In 2023, the D.C. Universe welcomed the first Latino superhero, Blue Beetle, supported by first-rate Latino talent before and behind the camera, but it barely recovered at the box office with its estimated $100 million budget.
In between the Blue Beetle release, the D.C. Universe not only had much better results at the box office with the return of The Batman (2022), directed by Matt Reeves, but also a surprisingly uplifting spinoff of one of its top villains in the 2024 acclaimed HBO series The Penguin – so it’s no surprise some “inventive” element of their creative team came with a pitch for a “sure” hit with Mexican-American audiences: an alternate version of “what if” the Aztec world had, during its most definitive battle for survival in the Spanish conquest, an unexpected hero supported by Bat powers – the Aztec Batman.
That’s precisely the premise of Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires, the directorial film debut of Mexican storyboard and animation artist Juan José Meza, who undoubtedly shows off his animation skills in this first animated feature – but the effort is too good to be true. On its way to being historically accurate with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors and Hernán Cortés (Christian Lanz) as its obvious villain, the appearance of the good-natured Aztec hero Yohualli (played by Horacio García Rojas, from Apple TV’s Las Azules) unravels the official story so badly that the well-documented background gets lost.
That’s how the Tlaxcalteca people, who were a decisive force in the Aztec Empire’s decline after joining forces with the Spanish Army to end the dominion of a longtime enemy on their own land, end up on the map of this story. But the alternate villain (as he has to be, since the Aztec hero is also “The Batman”) is an Aztec priest named Yoka (Raymond Cruz, from Breaking Bad), who turns into “The Joker” of the Batman universe. So the Aztec narrative surrenders to that of the franchise, which already has a beloved animated feature in Mask of the Phantasm (Kevin Altieri, Boyd Kirkland, and Frank Paur), which gave Star Wars’ Mark Hamill a great turn as its Joker at the time.
I wonder if, after the internet broke in the last days of August over Blue Beetle star Xolo Maridueña’s red carpet appearance with the cast of the upcoming Warner Bros. Practical Magic sequel, the D.C. staff might reconsider a Blue Beetle spinoff or sequel as the better vehicle for hooking a growing Latino audience. It’s been a rough summer for the studio – a box office flop with the failed Supergirl reboot, offset by a new streaming hit with the Green Lantern spinoff Lanterns. But mixing the Aztecs with Batman has proved just as wrong as mixing a Margarita with a Coke.
Rating: 6/10