Sook Cha Lee Kennel Hall, 1925 to 2016

    Sook Cha Lee was born in 1925 in Seoul Korea, which at that time was ruled by the Japanese empire.    Back then, medical doctors were not accessible to ordinary people, so there was only a midwife and a fortune teller.  It's not funny, but Sue would joke about the humble story of her birth, and her family would laugh at this story.  Sue's mother was in labor three days, no doubt fearing for her very life,  and the fortune teller offered the following sage advice:  "If you wait one more day, the child will be truly great!"   When telling that story my mother would laugh.  "What kind of advice is that?  Are you kidding?  Even if it's true you can't ask a woman to stay in labor for another 24 hours!" 
    In any case, somehow Sue's mother persevered and Sue arrived to her very relieved parents.  Early on the parents realized that little Sue was linguistically talented.  At two years old she was able to go to the neighbors' house and relay messages from her mother.   
        Korean folk have a custom that at one year, the baby is presented with different items--for example, coins, a bowl of rice, and an ink brush-pen-- to determine their future.  If the baby chooses coins, then she will prosper financially.  If she chooses, rice she will be a glutton and get fat, so hopefully the baby doesn't choose that.  Baby Sue selected the brush pen, signifying she would become a scholar. Even though it is a silly superstition, she says she sort of believed it as a kid. 

      Sue's mother used to say, "If a word even touches my daughter's ear, she never forgets it!"   The family decided to send her to school a year early, because of her incessant questions and desire to learn things.  So she wound up going to school a year early in order to help feed her insatiable desire to learn. 

     In 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, the family decided to move to Japan when Sue was 8 years old.  This was right at the time that Crown Prince Akihito was born. Sue remembered that all the streetcars were decorated with beautiful flowers as the entire city of Osaka, and indeed the entire country, celebrated.  It seemed like a grand time. The next year,the family moved to Tokyo.  Sue's education was in the Japanese language, which is very different from Korean.
       By this time little Sue had started reading all kinds of books about far off lands including Europe and America.  One book explained the custom of Christmas, which excited her very much.  So she told her father about it, and explained that she was going to hang up her sock by her bed on Christmas Eve.  That evening, her father would have to pretend to be Santa Claus and give her a present.  The next morning, Sue was delighted to find a little mandarin orange in her sock!   

     Sue's cousin George Myeong came to live with their family at about that time. Sue always considered George to be like a younger brother.  But by about 1940, family fortunes had taken a turn for the worse and Sue's father ultimately abandoned them. Sue's mother ran a boarding house in Tokyo.  But Sue was able to get a job in a print shop to help make ends meet, and she completed her high school studies at night school.  She finished number two in the province of Honshu based on the graduation examination. She was one of the few Koreans to be accepted by Ochanomizu College in Tokyo. This was an amazing achievement in its own right, and even resulted in a small stipend of a few dollars a month, which she gave to her mother.  It was a happy time.  But in December of that year, radio newscasts informed the people that the Japanese Empire had been attacked by demons from the United States and Great Britain.  Newscasters warned that although victory was certain due to the Godly leadership of Emperor Hirohito, it would be a time of great hardship. Indeed, food became scarce.    However, finishing school was very important, and for that reason the two elected to stay in Japan so that Sue could graduate in elementary education, which at that time was a two year program, and George could finish high school.  Sue and George had to live under a bridge for a time along with many others who endured great suffering during the war, but nevertheless, she did not quit, and she persevered to graduate in 1943 with a teacher's certificate, and George graduated from High School that same year.    
     One of the quirks of Asian society is that children are implicitly blamed when bad things happen, perhaps based on the notion that God punished children for wrongs committed in a previous existence.  Perhaps for that reason, Sue did not like to talk about being homeless.  Then too, a great number of people suffered terribly in World War 2, not just Sue and her cousin.  She said that she never worried about not having a proper place to live, as long as they could receive a daily food ration and attend school. 
      Sue appreciated the rigorous training from the Japanese system.  In addition to academics, the entire student body had to run 4 kilometers each morning in their school uniform and then on to class.  There were no special gym clothes, no showers, just they just ran in street clothes and then on to class. In addition to academics, each semester they had a field trip to work for a week, planting or harvesting crops in the fields, or working in a factory.  In this way, they learned something about the way that real people must live their lives.     

