A large part of Zorro’s charm is his old-fashioned adventuring ways. He’s a pulp hero who’s instantly recognizable for his mask, cape, and swordsmanship. 20th Century Fox would like to strip all that crap away and send him to the a post-apocalyptic wasteland. 24 Frames reports that the studio is in early development on Zorro Reborn. This time around, Zorro “will be less a caped crusader for justice than a one-man vigilante force bent on revenge, in a western story that has echoes of both Sergio Leone and No Country for Old Men.” Good, because I haven’t seen a movie before where a one-man vigilante force roams the post-apocalyptic wasteland before. Wait—sorry, I have actually seen that—many times. But in all fairness, the vigilante wasn’t named Zorro.
Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, the screenwriters behind the Dracula re-imagining Harker wrote the script and pre-visualization specialist Rpin Suwannath (The Matrix) will make his directing debut on the flick. (For those who don’t know, pre-viz is way of creating motion storyboards that can better illustrated the flow of a scene) Hit the jump for more of my thoughts on Zorro Reborn.
As tempting as it is to write this off completely, I have to applaud Fox for taking on a story that sounds slightly bonkers. And it could work. I’m not exactly sure how you keep Zorro as Zorro when you take away his distinctive elements, but perhaps Shipman and McGreevy have found a way to make it work.
However, 24 Frames says that the project is a “dark reinvention”, which I really don’t need out of a Zorro film. I don’t need a gritty, tortured Zorro. It’s Zorro. Is it such a crime for the character to be light and fun?
Dammit, now I just want to go and watch Martin Campbell’s excellent The Mask of Zorro.