Tarzan is a 1999 American animated adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the 1912 story Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, being the first animated major motion picture version of the story. The film was directed by Kevin Lima and Chris Buck (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by Bonnie Arnold, from a screenplay by Tab Murphy, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White. It stars the voices of Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, Glenn Close, Rosie O'Donnell, Brian Blessed, Lance Henriksen, Wayne Knight, and Nigel Hawthorne.
Pre-production of Tarzan began in 1995, with Lima selected as director and Buck joining him the same year. Following Murphy's first draft, Tzudiker, White, and Dave Reynolds were brought in to reconstruct the third act and add additional material to the screenplay. English recording artist Phil Collins was recruited to compose and record songs integrated with a score by Mark Mancina. Meanwhile, the production team embarked on a research trip to Uganda and Kenya to study the gorillas. The animation of the film combines 2D hand-drawn animation with the extensive use of computer-generated imagery, and it was done in California, Orlando, and Paris, with the pioneering computer animation software system Deep Canvas being predominantly used to create three-dimensional backgrounds.
Tarzan premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on June 12, 1999, and was released in the United States on June 16. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised its voice performances, music, animation, and action sequences. Against a production budget of $130 million (then the most expensive traditionally animated film ever made until Treasure Planet in 2002), the film grossed $448.2 million worldwide, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 1999, the second highest-grossing animated film of 1999 behind Toy Story 2, and the first Disney animated feature to open at first place at the North American box office since Pocahontas (1995). It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song ("You'll Be in My Heart" by Phil Collins). The film has led to many derived works, such as a Broadway adaptation, a television series, and two direct-to-video followups, Tarzan & Jane (2002) and Tarzan II (2005).
Plot
In the late 1880s, a British couple and their infant son are shipwrecked in Equatorial Africa. The adults build a treehouse but are killed by Sabor, a villainous leopard. Kala and Kerchak, the leaders of a troop of gorillas, lose their infant son to Sabor as well. Kala finds the human infant and after saving him from Sabor, she adopts the human infant, despite Kerchak's objections.
Years later, the adopted human, named Tarzan, begins to befriend other animals, including Kala's niece Terk and the paranoid elephant Tantor. Tarzan finds himself treated differently because of his different physique, so he makes valiant efforts to improve himself. As an adult, Tarzan manages to kill Sabor with a spear, gaining Kerchak's reluctant approval.
Meanwhile, a team of human explorers from England, consisting of Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, his daughter Jane, and their hunter escort Clayton, are looking to study the gorillas. Jane accidentally becomes separated from the group and is chased by a baboon troop, until Tarzan rescues her out of sheer curiosity. After comparing her to himself, he realizes they are similar. Jane leads Tarzan back to their camp, where Porter and Clayton both take interest in him; the former in terms of scientific progress, while the latter hopes to have Tarzan lead the group to the gorillas. Despite Kerchak's warnings to avoid the humans, Tarzan repeatedly returns to the camp. Porter, Clayton, and Jane teach him how to speak English properly, and tell him what the human world is like. Tarzan and Jane begin to fall in love; however, she has difficulty convincing Tarzan to lead the humans to the gorillas, as Tarzan fears Kerchak's fury.