     In order to escape the bombing in Tokyo, Sue and George returned to Korea in 1944.  Sue taught elementary school for two years in a small town in the Korean countryside, and George went to live with relatives and eventually attended college.  
     The Japanese Emperor was thought to be a God, who would appear in public only once a year outside his palace. Everyone attending his speech had to get on their hands and knees and bow and not even look at the Emperor lest they should die.  Sue said, "I knew it wasn't true."
      In August 1945, Emperor Hirohito unbelievably spoke on the radio to announce the surrender of Japan.  He was obliged to finally admit that he was a human being rather than a God. The Japanese occupiers were immediately expelled from Korea, amid great rejoicing.  Sue was happy that Korea could be free of Japanese government oppression, but also saddened at the inhumanity with which the Japanese people were forcibly evacuated.  She remembers them being packed like cattle on trains and unceremoniously  shipped out.  

     After the war, Ewha Womans College was officially recognized as a National University for women in Seoul and Sue was selected as one of the students.  But in 1946, Sue was orphaned as her mother died of Typhus.  She never really got over that blow.  She would recount, "My mother was always there for me, supporting me in everything and encouraging me.  When she left suddenly, my whole world fell apart."  Ewha became the replacement for her mother. She graduated number one in her class in 1947, and thus earned degrees from both Japan and Korea.  Upon graduating she became a student teaching assistant and worked directly for Dr. Helen Kim, the Ewha President. 

Graduation at Ewha University, 1947.

     Years later, Sue's granddaughter Natasha once asked her what was the proper age to date.  Sue's answer was, "In Korea, the girls went to school on one side of the mountain, and the boys went to school on the other side of the mountain, and we never saw each other till after graduation and then only as arranged by the parents!"  Sue's son Elliot advised Natasha, "There are certain questions you should never ask a Korean grandma."  
     In any case, by 1948, the Methodist Church was interested to sponsor Korean women to study in America, and Sue was selected for this opportunity.  She would attend Baldwin Wallace College in Berea Ohio. Somehow, arrangements were made for several Korean women to a ride on a US Navy ship to San Francisco, and then by train to Ohio.  On a way they encountered a tropical storm, and everyone became very sick.   Sue said "at first we were afraid we might die.  Later, we became afraid we might not die."  But eventually things calmed down.  The Navy sailors were all very, very respectful to the young women, but communication was very difficult.  Sue recounts that the cook asked them if they wanted eggs "sunny side up." They couldn't understand this at all.  How can eggs be like the sun in the sky, they wondered?  That made no sense.  Well, better get used to it.  Lots of things in America made no sense to Koreans.  Sue liked to quote Rudyard Kipling:  "East is east and west is west, and the twain shall never meet!"
    Baldwin Wallace was a great culture shock.  Although Sue had learned to read and write in English, there had been no opportunity to speak with native speakers during the war.  So basically she arrived not being able to communicate. Learning spoken English proved to be much more difficult than speaking Japanese.  Moreover, she was also obliged to learn Old English to read the classic Beowulf, as well as French. Though she never achieved great proficiency in French, she would continue to practice with her friends in French Club in Berea, and would spend summers in France with her second husband Vernon Hall.

Sue and Bessie Rutemiller, Japanese American from Hawaii, 1950. See postscript.

