Tarzan (1999)

Tarzan is the thirty-seventh animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, and released to theaters by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on June 18, 1999. It is based upon the Tarzan of the Apes series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and is the only major motion picture version of the Tarzan property to be animated. It is also the last "bona fide" hit before the Disney slump of the early 2000s making $171,091,819 in domestic gross and $448,191,819 worldwide.

Plot
In the late 1880s off the coast of Africa, a young couple and their infant son escape a burning ship and land on the unexplored rainforests of Africa, where they craft themselves a treehouse in which to live using salvaged ship parts("Two Worlds"). Meanwhile, a gorilla couple named Kerchak and Kala are traveling with the rest of their group when their infant son is killed and eaten by a leopard named Sabor. The next day, the still-heartbroken Kala hears a distant child's cry and, following it, stumbles upon the treehouse. She enters the treehouse to find it trashed, and blood covered paw prints (as well as the corpses of the couple) on the floor. Kala rescues the baby from a still-hungry Sabor and returns with it to the rest of the group, but Kerchak despises the boy for his appearance. Nevertheless, Kala decides to raise the boy as her own, naming him Tarzan ("You'll Be in My Heart").

A few years later, Tarzan makes friends with feisty young female gorilla Terk and an elephant named Tantor ("Son of Man"). Despite his inability to compete with the rest of the gorillas, Tarzan perseveres and eventually grows into a strong, capable, and gorilla-like man. When Sabor attacks the group again, Tarzan successfully fights with and kills her, earning Kerchak's respect. Tarzan then notices a group of humans arriving: Professor Porter and his daughter Jane, who have traveled to Africa in search of gorillas, along with their hunter guide Clayton. Jane then has an encounter with a horde of angry baboons, who chase after her. Jane runs towards a cliff and tries to jump to the other side, only to be caught mid-leap by Tarzan. She screams as she is taken to a branch, where she demands to be put down. Tarzan puts her down, but then the baboons get closer and she screams, "No! Pick me up!" The chase then rages on, but finally, Tarzan gets Jane to safety. Curious about Jane, Tarzan proceeds to examine her, at one point playing with her feet, tickling her. He then notices her gloved hand. Taking off the glove, Tarzan places his hand against hers, then puts the side of his head to her chest and listens to her heartbeat, and this is when he realizes that he and Jane are the same. He takes Jane back to her camp.

Meanwhile, Tarzan's friends, who are trying to find him, arrive at the human trio's campsite and proceed to destroy it, playing music on various human objects they find in camp ("Trashin' the Camp"). Tarzan returns Jane to camp, but must depart with the other animals before Professor Porter and Clayton arrive. In the jungle, Kerchak instructs the others to stay away from the campsite, but Tarzan protests, believing that the humans pose no threat. Tarzan secretly returns to the campsite and is introduced to the other men, and the three of them teach Tarzan about the human world ("Strangers Like Me"); nevertheless, Tarzan refuses to tell them the gorillas' location, fearing Kerchak's fury. A few days later, when the boat to England arrives, the trio, unable to find the gorillas, prepare to leave, and Tarzan is heartbroken to see Jane depart. Clayton tells him that they will stay once they find the gorillas. Tarzan, eager to have the humans remain, schemes with his friends Terk and Tantor to get Kerchak out of the way while Tarzan shows the humans the nesting site.

Tarzan leads the humans to the nesting site, but Kerchak appears and attacks Clayton, much to the humans' fright. Tarzan puts Kerchak in a headlock, allowing the humans to escape, and as a result alienating himself from the gorillas. Sympathetic, Kala takes Tarzan to his biological parents' treehouse, and he decides that he belongs in the human world. Tarzan decides to depart for England with the others, but Clayton and the crew attack them and lock them up; Clayton reveals that he wanted to find the apes so he could sell them to the zoo for a high price. As the crew storm the jungle, Tantor and Terk rescue Tarzan and they race off to stop Clayton and his men. In the ensuing battle (in which the gorillas are aided by various jungle animals), Clayton shoots and mortally wounds Kerchak with his rifle. Tarzan and Clayton duel among the treetops until Tarzan wrests Clayton's gun away and smashes it. Clayton pursues Tarzan with a machete into a tangle of jungle vines, which Tarzan uses to ensnare Clayton, with one of the vines becoming looped around Clayton's throat. Clayton's wild slashing at the vines to free himself cuts the vines holding him in the air, but does not notice the vine around his throat, and does not cut it, causing him to fall and hang to death. Tarzan then finds the dying Kerchak, who apologizes to Tarzan for his behavior and makes him, as the uncontestedly most capable of the younger generation, leader of the gorillas. Kerchak dies, and Tarzan and the gorillas mourn for his demise.

