THE LEGEND OF ZORRO (2005)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Given the popularity of 1998's MASK OF ZORRO, I'm surprised it took Hollywood seven years to come out with a sequel. And maybe the producers weren't entirely sure the franchise had legs, for the budget was about $30 million less. Would LEGEND have made better box office with a bigger budget? Probably not, for though the script left things open for a second sequel, there are also strong indications of hedging bets with a potential wrap-up.

In my review of MASK I observed that it was in the tradition of many latter-day films that built on the mythos of Classic Zorro. However, it may be significant that few if any of these Latter Zorros proved capable of sustaining an ongoing series.  Before the two-film series of MASK and ZORRO, there had been a few times when some company made a couple of Zorros back-to-back, as with this pair of Euro-Zorros. To my knowledge, any time a company wanted to come out with a series of many episodes-- a comic book, a TV show-- the makers defaulted back to the Spanish California setting.

MASK paid all due reverence to Classic Zorro by having a Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins) train the younger Alejandro (Antonio Banderas) in the art of foxy-swashbuckling. However, the script for LEGEND-- written by two new writers-- omits any reference to Diego. Given that MASK ended with the character finally re-united with his grown daughter Elena, it would have been appropriate to at least mention if Diego had died or moved to Spain in the nine years between MASK and LEGEND. 

By this year of 1850, California is about to join the United States the married couple Alejandro and Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) have remained the only ones who know of Alejandro's double identity, and not even their young son Joaquin is aware of his father's true nature. But Elena does not like her husband's costumed excursions, and this seems to be the start of deeper issues, for a day or so after Alejandro's last escapade, Elena sues him for divorce. Elena's real reason for so doing are connected to her being blackmailed by ruthless American agents who want her free to spy upon the Spanish don Count Armand (Rufus Sewell). 

Alejandro, who knows nothing of the pressures upon Elena, is by turns confused by Elena's rejections and heartily jealous of the upper-class Spaniard Armand (thus reiterating the class-conflict aspect of the first film). As a way of striking back at his competition, Zorro begins investigating the activities of Armand's men, one of whom, a bigoted white guy, the hero has had previous dealing with. Zorro learns what Elena was charged to learn: that Armand plans to conspire with an early version of the Southern Confederacy in order to overthrow the American government.

Director Martin Campbell returns to boost the weak script with a fair quantity of athletic fight-scenes, and this time Elena, who had just one sword-battle in MASK, has four well-executed fight-scenes that don't treat her as if she were a guy in a dress. But the plot itself is nonsensically unworkable (involving soap-bars made of nitroglycerin), and the distortions of history are unnecessary. I can forgive the movie claiming that California statehood took place two years earlier than in the real world: the date may've been moved just so that Young Joaquin could be about nine years old. I can even understand the filmmakers not wanting to reference the unsavory conditions of the Mexican-American War, which was the proximate cause of California's annexation by the U.S. But why bring the Confederate States of America into the matter, eleven years before the CSA existed? Is it that the scripters thought that no one in the audience would remember dates that well? The CSA wasn't even strictly necessary to the plot, since Armand is tied to a generations-old secret society that wants to cripple American power. But I suppose even in 2005 the practice of virtue signaling was beginning to become a major Hollywood strategy.

Though the audience is supposed to resent it when a villain says that Alejandro's "Zorro 2.0" is past his shelf date, the script suggests that Zorro does not belong in the world of the late 19th century. Given that LEGEND is about half as entertaining as MASK, this was definitely a good place to end this short-lived franchise.