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Apr 25 15 8:27 PM
Apr 25 15 8:38 PM
Apr 25 15 10:23 PM
Wich2 wrote:Yeah, Disney did three animated TARZANs because they knew they'd fail. We all know the folks on Uncle Walt's Farm like to throw money away!
Apr 25 15 10:34 PM
Mattel Jones wrote:OMG Craig that was like more than 10 years ago! That was BTDK*, which means it is now just something for the cool kids to sneer at. Unless it has been specially designated for enduring coolness (as with OHMSS, and deservedly so IMO) then it's just a joke and not worth discussing. What do you think this is, a forum for talking about old movies and TV shows?*before the dark knight
Apr 26 15 9:19 AM
No, the discussion was whether the earlier Tarzan films were big-budget A-pictures or not; you, with your usual inimitable combination of offensively in-your-face cockiness and jaw-droppingly astonishing ignorance, said they weren't. Read some of the entries under MGM on this page (http://www.geostan.ca/films.html) and actually get a handle on how big the Tarzans were in their time; the idea of a primitive but noble hero living in a jungle paradise and keeping unspoiled by fighting off both local animal and native enemies and greedy exploiters from the outside world proved a really resonant idea with audiences during the Depression.
A few additional facts and figures: The first Tarzan film, Tarzan the Ape Man, was budgeted at $652, 675 (which, adjusted to inflation, translates to $9,519,001 in 2015); its worldwide gross was $919,000, which translates to $13,403,244 today--definitely a "big" picture.
Tarzan And His Mate, the second and most popular of the MGM Tarzans, was more expensive but also more lucrative; it cost MGM about $1,279,142 to make--which translates to $18,655,769 in 2015. It grossed, worldwide, $2,239,000, which would be $32,654,911 today.
The fact that Burroughs disliked the Tarzan movies has absolutely nothing to do with whether they were hits or not; the Fleming quote about Dr. No evidences, most authors don't really care for screen adaptations--and it never has the slightest effect on the box-office. A few other examples: A. E. W. Mason loathed the 1939 movie adaptation of his The Four Feathers; John Buchan didn't particularly care for Hitchcock's version of his book The 39 Steps; the nephew of Carlo Collodi (author of Pinocchio) asked Mussolini's government to sue Walt Disney for his movie version of his uncle's book.
Burroughs' own Tarzan production, incidentally, was a low-budget serial that was filmed on location and was closer to Burroughs' conception, but which didn't make anywhere near the profit the MGM Tarzans did--partly because the location filming wreaked so much havoc on cast and camera equipment; again, international filming simply wasn't feasible until the post-war era.
Apr 26 15 9:31 AM
Apr 26 15 10:53 AM
amanaplan1 wrote:As you can see in my unedited posts above, I specifically wrote: "a wildly popular leading character be replaced by a different actor in a sustained film franchise" "I'm not talking about stuff like Tarzan movies, which were made by different producers and studios throughout the years, or low-budgeters like the Charlie Chan serials." "...the Bond films really were the Star Wars or Indiana Jones series of their day" In other words, this is another way of saying what I wrote in my later post, "1) None of the Tarzan or Chan or whoever movies became an international phenomenon like the Bond series did, and 2) over a sustained period of time."
Apr 26 15 11:03 AM
Joseph Neyer wrote: No, the discussion was whether the earlier Tarzan films were big-budget A-pictures or not; you, with your usual inimitable combination of offensively in-your-face cockiness and jaw-droppingly astonishing ignorance, said they weren't. Read some of the entries under MGM on this page (http://www.geostan.ca/films.html) and actually get a handle on how big the Tarzans were in their time; the idea of a primitive but noble hero living in a jungle paradise and keeping unspoiled by fighting off both local animal and native enemies and greedy exploiters from the outside world proved a really resonant idea with audiences during the Depression. A few additional facts and figures: The first Tarzan film, Tarzan the Ape Man, was budgeted at $652, 675 (which, adjusted to inflation, translates to $9,519,001 in 2015); its worldwide gross was $919,000, which translates to $13,403,244 today--definitely a "big" picture. Tarzan And His Mate, the second and most popular of the MGM Tarzans, was more expensive but also more lucrative; it cost MGM about $1,279,142 to make--which translates to $18,655,769 in 2015. It grossed, worldwide, $2,239,000, which would be $32,654,911 today.The fact that Burroughs disliked the Tarzan movies has absolutely nothing to do with whether they were hits or not; the Fleming quote about Dr. No evidences, most authors don't really care for screen adaptations--and it never has the slightest effect on the box-office. A few other examples: A. E. W. Mason loathed the 1939 movie adaptation of his The Four Feathers; John Buchan didn't particularly care for Hitchcock's version of his book The 39 Steps; the nephew of Carlo Collodi (author of Pinocchio) asked Mussolini's government to sue Walt Disney for his movie version of his uncle's book. Burroughs' own Tarzan production, incidentally, was a low-budget serial that was filmed on location and was closer to Burroughs' conception, but which didn't make anywhere near the profit the MGM Tarzans did--partly because the location filming wreaked so much havoc on cast and camera equipment; again, international filming simply wasn't feasible until the post-war era.