    Sue had never intended to stay in America, but the Korean War made going home impossible.  Accordingly, she studied at Western Reserve College in Cleveland, and obtained a Master's Degree in English.  Sue met Byron Kennel at a dance sponsored by the Cleveland Council of International Affairs.  One time Byron decided Sue needed to learn about American culture, and took her to a thing called Hillbilly Jamboree at the old Circle Theater in downtown Cleveland. The warmup act was a young kid who wiggled and shook a lot and poor Sue had no idea what all the commotion and yelling was about.  She was kind of mad at Byron for taking her to this uncivilized affair. It turns out this kid was named Elvis Presley, and that concert is marked by some historians as launching the rock n roll era, and is part of the reason the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland.
     Another time Arthur Bisguier, the United States Chess Champion, known as the Dean of American Chess, came to Cleveland and played simultaneous exhibition against all comers. Almost all of them were men, although Byron brought his smart Korean girlfriend along.  Perhaps Grandmaster Bisguier did not take her seriously at first, but after she took his queen he started to pay more attention.  In any case, the Champ prevailed against every one of the challengers--except for Sue.   

Lilly Rosenbaum, Sue and Byron Kennel, Linda Lee was the flower girl, daughter of Rev. Julius and Yolanda Lee.

      In 1956 Byron and Sue were married and children Elliot and Nancy came along, and Sue basically withdrew from academia for several years.  But in a few years, Cuyahoga Community College made it possible for Sue to return to academia. Could someone from Korea teach English in America?  Well, Sue did.  She was particularly skilled at explaining the mysteries of grammar and diagramming sentences. Virtually all students hate grammar and diagramming sentences.  But Sue would tell the students, "If I can do it, you can do it!" That logic apparently was persuasive.  Many students took it to heart, and really believed that they could learn it if Sue had learned it. And they did.   

 Tri-C friends  Veronon Hall at lower left.  

 Sue and her cousin; Nancy Lee and Stuart Anderson, 1980s. 

        Sue's simple advice was "Find out what you like to do, and do it for the rest of your life!"   By the same token, Cuyahoga Community College is known informally as Tri-C. Sue like to call it "Try and See."  Try college and see if there is something there you like.  When you stop to think about it, it is a mind blowing concept.   In Korea, going to college was about as difficult as making the Olympic team.  In America, the benefits of college were being extended to almost everyone with the capability and desire to learn.  Everyone can learn to see other points of view, and make friends with other people from other backgrounds. Everyone can think and even make decisions about who the leaders would be in America, rather than being ruled by an Emperor like in Japan.    
     In the mid 1970's, Sue really hit her stride, as she proposed that Cuyahoga Community College would be one of the first institutions of higher learning to teach a new subject, "English as a Second Language."   Prior to that time, foreign students were usually sent to remedial English classes.  But in reality learning a language as an adult is not the same as learning a first language as a child, and even very gifted scholars may struggle to catch up with a foreign language.  Sue also understood the homesickness and the culture shock that accompanies learning to live in a foreign country.   
      Foreign students presented special challenges because of their diverse backgrounds.  Early on, some of the students from paternalistic countries were uncomfortable being tutored by females and demanded male tutors instead.  Well, you can imagine that Sue was not very sympathetic with this blatant male chauvinism, culturally dependent or not.  "This is America.  Everyone gets a chance here," she responded simply, and that was it.   Perhaps that summed up her political philosophy.  One might suppose that this is overly simplistic, but Sue really believed it.  "This is America. Everyone gets a chance here."  With ESL, the students realized that they could earn that chance.     

