About that Constantin Film ‘Tarzan’ Trailer

Michael Sellers Other Stuff

The following is offered in the spirit of — hey, Constantin Films, I hope you’re paying attention and are doing something to correct this because if you don’t, there’s a chance that your Tarzan is going to be a disaster.  There is still time to turn this around — plenty of time — but you’ve got to get focused and figure out what’s wrong and fix it.

What am I talking about?

I just noticed on YouTube that the trailer for Constantin Films motion capture “Tarzan” has 1,131 Dislikes, and 1,101 Likes. I’ve never seen a studio trailer that has anything remotely like an even number of “likes” and “dislikes”. This is very alarming and bad news for all of the long-suffering Edgar Rice Burroughs fans looking for a “win” after the release debacle of John Carter.

Some perspective.

John Carter’s much criticized official trailer has 13 likes for every dislike. Hunger Games is 16/1, Prometheus 20/1, and the highest studio trailer I could find was Avengers at 50 likes for every dislike.

And — I debated whether or not to mention this, but why not — our John Carter Fan Trailer 1 has a ratio of 93 likes to every dislike . . . . just sayin’.

To actually have more dislikes than likes is frightening and alarming.

Is anyone at Constantin Films paying attention?

 

Here it is on MovieClipsTrailers.  This is where it has 1131 “Dislikes” and 1101 “Likes”:

And here it is on the official Constantin Films Youtube Channel . . . . here it has 368 likes and 304 dislikes. Still really bad ratio.

 

7 comments

  • And this might be nitpicky on my part but it really is a pet peeve of mine. Tarzan was NOT raised by Gorillas!

  • I often wonder if we wouldn’t be better off if the Mayans had been right. Just to spare us from people who think they know how to tell a Burroughs story better than Burroughs did.

  • I’ll play Ebenezer for a little bit here. I think as an ERB fan we’re just made to suffer. As John Carter showed, as the plot description for this Tarzan and the upcoming David Yates/Warner Bros version proves Hollywood has no respect for the man and since it appears no one-not even ERB Inc-thinks they need to fight to preserve his vision on film its unlikely that will ever change. I guess the only thing to be said about the people making the two Tarzan films so far we’ve been spared any “we’re fans of ERB” BS that Stanton and his lackeys kept telling the press, only to prove otherwise.

    With this trailer part of it is the character animation doesn’t look that great. It’s not terrible but nothing special. The backgrounds look good but more work needs to be done on the characters and then it might be more accepted.

    Also on an unrelated note I read your book and posted a review on my blog. Just FYI for the Back to Barsoomers to give me their usual tongue lashing. 🙂

  • The problem with performance capture: you need a good, talented and charismatic actor, as for a live action movie.

  • The animation is horrible, I can see them minimizing motion, Tarzan has no weight, there is a lack of imagination and drama in the framing… It looks like an animatic for a film that shouldn’t be made. After seeing this I don’t care what the film is about. I’ll give it chance if whatever they show next looks a LOT better. Other than that I’ll wait and see what the Warner Bros one looks like.

  • This is not a trailer really, it’s just their teaser with a few more frames. Unless they cut a trailer with some sense of the story they want to tell, or the tone they are going to use, it’s worthless.

    IMDB lists the synopsis as “Tarzan and Jane Porter face a mercenary army dispatched by the evil CEO of Greystoke Energies, a man who took over the company from Tarzan’s parents, after they died in a plane crash.”

    I won’t talk about fidelity for Burroughs , we already know it’s probably out of the window since day one. But they should emphasize the story because nobody is going to be hypnotised by supposed technical achievements in special effects and/or beautiful scenery. As a personal taste, I quite like the animation and the look of Tarzan. They will probably do another trailer if the release date is indeed october 2013.

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