With Clayton's men captured and the crew released, Jane and Professor Porter prepare to depart for England. However, realizing where her heart belongs, Jane returns to the jungle and is soon followed by her father; the three of them reside happily in the jungle among the animals and gorillas ("Two Worlds Finale").

Cast

 * Terk (voiced by Rosie O'Donnell) is a feisty, tomboy-ish ape who acts as a foster sister of sorts to Tarzan. She at first considers him a pest, but later warms up to him, often helping and keeping Tarzan out of trouble with Kerchak.
 * Kala (voiced by Glenn Close) is Tarzan's foster mother, who rescued him from Sabor after losing her own baby to the leopard. She rears Tarzan as a man of the apes, and lends a voice of compassion and understanding to Tarzan when he feels that he doesn't belong, explaining that Kerchak simply can't see they are one and the same.
 * Kerchak (voiced by Lance Henriksen) is the xenophobic leader of the gorillas, who refuses to accept Tarzan as his son because he is human.
 * Young Tarzan (voiced by Alex D. Linz) Shown as having many difficulties, such as nearly killing the gorillas, warthogs, monkeys, baboons, cobras, snakes, scorpions, lizards, aardvarks, porcupines, bees, dragonflies, parrots, toucans, woodpeckers, owls, frogs, flying squirrels, mandrills, crocodiles, tortoises, archerfishes, chameleons, bats, rhinos, genets, armadillos, and hyenas by causing an elephant stampede while trying to obtain an elephant hair, and feeling insecure because of his differences.
 * Young Tantor (voiced by Taylor Dempsey) is an elephant who notices Tarzan and tries to warn the other elephants, but goes unheard; he later befriends Tarzan.

Songs
The songs for the film were written and performed by the singer Phil Collins.
 * Two Worlds
 * You'll Be in My Heart - (featuring Glenn Close)
 * Son of Man
 * Trashin' the Camp
 * Strangers Like Me

Deep Canvas
To create the sweeping 3D backgrounds, Tarzan's production team developed a 3D painting and rendering technique known as Deep Canvas. This technique allows artists to produce CGI background that looks like a traditional painting. For this advancement, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the creators of Deep Canvas a Technical Achievement Award in 2003.

After Tarzan, Deep Canvas was used for a number of sequences in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, particularly large panoramic shots of the island and several action sequences.

Expanded to support moving objects as part of the background, Deep Canvas was utilized to create about 75% of the environments in Disney's next major animated action film, Treasure Planet, though the results were less stunning, due to the film's tighter painting style which could have been accomplished without such advanced software. Deep Canvas was designed to accomplish a very loose, brushstroke-based style without hard edges, but Treasure Planet's backgrounds were more hard-edged and clean.

Deep Canvas was finally used in a more natural setting in restrained doses for Disney's final two traditionally animated theatrical releases, Brother Bear and Home on the Range.

An advanced version of Deep Canvas technique was originally planned to be used in Angel and Her No Good Sister, a Disney animated feature which features bluegrass music. However, since the project was cancelled, it is unknown if Deep Canvas will be used on any of the new projects given the Disney/Pixar merger and the software Disney will have acquired as a result.

Awards

 * 1999 Annie Award in the Technical Achievement in the Field of Animation category (for the Deep Canvas process).
 * 2000 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for the song "You'll Be in My Heart" by Phil Collins.
 * 2000 Academy Award for Best Song for the song "You'll Be In My Heart" by Phil Collins.
 * 2000 Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

Trivia

 * Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung and Sandra Ng provided the voices of Tarzan, Jane and Terk respectively in the Cantonese language version of the film.
 * Wakin Chau sang all the songs in both the Cantonese and Mandarin language versions of the film.
 * The teapot and cup that are seen in the scene where Terk and the other animals mess up the camp are of the same design as Mrs. Potts the teapot and her son, Chip the teacup, from Beauty and the Beast.
 * One of the toys that falls out from Professor Porter's pockets when he is turned upside down by an ape resembles Little Brother, the dog from Mulan.
 * The treehouse in Disneyland's Adventureland, was renamed Tarzan's Treehouse in 1999 (it originally was the Swiss Family Treehouse).
 * Tarzan's home, Deep Jungle, is also a playable world in the Disney/Square Enix video game Kingdom Hearts. Sora, Donald Duck, and Goofy had to work with Tarzan to save his world from the Heartless and Clayton. It didn't re-appear for Chain of Memories or Kingdom Hearts II.
 * Minnie Driver largely ad-libbed the breathless speech in which Jane tells her father and Clayton about meeting Tarzan for the first time.
 * Tarzan has been adapted from its book many times over the years and is second only to Dracula in the adaptation chart.
 * William Cecil Clayton, the character in the book on whom the film's Clayton is (loosely) based, is Tarzan's cousin; Tarzan's birth name is John Clayton, Earl of Greystoke.*
 * All of the actors who voiced gorillas also provided their character's own "gorilla" vocal effects.