Apr 26 15 11:07 AM
Wich2 wrote:That summarizes things pretty well, D.And as far as considering again what authors wanted for their filmizations? Two of Fleming's top preferences for Bond were -Cary Grant and David Niven.-Craig
Apr 26 15 3:08 PM
Apr 26 15 3:26 PM
Apr 26 15 5:04 PM
Apr 26 15 5:12 PM
Apr 26 15 11:05 PM
Joseph Neyer wrote: No, the discussion was whether the earlier Tarzan films were big-budget A-pictures or not; you, with your usual inimitable combination of offensively in-your-face cockiness and jaw-droppingly astonishing ignorance, said they weren't.
No, the discussion was whether the earlier Tarzan films were big-budget A-pictures or not; you, with your usual inimitable combination of offensively in-your-face cockiness and jaw-droppingly astonishing ignorance, said they weren't.
Apr 26 15 11:35 PM
Apr 27 15 12:33 AM
Apr 27 15 2:14 AM
delgadosaur wrote:JJ, name one moment of the Tarzan series that is on par with Kong? Just one and it better be biggerthan the big sequences in Kong. Can you even name all of the MGM Tarzan films, such is their wild popularity? Meanwhile the Bond series is simply the most successful franchise in film history.
Apr 27 15 7:35 AM
Apr 27 15 9:00 AM
Apr 27 15 9:41 AM
delgadosaur wrote:JJ, name one moment of the Tarzan series that is on par with Kong? Just one and it better be biggerthan the big sequences in Kong. Can you even name all of the MGM Tarzan films, such is their wild popularity? Meanwhile the Bond series is simply the most successful franchise in film history. Robert and Wich, the debate is over if all you have left are insults.
Del, as usual when you "debate" anyone on any topic, the goalposts are hopping around like a cat on a hot roof; we are not talking about individual setpieces in the Tarzan films or about which franchise is the most successful one, but about whether or not the Tarzan films were A-pictures and were their era's closest equivalent to the Bond films; there's been ample evidence on this thread to show that they were. And, as for insults, you're the one who can't debate anyone without either giving off obnoxious "shrugs," rudely telling people "LOL, c'mon," "yawn," or "give me a break," insinuating that your opponents are all miserable old fogeys, or screaming that "everyone in the world thinks the same way I do, except for the cranks on this thread!" None of these tactics are actually debating ploys, and are a lot more offensive than anything anyone else has said to you in response.
By the way, I can name, off the top of my head, not only all of the MGM Tarzans, but all of the Tarzan features produced by MGM, Lesser, and Weintraub until Weintraub took the franchise to TV:
Tarzan the Ape ManTarzan and his MateTarzan EscapeTarzan Finds a SonTarzan's Secret TreasureTarzan's New York AdventureTarzan TriumphsTarzan's Desert MysteryTarzan and the AmazonsTarzan and the Leopard WomanTarzan and the HuntressTarzan and the MermaidsTarzan's Magic FountainTarzan's Savage FuryTarzan and the Slave GirlTarzan's PerilTarzan and the She-DevilTarzan's Hidden JungleTarzan and the TrappersTarzan's Fight for LifeTarzan and the Lost SafariTarzan's Greatest AdventureTarzan the MagnificentTarzan's Three ChallengesTarzan Goes to IndiaTarzan and the Valley of GoldTarzan and the Great RiverTarzan and the Jungle Boy
Then there are the color MGM remake version of Tarzan the Ape Man, Burroughs' serial The New Adventures of Tarzan and its feature versions, Sol Lesser's serial Tarzan the Fearless and its feature version, and Lesser's 1938 feature Tarzan's Revenge (Lesser, during the 1930s, was to the MGM Tarzan films what Kevin McClory was to the EON Bond films).
As for memorable setpieces in the Tarzan films (since you brought them up), there's the nightmarish scene with the pygmies and their killer gorilla in Tarzan the Ape Man, the fight with the giant crocodile in Tarzan and his Mate and the later incredible finale to that film (which has Tarzan leading elephants and apes to battle natives and lions), the Brooklyn Bridge sequence in Tarzan's New York Adventure, the large-scale battle between the Nazis and the denizens of the lost city in Tarzan Triumphs, the one-on-one showdown between Gordon Scott's Tarzan and Anthony Quayle's Slade at the end of Tarzan's Greatest Adventure, and too many others to run over here. If it hadn't been excised due to terrified reactions by theater patrons, we'd also be able to count the giant bat attack in Tarzan Escapes.
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