    Needless to say this program became extremely successful.  It was then and is now the largest college credit ESL program in Ohio. For many students, Sue was not just a teacher, but the "American mom" to students from many diverse cultures. 
        Eventually she took a sabbatical and finally was able to return to her beloved Ewha University in Seoul, where she lectured Korean students for a semester in a variety of capacities.  She had been gone for more than 30 years, but they remembered who she was and welcomed her back.  At that time there were a series of political crises in Korea, and Sue acted as a  translator for CBS and BBC.
        Sue remarried  in 1983 to Vernon Hall, who was also an English professor, and he also wound up lecturing at Cuyahoga Community  College for a number of years.  Sue had met Vernon in Korea, and they were drawn together by their common love of English literature--and the Benny Hill show.  In reality Sue found it very difficult to understand English and American humor.  She summarized herself in this Yogi Berra-esque way, "Oh, I have no sense of humor. I'm just naturally funny."
       At about this time, Sue realized that there was an emerging need to study Japanese language at the college level.  This was especially true because Cuyahoga County is a major industrial manufacturing center, and many companies were interacting with their counterparts in Japan. Sue proposed that Tri-C offer a course in Japanese language.
      Japanese language instruction at Tri-C was immediately successful and Sue's courses were always filled, soon resulting in the hiring of other teachers to handle the demand.  

      Sue was never interested in making great sums of money, though avoiding poverty was very important.  What Sue liked most of all was to have great friends.  

    She had an amazing number of friends, staying in touch with her friends from Ewha, Her friends included Sung Hee Kang, who became a famous playwright, Sora Kim, a classical musician, Professor Young Kyoung Yoon, who taught music at Ewha and was also the niece of the Korean President.  Sue was not the only one that endured hardship to attend college.  One friend, Sookney Lee had to sneak across the border from North Korea and walked all the way to Ewha, and arrived at the college with her shoes soaked in blood.  Sookney eventually became the Dean at Ewha. 
      Sometimes her Ewha friends would come to visit and they would eat Korean food and reminisce about the old days and how poor they had been, and would laugh and laugh.  "I don't know why we laugh so much," Sue would say.  "It's certainly not funny to be poor. But now we remember how poor we were and we laugh our heads off!"
       Sue enjoyed many friendships at BW and Western Reserve with Margie Dwyer, Constance Weinstein and Nancy McArthur and many others.  She continued to participate in a book discussion group over 60 years, with Mr and Andy and Marilyn Sparks, Mel and Ruth Schochet and many others,  as well as Tri-C with Jo and Helmut Dehn, Ethel Laughlin, Dick Matthews, Jim Leonard, Cathy Honesty Pulliam, Shirley Campbell, Dana Synder, Oscar Crawford and many, many others.             
     She was also great friends with neighbors like Sue and Frank Nakamura, Jim and Nadja Johnson, Carl and Marge Norgren, Dick and Mary Ashbrook, Susan Depould and her son Jamie and his wife Anna, and many many others.  
     Sue eventually returned to the United Methodist Church of Berea, where she had first worshiped as a student in the 1940s.   Sue jokingly called herself a rice Christian. "I'm just here for the food," she would say.  Well, the Methodist Church is not a bad place for that.  She liked serving meals to students from Baldwin Wallace University, here at the church, and working with friends like Roy and Fran Seitz and many many others.  In particular she was very impressed with the influence that Roy, who years ago had been Elliot's baseball coach, had had in getting young men to try college and apply themselves.  Let's face it, youngsters, and especially the fellows tend to be mainly interested in sports, girls and parties, and it is only via a miracle of God that they become interested in college and Church and serving others. In that way, God uses baseball coaches as much as or more than academics.   
    Especially in the early days, she knew almost all of the Koreans and Japanese people that lived in Greater Cleveland.   Lee Cerny was one of the first to settle to Berea, followed by Hilson Cho and many others.  
      Sue continued to teach at Tri-C into her 80s as Professor Emeritus, and finally moved to a retirement community in Beavercreek Ohio.  Her last years were mainly happy ones spent near her son Elliot and daughter in law Daphne, and their two children, Natasha and Brandon.  She was able to travel to Washington every year, as recently as Christmas 2015 to visit her daughter Nancy and son in law Stuart Anderson. She made many friends at the retirement community as well, including Helen Schweller who came to visit her every day at the hospital after Sue suffered a stroke. 

    Sue would not want people to remember her with sadness. Sue loved to be surrounded by interesting people, sharing conversation and good times.  

