novel. Minor changes are to be expected, of course. But a major change is when Tarzan (Christopher Lambert) meets Jane (Andie MacDowell). In the novel, she is abducted by Terkoz, one of the great anthropoid apes, who wants to ravish her, but she is rescued by Tarzan, who wants her for himself. Although he cannot speak a human language, they fall in love. In this movie, he does not meet Jane until after he has learned to speak English and has arrived in England.

Moreover, Burroughs apparently believed in Lamarckian evolution, for he presents Tarzan as one who manages to maintain his noble bearing even though he was raised by apes in the jungle, on account of his aristocratic ancestry. In this movie, on the other hand, Tarzan runs about on all fours, oo-oo-ooing like an ape. This is bad enough while he is in the jungle, but long after he has arrived in England, he still reverts to running about on all fours and making silly ape noises.  Even on the night he has sex with Jane, he comes into her bedroom, barefoot and on all fours, and when he starts removing her clothes and sees her bare flesh, he gets so excited that he starts oo-oo-ooing again.

Compare that with the first sexual encounter between Jane and Tarzan in the novel as he fights with Terkoz to the death:

Jane—her lithe, young form flattened against the trunk of a great tree, her hands tight pressed against her rising and falling bosom, and her eyes wide with mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration—watched the primordial ape battle with the primeval man for possession of a woman—for her.

As the great muscles of the man’s back and shoulders knotted beneath the tension of his efforts, and the huge biceps and forearm held at bay those mighty tusks, the veil of centuries of civilization and culture was swept from the blurred vision of the Baltimore girl.

When the long knife drank deep a dozen times of Terkoz’ heart’s blood, and the great carcass rolled lifeless upon the ground, it was a primeval woman who sprang forward with outstretched arms toward the primeval man who had fought for her and won her.

And Tarzan?

He did what no red-blooded man needs lessons in doing. He took his woman in his arms and smothered her upturned, panting lips with kisses.

For a moment Jane lay there with half-closed eyes. For a moment—the first in her young life—she knew the meaning of love.

But then her civilized upbringing comes back to her, and she resists Tarzan.  He is puzzled by this, but he does not force himself on her.  As they become better acquainted, his behavior toward her was the “hallmark of his aristocratic birth, the natural outcropping of many generations of fine breeding, an hereditary instinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate.”

It might be argued that the movie is more realistic. It probably is, for the Tarzan of this movie reminds me of the title character in The Wild Child (1970), based on the true story of Victor of Aveyron, a boy who had grown up wild in the forest. But if realism is what you are after, you should watch that movie instead of a movie about Tarzan anyway.

Speaking of which, there is a worker on the Greystoke estate named Willy who is said to be “a bit soft in the head.” Both his behavior and his posture are similar to that of Tarzan. One of the unresolved questions about Victor of Aveyron is whether he was born with normal intelligence, which was impaired by his growing up without human contact, or whether he had been abandoned by his parents because he was suffering from a mental disability to begin with. Willy’s presence in this movie reinforces the similar doubts we have been having about Tarzan.

When Tarzan discovers an ape in a cage, he frees him, and they go to a park and climb a tree, just like old times.  When a guard shoots the ape, Tarzan screams, “He was my father.”  In the end, the Tarzan of this movie is so offended by the civilized world that he decides to go back to the jungle where he belongs.

There is one part of the novel that I doubt even the most devoted Burroughs’ fan would want to see in a movie because it is just too painful.  Tarzan’s parents had brought books with them for the purpose of raising a child, which Tarzan discovered long after they had died.  By means of these books, Tarzan learned to read English by associating, for example, a picture in the book of a man with the word “man” written on the same page.

He rescues a Frenchman named Paul D’Arnot, who discovers that although Tarzan is not mute, he can only read English, not speak it.  So, he decides to teach Tarzan how to speak a human language. But since D’Arnot’s English is not very good, he teaches Tarzan to speak French.  He does so by pointing to the word “man” and telling Tarzan that the word is pronounced homme.

Ugh!  Apparently, French still had some snob appeal back when Burroughs wrote this story, so he wanted his Tarzan to speak both French and English.  This movie wisely avoided all this by having D’Arnot teach Tarzan English to begin with, letting him learn French later.

Anyway, to continue with the novel, D’Arnot also teaches Tarzan the ways of civilization.  Eventually, Tarzan travels to America to find Jane, whom he rescues from a fire along with several others. Unfortunately, she is engaged to another man, Tarzan’s cousin, William Cecil Clayton, the heir apparent to the title of Lord Greystoke. Though she loves Tarzan, yet she cannot break her promise to Clayton.

Shortly after talking to her, Tarzan receives a telegram informing him that fingerprints have established that he is Greystoke.  The following lines are the end of the novel, an ending that to my knowledge has never been in any Tarzan movie ever made, but would be enough to put such a movie at the top of my list should there ever be one:

As Tarzan finished reading, Clayton entered and came toward him with extended hand.

Here was the man who had Tarzan’s title, and Tarzan’s estates, and was going to marry the woman whom Tarzan loved—the woman who loved Tarzan. A single word from Tarzan would make a great difference in this man’s life.

It would take away his title and his lands and his castles, and—it would take them away from Jane Porter also. “I say, old man,” cried Clayton, “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for all you’ve done for us. It seems as though you had your hands full saving our lives in Africa and here.

“I’m awfully glad you came on here. We must get better acquainted. I often thought about you, you know, and the remarkable circumstances of your environment.

“If it’s any of my business, how the devil did you ever get into that bally jungle?”

“I was born there,” said Tarzan, quietly. “My mother was an Ape, and of course she couldn’t tell me much about it. I never knew who my father was.”