Many new projects involve the masked swordsman. An archetype which inspired several other icons, such as Batman. His anarchy, however, linked to respect for the weakest, make him a hero of other times. And therefore immortal
In fact, Argentine president Javier Milei provided a somewhat extreme interpretation. About a year ago, to celebrate the anniversary of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, he gave an enthusiastic eulogy to his favorite character, Zorro. “He’s an anarcho-capitalist, he’s a market anarchist and he’s obviously demonized, but he’s a real hero,” he declared emphatically. «Zorro not only defended private property, but also the well-being of citizens and fought against Captain Monasterio who collected taxes. A fabulous character.” An extreme reading, it was said, but not too far from the truth. Zorro is, in fact, an anarchic adventurer, who fights against authority, the army and in general the corrupt representatives of the dominant power in the Pueblo de Los Ángeles, in late eighteenth-early nineteenth century California, still dominated by the Spanish.
An avenger who is certainly populist in the noblest sense of the word: he takes the side of the oppressed people, of the workers and farmers oppressed by corrupt public officials and thieves. And yes, he is also a staunch opponent of excessive taxes, to the point of attacking the convoys of tax collectors, stealing the gold and money they have stolen from the population and returning it to those who earned it with the sweat of their brow. Moreover, his creator, the American Johnston McCulley (1883-1958), imagined him as a sort of Hispanic-American Robin Hood, a nobleman who doesn’t exactly steal from the rich to give to the poor. To be precise, in fact, Zorro steals from those who get rich in a parasitic way and gives back to those who have worked hard to stay in the world.
McCulley was obviously also inspired by the Scarlet Pimpernel, but he was able to insert atmospheres and themes typical of popular pulp literature into his stories. It is no coincidence that he became famous with the serialized novel The Curse of Capistrano in 1919, published in the pulp magazine All-Story Weekly. It was there that the masked swordsman appeared for the first time, with immediate success: already in 1920 the film The Mark of Zorro was filmed and, since then, the character began to exist outside the page, in the imagination and dreams of adults and especially children all over the world.
Time, it must be said, has somewhat tarnished the charm of the vigilante in black, known as the Fox. But it must be recognized that, without him, most superheroes probably wouldn’t exist. In particular, it is not difficult to trace in Batman (whose first adventure dates back to 1939, therefore twenty years after the birth of Zorro) some characteristic traits of the Spanish adventurer. Both, for example, are very rich and come from important families. Unlike Bruce Wayne, Don Diego de la Vega is a nobleman, but they both live in large houses where you can feel the breath of the years and full of secret places, and for both of them nobility is first and foremost spiritual. They are knights (even if Batman does not have a horse but a powerful car or motorbike) and they behave as such: they defend the weakest. The connection between Zorro and Batman is even made explicit by the creators of the Batman. When Bruce Wayne’s parents are murdered they are leaving a cinema, where they have seen a Zorro film.
A more recent connection between the two figures is embodied by Sean Gordon Murphy, an American cartoonist who years ago wrote Batman: White Knight, one of the most interesting sagas of the bat. Together with Simon Cough, Murphy took up the character of Zorro again and created a graphic novel of great strength: Zorro, man of the dead, published in Italy by Sergio Bonelli editore. Again, Batman’s shadow looms over the entire work. In this case, Diego de la Vega is a young Mexican of our times, fixated on the myth of Zorro and with some problems adapting to the real world, also due to the terrible trauma he suffered as a child: like little Bruce Wayne, his father was killed before his eyes. However, he was not a simple criminal, but a drug trafficker at the head of the cartel that dominates the area. The new Zorro is therefore an adversary of the narcos, with the attitude of a dazed, dysfunctional Don Quixote. A suggestive rereading that turns out to be much less politically correct than the premises might have led one to fear.
Perhaps it is even more interesting than Django/Zorro, a strange comic written by Quentin Tarantino and Matt Wagner, a very classy cartoonist. Still unreleased in Italy, it seems that the director saw it as fun… interested. In essence it was a sort of trailblazer for the making of a film. A film that Tarantino has been talking about for at least ten years and which, according to some, could soon see the light, but which will not be written or directed by the master of Pulp Fiction. It appears to Variety that Brian Helgeland will write the screenplay (a sacred monster, therefore a good sign) and that Antonio Banderas could return to play Don Diego after the film in which he was the protagonist in 1998. As for Jamie Foxx, the face of Django, it is not known whether he will actually be involved. In 2014, speaking about the comic, Tarantino seemed enthusiastic about the idea of bringing the two characters together: “I really liked the idea,” he said. “One of the things I always liked best was taking the most famous fictional Mexican Western hero and putting him together with one of the most famous black Western heroes.” In reality, as we have seen, Zorro is not Mexican, but yes.
“Both oppose oppression,” Wagner said, reinforcing Tarantino’s reasoning. «Django’s approach is a little more personal, a little more lethal. Django is set in the American Civil War era, while Zorro reaches the peak of his career in 1815, so I thought maybe we could have a new incarnation. But Quentin shot down the idea, saying, “No, he has to be old. He has to be your Zorro,” and that sold me straight away. Quentin noted that after years and years of playing the dandy Don Diego de la Vega, he has in a sense become that character. He’s become fussy and old, and he likes cucumber sandwiches…”
Thinking about it, Django and Zorro might work better in the cinema than in a comic book. But Tarantino’s hand behind the camera would make the difference, it would probably mark the distinction between a surprising result and a total failure. A film like this with a different director is not easy to imagine. But who knows: after all, Zorro has had many faces, many shades and many different incarnations. Over the years, Douglas Fairbanks, Tyrone Power, Guy Williams, Alain Delon and, indeed, Antonio Banderas have given it body and face. And as for her stories, even a venerated master like Isabel Allende wrote a remarkably successful version, even if predictably burdened by some do-gooder clichés. The author of Eva Luna wrote the novel on commission but at first – like a good snob – she thought of refusing. Then, however, he began to delve deeper into the character. “It was a totally unexpected discovery,” he later said. «I had so much fun writing this book. It wasn’t stressful at all. My agent was horrified. Everyone was. Why did I do something like that? For the same reason I would wear Zorro’s mask and costume and take fencing lessons.”
Ultimately, however, the most interesting and perhaps closest to the original version of Zorro remains Javier Milei’s. He loves the libertarian hero who does not deny his noble origins, who is populist but also aristocratic, rebellious but faithful to eternal and traditional values. All the others, especially in recent times (including the authors of the almost comical French TV series of 2024, with the good Jean Dujardin), have made him either a half-spot or a kind of socialist and third worldist revolutionary. They wanted Che Guevara as Zorro, and they betrayed both icons. Anything to avoid presenting Diego de la Vega for what he is: a hero from other times, an ancient knight, and therefore eternal.