Postscript.  Bessie M. Rutemiller was Sue's lifelong friend.  She was a Japanese-American from Honolulu.  They met at Baldwin Wallace and were natural friends because of their common language.  Unfortunately I cannot recall Bessie's maiden name. Some details I found from Cal-State Fullerton's newsletter:  Bessie M. Rutemiller, Librarian Emeritus, died April 24 2009. Rutemiller served the university from 1966 to 1982 and worked as coordinator of precataloguing services. Like Sue, She was a passionate Francophile who traveled often to France and learned to speak the language. She had held a master's degree in library science from Case Western Reserve University and a bachelor's degree from Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. As I recall, she married very late, perhaps in the late 1960s, to Herbert C. Rutemiller, Professor of Management Science Emeritus

Star Trek Beyond: Best of the Rebooted Series

    I went into Star Trek Beyond with very low expectations.  My beef has been that the franchise has put aside the vision of the future, trading it in for zero risk plots.   The Crew of the Enterprise represents the Cops, while the Klingons and Romulans represent the Robbers, led by a really evil leader.  Then the Cops and Robbers shoot at each other, and the Cops win.   Whoopee.  That has been the Star Trek plot for years.

    This movie is different.  The Enterprise encounters beings they have never met before, hearkening back to the original show when we didn't know the Klingons and Romulans so well, and weren't sure what they could do.   But the entire premise of Star Trek is to explore the unknown, so I was getting bored with the previous movies in which the same bad guys were seen over and over and over again.  In Star Trek Beyond, there are some new characters, and you can't be sure if they are good, evil or somewhere in between. That's the way it should be when you encounter a new world!

If you're going to seek out strange new worlds, then it's about time the Enterprise finds some.  Hurray!  So who are they, and what do they want? Are they peaceful?  Or not?

    In fact, this one is so unique, that I will definitely have to see it again.   There were some things I did not understand at first.  For example, I never did figure out what kind of threat is posed by the civilization the Enterprise encounters?  Do they need a secret weapon, or what?  Why weren't they already able to overrun the Federation decades ago?  But in any case, let's just say that the bad guys are much more interesting than previous villains, though still too one-dimensional at times.  If Kirk is not 100% the good guy at times, then the bad guys should not be bad 100% of the time either.  

Definitely some new people for the Enterprise to meet!

Plenty of special effects to please the kiddies.  

But more importantly, the chemistry has started to work between Kirk, McCoy and Spock.  Up to this time, Jeffrey Quinto's Spock has been cranky and middle aged, but in this movie I started to see some of the subtleties of Nimoy's character.  Spock's crush on Uhura, featured in one of the previews, still makes me groan, but at least now Spock is starting to depend on his relationship with McCoy and Kirk in order to develop something really great by working together. Similarly, McCoy is a crabby right wing throwback, but he started to win us over a little bit this time.  

Spock has started to realize that he needs McCoy and Kirk in order to be fulfilled.

No, Star Trek Beyond is not perfect.  They need to concentrate on making the bad guys believable, and creating better story lines, but this is definitely the best of the rebooted Star Trek so far.  

She's Not Your Father's Wonder Woman

 Is there a "glass ceiling" above which female superheroes can not pass?   I think there is, and it's about time to smash through this ridiculous stereotype. 
    What I mean is there is a rule that females are not allowed to exceed the accomplishments of males.  This dates back to, for instance, the Bionic Woman, had almost exactly the same strength and ability as the 6 Million Dollar Man (2 bionic legs an one bionic arm, though Jamie Sommers had a bionic ear instead of a bionic eye like Colonel Steve Austin.
    In the comics and tv shows, Wonder Woman was never allowed to exceed the capabilities of Superman.   The same hold true for her most recent incarnation, brought to life (sort of) by the gorgeous Gal Gadot, who at least looks the pat.  
      

