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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   3070 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 28, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Do you ever get that weird feeling, where you see a perfect opportunity for something you don't like to be done perfectly? Or like, for a group of people you don't like to make their point? Like, when I read a news story about Chinese camps for Muslim prisoners, or the Rohingya, I'm like "Where the fuck is ISIS on this one?"

That's the feeling I got watching The Mask of Zorro; the original silent starring Fairbanks Sr.. My local symphony did a showing of it with a new original score. It was amazing, but the whole time I'm thinking, when we're stuck with constant social justice reboots and capeshit how have we not gotten a lefty Zorro reboot? Zorro is Mexican Social Justice Batman! He is literally, in the original, Batman* but Hispanic and fighting for the rights of oppressed indigenous laborers. A villain comments to another villain that if you're looking for Zorro, just beat up a native and Zorro will show up. Then that exact sequence of events happens, because it's a 1920 silent film and the plot is pretty simple: he beats up an Indian who is minding his own business, and Zorro shows up and slices a Z into his ass and tells him to never touch another native again. The original film is so modern in its combination of violence, social justice, and wry comedy.

So rather than rewrite an existing superhero, why haven't the kind of people who are always talking about how we need more Latinx superheroes given a reboot to this? While Zorro is typically portrayed as a white Spanish nobleman, it doesn't feel like a betrayal of the character, or even much of a change most would notice, to make him Mestizo. It's so weird to me that it hasn't been done.

*He's also, canonically, Batman's spiritual godfather: the 1920 Fairbainks Mask of Zorro is the film that Bruce Wayne's parents went to see the night they were attacked.

Disney appears to be making a Zorro series with Wilmer Valderrama.

Wow, that can't be real. Dudes gotta be like 50 by now right?

I dunno, how old is Zorro supposed to be?

Well in the first he just got back from Spain, and it's implied the trip was gentlemanly education and cultural enrichment (and learning fencing) rather than business, now his dad wants him to get married asap. So depending on culture somewhere between 20 and 32? Much older is a stretch.

The one I want to see is a modern film series featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel (he's the inspiration for all these masked dual identity superheroes).

Scarlet Pimpernel

This sounds like something people see a dermatologist about.

Absolutely! I am glad I'm not a gambler, because I would have lost my ass betting on the likelihood of a woke Zorro movie coming out in the last decade. I wouldn't have even minded it that much, because like you say, it fits. And it's not like Zorro is too ridiculous a concept next to marvel movies about magic robot suits and talking animals from outer space.

On the side, I get the impression Batman fans (aside from those like me who want to watch the world burn) want to forget Zorro exists. That's why Nolan changed the movie to an opera and why the latest one doesn't show the movie. Because it raises the question - wasn't Zorro's disguise good enough? Why did Bats also have to roll in aspects of a flying rodent? I know I know, his mother or father's ghost threw one at him and insisted on it, but now we're drifting closer to "traumatic experience destroys young man's mind" than "super cool vigilante uses fear to clean up crime". And while I think that's a way more interesting concept, it is definitely one which exceeds the grasp of most writers. Even the ones who don't fuck it up entirely usually just do something dull with it.

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