Based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alexander Skarsgard stars as John Clayton III of Greystoke Manor, an earl living comfortably in London during the Victorian Era, whose past has made him something of a legend, where he was orphaned and raised by apes until adulthood. Margot Robbie plays his wife Jane, who was once saved by Tarzan while she was exploring the jungles of the Congo, soon entering into a steamy relationship with the feral man who would soon come to learn the customs and laguage of a proper Engish gentleman, abandoning his former life. Christoph Waltz emerges as the main nemesis, playing Captain Leon Rom, an emissary from the floundering Belgian regime who has been sent to the Congo in the late 19th Century in order to propogate, by any means necessary, the extraction of valuable diamonds from the mostly tribal lands, which they've also sought to colonize for further exploitation. Chief Mbonga, one of the powerful heads of those tribes, agrees to give Rom the riches he's seeking if the Belgian is able to secure Tarzan to him. To fulfill his part of the bargain, Rom entices Clayton to return to his former stomping grounds, ostensibly for humanitarian purposes. In tow are Jane and a U.S. envoy to the region named George Washington Williams out to thwart what he feels is the continued enslavement of Africans of the region. When Rom kidnaps Jane in order to bring Clayton out to the open, the latter finds himself having to use his old skills of the jungle to bring down powerful forces seeking to upend all that he has come to hold dear in this world.