Recently, I had lunch with a colleague of mine who had an interesting observation about Disney’s Tarzan. While he and his wife usually agree on the kind of movies they like, they couldn’t come to an agreement about this one. One loved it, while the other hated it.

Why did they have such a differing opinion?

Turns out one had seen the first half, while the other had seen the second half.

That’s the problem with having an out-of-control rambunctious kid. Even at a kid’s movie - sometimes you just have to take them out to the lobby for a breather.

And this is what they did. One watched him for the first half of the movie, while the other watched during the second half.

But a movie is a movie, right? Regardless of when you see it…

I knew exactly why they felt they had seen two different movies.

They had!

I was an animator on that film and it always bugged the hell out of me that the film just ended halfway through. Rent it (unless you have children, which in your case, you’ve probably already seen it a million times) and watch it. Just about halfway into it, right after Tarzan saves Kerchak from the Leopard the movie just stops. The picture fades out and you could hit stop and go on with your life without ever knowing any better. But it’s just not the slow fade out to that act that brings it to and end…

…it’s that it stops emotionally.

What the filmmakers did, what happens in a lot of animated films (except those from Pixar) is that they resolve the conflict in the Relationship storyline too early. The main relationship story in Tarzan is the story between Tarzan and Kerchak (the main ape of the bunch) - a father/son relationship. It has some familiar themes to it - a father who doesn’t want his son, a son trying to prove himself to his father, etc.

But here is the problem: they take all this time setting up the tension in their relationship, only to resolve it the moment Tarzan does one good thing for Kerchak. Albeit, it’s a big one - he saves Kerchak from the Leopard, but still - that’s all he had to do?

Tarzan, exahusted from his tussle with the leopard, stands before Kerchak, muscles rippling - “What do you think, Dad? Did I do good?”

And what happens?

Kerchak smiles at him!

End of story. Tarzan is accepted into the family. Daddy likes him. Emotional conflict resolved. Move along, there’s nothing left to see here.

But there is something left to see - another 45 minutes or so of an entirely new set of characters (humans arriving in the jungle).

To further the confusion, the filmmakers, sensing that they can’t have their tear-jerking ending without some kind of relationship conflict, resurrect the tension between Tarzan and Kerchak - but by then, we don’t care. We know it will end well as it already has.

There was no need to have Kerchak smile - to have him acknowledge Tarzan’s good deed. If Kerchak had just turned his back on Tarzan, if he had just let Tarzan know that there is no way he’ll ever be part of the family - that would’ve kept the tension bubbling. Progressive complications, right?

Sometimes I feel that in an effort to make characters likable, filmmakers/writers take out all the real world conflict that comes from people who do jerky things. Real people do jerky things - things that make us not like them. Doesn’t mean we’ll never like them again. And I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to have characters that act more like us.

It would’ve prevented Tarzan from feeling like such a stop-and-go effort.

Oh, and here’s a cool little anecdote, if you do watch it, that scene where young Tarzan is jumping from elephant back to elephant back while Phil Collins wails about being a man - that was the first scene I ever animated professionally.

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