I’ve been stating for a decade that men will save America from the forces of leftist darkness, and this election year should be the turning point. Because time is running out, as more young women turn to the dark side. But the entertainment medium which once helped guide the two sexes toward their essential separate roles has spent this century denying both and diminishing one — manhood. Today, screen fiction can’t even present a classic male hero story without sinking it in woke garbage. Case in point — the new Amazon Prime series, Zorro.
Portela sticks reasonably close to the original great story … but his liberal deviations damage it beyond repair.
There’s a reason Zorro has been a popular character for more than a hundred years, preceding yet inspiring all the comic-book heroes that followed, in particular Superman and Batman. The idea of a lone mystery man using his exceptional warrior skill to fight societal tyranny but disguising it under a meek persona never gets old. For, sadly, neither does societal tyranny. And the contemptible lot now wrecking America certainly deserves to be branded by a Z, the mark of Zorro. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Look What They’ve Done to My Song)
The rot starts at the top with the decomposing zombie in the White House. His corrupt Department of Justice and other legal minions hunt nonviolent ideological opponents with Stasi-like zeal. Last week’s conviction of six pro-life Christians who did nothing more than pray outside a Tennessee abortion center cries out for dynamic intervention. The group could face more than ten years in prison, while the illegal-alien muggers of two New York City policemen strut out free from the courthouse, one flipping his middle finger at the camera. A crimson Z across his chest would be very appropriate.
During the now effectively over Republican primary, I actively supported Ron DeSantis, the best state governor in my lifetime. I knew he would drain the liberal swamp politically, not violently like Zorro. Last week, DeSantis didn’t just talk, he acted. He deployed members of the Florida National Guard to Texas to support governor Greg Abbott’s border-closing effort, defying the Biden Administration’s open-border adamance. And as a nightcap, a federal judge tossed out Woke Disney’s crybaby lawsuit against DeSantis for being a meany to them.
However, the septuagenarian former president beat DeSantis, practically guaranteeing a rematch between two tired old men, one of them senile. In a way, it had to be thus — the last gasping battle cry of a generation about to lose power forever. I’ll back Trump with everything I got, short of a rapier, because now only he can stem the darkness. And this time it’s personal. Unfortunately, Zorro won’t be riding to the rescue this year, perhaps in 2024.
What about his latest screen incarnation? The new show could have been decent but falls short, brought down by the inescapable gravity of wokeness. Writer-creator Carlos Portela sticks reasonably close to the original great story by Johnston McCulley in his 1919 novel, The Curse of Capistrano, but his liberal deviations damage it beyond repair.
What do Portela and the series producers care that the book sold more than 50 million copies to be one of the bestselling books of all time? Or that the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks adaptation, The Mark of Zorro, was one of silent cinema’s biggest hits. Or that the 1940 Tyrone Power version, The Mark of Zorro, is the best swashbuckler ever made, featuring the greatest swordfight in film history. They just had to modernize it, which in showbiz speak means feminize, which in reality means ruin. (READ MORE: Beauty Survives the Left)
The pilot episode begins with the death of Zorro. That is the Latino Indian embodying Zorro, who it turns out even the bad guys know is a succession of different men. This idea rather diminishes the Zorro mystique. Portela should have checked out The Phantom, Lee Falk’s hugely popular, enduring comic strip about a seemingly immortal Zorro-like hero in Africa nicknamed “the ghost who walks,” really the first-born male of one family going back centuries.
Then the real female trouble starts. An Indian warrioress — a typical modern Hollywood fabrication — played by Dalia Xiuhcoatl demands that the medicine man make her the new Zorro (or is that Zorra?). The resulting sound isn’t the Indian spirits but the channel being changed by every boy who knows she’d last about half a minute in a swordfight.
The remaining spirits choose young Diego De La Vega (a tolerable Miguel Bernardeau), whose father was also just murdered by the corrupt regime. So where in all good versions of the tale, Diego seeks justifiable vengeance against the ruling tyrants of Los Angeles, this Diego is reluctantly drafted. It’s a major dent in his knightly armor.
Soon follows the next fatal blow for girl power over enjoyment. Diego’s childhood girlfriend Lolita (a stunning Renata Notni) sees him riding toward her father’s hacienda. She runs up to her bedroom and gets into a lovely red dress, becoming a rare screen vision of feminine beauty. For a moment, some naïve viewers might think the vision will hold. Until Lolita apparently remembers her girl-boss obligation and says, “No!”
She appears to Diego wearing a hideous hat and manly dress. Diego still kisses her, but as he’s riding away, she fires a rifle at his hat and blows it away. That’ll teach him for his “Me too” violation. (READ MORE: The Boys in the Shaky Boat)
Eventually, Diego must also contend with Indian Warrioress, who challenges him to a fight for snubbing her as Zorro. This being a modern rendition of the story, Indian Warrioress wins. Consequently, the mark of Zorro is no longer Z but L — for loser. But male and female viewers won’t be sticking around to see more of him