     With her sword, which she swings like a tennis racket, complete with a Serena-Williams'-style yell, she is almost as tough as middled aged, cranky Superman.  But far from being a woman's liberation icon, she merely extended stereotypes.   We're supposed to think, "Wow, she can play with the big boys" because she can whack Kryptonian monsters with her sword.  But she doesn't actually slice anyone to pieces with her sword, and really uses it like Superman uses his fists.    

Like the dull Oldsmobile campaigns that led to the demise of that fine automobile, the best you can say about Wonder Woman as we most recently met her in Batman vs Superman was that she was not nearly as boring as Superman. 

    Now, they've at least given her a more colorful costume.  That's a start.  

    

  From Entertainment Weekly comes this preview of Wonder Woman  and a new colorful (sort of) costume.  

    But think it would be way cooler to make Wonder Woman vastly more powerful than Superman, rather than "almost even" with Superman.  Let her punch like three times as hard as Superman, and make it obvious that Superman can not

    The business about the sword is stupid.  If you don't want her to slice up bad guys a la Wolverine, then she shouldn't be using the sword as a punching device. She doesn't have a sword in the comics anyway.  So either make her a vicious human meatcleaver, or else let her be the demigoddess power puncher.  She can be like Ivan Drago in the Rocky movies, the toughest power puncher in the DC universe.   

    Part of the allure of Wonder Woman is that she threatens male insecurity, and in particular Captain Steve Trevor. Hence, even Superheroes like Superman and Batman should literally be knocked on their butts by a Demigoddess.  

   Plus I think the magic lasso (which compels prisoners to confess the truth) could be a hoot.  Maybe she can catch a bad guy and ask him embarrassing questions, and the bad guy make have to make embarrassing revelations about why he acts so bad.  Or, maybe even get Clark Kent in the lasso and find out that he likes Wonder Woman more than Lois Lane.

    But no, up to this point, the whole thing has been about protecting the egos of Batman and Superman, while acknowledging that Wonder Woman is a useful ally, as long as she doesn't attempt to go beyond the "glass ceiling."

     We shall see what happens in the next movie.  I'm not optimistic, given the dismal record of DC movies.  But I think the last movie shook them up as they basically ruined a sure-fire way to print money.  Maybe they will be motivated to try a few new things this time.  We shall see, by Aphrodite.  

  

Protestors: Demanding Solutions, or Helping Networks Get Ad Revenue?

     My question for any given protest, is whether the purpose of the protest is to put forward a solution to a problem, or only to complain about a problem, and often times to appear on TV and other communications media.   

    Back in the day I participated in protest marches.  In those days, it seems to me, the protestors were often idealistic and politically astute if not completely unbiased.  Organizers of protest marches usually had specific goals in mind.  For example, I went to Boston to protest school segregation in the 1970's.  We wanted legislation passed that would prevent segregated schools.   And the legislation was passed, so to me the protest was successful.   

    By and large, if it was a good goal, the protest could be successful in bringing about a change for the better.  The goal was usually some sort of legislative milestone.

    These days I see a different type of protester.   Often the ideological commitment seems to be missing and replaced by the simple desire to be a complainer.  The protests often have a nice catch phrase, but how do you know if the protest is a success?   What change do the protesters want?  I didn't like recent protests that chanted slogans like "Enough is Enough!" or "We won't take it anymore!"  These slogans raise people's passion and evoke anger but do not lead to a solution on how to fix the problem.   

     So, assuming you have America's attention thanks to your your captivating, high-Nielsen-ratings protest, what do you want them to do?   In the old days they actually did things. They desegregated lunch counters, let black people register to vote, stopped supporting the war in Viet Nam, and actually made specific accomplishments.  This did not transform the society to a Utopian one, but bit by bit they made lives tangibly better or at least attempted to do so.  

    This new crowd often seems to be interested in seeing themselves on TV or in a viral Youtube video.   The news media is happy to have such protests because they make money by getting ratings and generating advertisement revenue.  Even better if they just create anger and controversy without offering any solutions to specific problems.  That keeps the ratings up forever.  

   Angry protests that accomplish nothing are good--if you are the news media and want to turn a profit on them.  

     If some group has a solution to a problem and they want it implemented, I will probably listen to them and maybe even join their cause.  If it's about complaining, getting on TV and generating viewership, no thanks.  

Me Tarzan! You Watch!

I went to see Tarzan today (July 4) and was pleased with the movie.  To make a long story short, originality and good acting overcome some flaws in the plot and directing.  

     First of all, I was thrilled that this movie, directed by David Yates, contains mimimal flashbacks to the 1000-times-retold story of young Lord Greystoke's adoption by wild killer apes.   Previous movies felt obliged to waste at least half the movie retelling this wretched story.  But no, we catch up with Lord Greystoke, a bit bored with his life as an English Noble.  Time to revisit Africa and determine whether some white guys are up to no good there, as they usually are.

    There were some terrible flaws in the movie, however. Perhaps the most serious is that the movie drags to a climax rather than races to it.   The bad guy simply has no Plan B, C or D, so that when Tarzan succeeds in partially disrupting him, there is nothing to do but plod forward.

           Tarzan is exciting and has a different feel than past movies about the King of the Apes.  

     Tarzan is relatively weak in this movie.  Consider the following:

   

     1.  He can keep barely ahead of a 50 year old guy (played by 67 year old Samuel L. Jackson no less) when traversing the jungle at maximum speed.  He never gets more than a few minutes ahead.

     2.  He can can talk to animals and get them to do him small favors, but he apparently can not ride an elephant.  Dude!  Learn to ride!

    3.  He can barely punch out a 50 year old bad guy, but tends to lose when fighting a gorilla or a more youthful Englishman. 

    Other gripes I have include the following:

     a.  The Congo instead of being a million square miles as it is in real life, appears to be about the size of Cleveland, so that Tarzan can walk from one end to the other in a few days. 

    b.  Jane is spunkier and prettier than, say, any version of Lois Lane we have ever seen, but at the end of the day she just gets in trouble too much and is rather helpless.  That needs to be fixed. 

     c.  The movie flips back and forth between the present and various flashbacks.  It's sometimes hard to figure out where we are.

     I did like the idea that when Tarzan gets very very mad, he and his animal friends can really mess people up.  In previous Tarzan movies, Tarzan is kind of like a head of a biker gang with a few apelike followers.  This Tarzan is ultimately able to get a lot of animals to work together, which is kind of a cool idea.   Bad guys should have to work things out with an entire jungle that is mad at them, like 100,000 or so animals.  There are plenty of white guys doing bad things in Africa.  Let's throw a few more to the beasts next time, shall we?   

    

    I am sure there will be a sequel, and in the meantime I would like both Tarzan and Jane to do push-ups and the like so they can be more effective in action scenes.  They should also study herbology in order to be able to recover from wounds and the like.  Jane needs to get a job, perhaps become a doctor, rather than continuing as a professional damsel in distress.

     And what about elephants?  They are the equivalent of tanks in the jungle.  Let's use elephants a whole lot more next movie.  

     The bad guy needs to have a better plan than to set up a confrontation and stall till the end of the movie.  No, he should score some points and do many things to annoy Tarzan, not just one or two.  

     James Bond and Goldfinger pioneered the idea that British bad guys like to engage their captives in witty conversation, trusting them to not try to escape (what a shock that Bond tricks him).  But that only worked for Bond and Goldfinger.  Let's get rid of that campy idea altogether, shall we?  Pip, pip! 

   

    I will be rooting for the animals, just like Jurassic Park, where the people deserve to be eaten.  This movie showed how Tarzan can lead the animals, next time perhaps he will actually do a better job of it.  In the meantime, this movies is fun, interesting and has great scenes from the Congo, so it is worth watching.