‘Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires’ 4K UHD Blu-ray (review)

Warner Bros.

Author’s Note: This film is available with both Spanish and English soundtracks. This review reflects the English dub.

Earlier this year I reviewed Batman Ninja and its sequel for FOG! and found them to be charming alternate takes on the world of the Dark Knight mixed with the aesthetics of Sengoku-era Japan and bolstered by some extremely dynamic Japanese animation.

Evidently Warner Brothers felt the same way because now they’ve partnered with Mexican animation firm Ánima and Brazilian production company Chatrone to produce Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires, a version of the Batman legend that uses the trappings of Meso-American indigenous peoples at the time of the Spanish arrival in North America.

Aztec Batman is the story of Yohualli Coatl (Jay Hernandez), son of a widowed tributary chief under the Aztec Emperor Toltecatzin (Jorge R. Gutierrez) whose coming of age is interrupted by the arrival of Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés (Álvaro Morte).

Initially, the Aztecs are unsure whether Cortés and his cadre are long prophesied gods returning to Earth, but when demonstration of a Spanish arquebus triggers a massacre of the village that leaves Yohualli Coatl orphaned, he’s chosen by this universe’s variant of Poison Ivy to take on the Bat totem and defend the people from the invaders.

Coatl makes his way to the capital, Tenochtitlan where he poses as a priest and comes into contact with the emperor’s vizier Yoka (Raymond Cruz, from Breaking Bad) and aided by the avatar of the Jaguar (Teresa Ruiz) to become this universe’s version of Batman, who will defend the people from the colonizing horde.

Those readers who also have seen Batman Ninja will notice that, unlike that project, Aztec Batman does not displace the regular cast of Batman comics in an unfamiliar time but acts as an Elseworld where familiar Batman characters are recast in historical characters. Additionally, whereas Batman Ninja treated its Sengoku setting as a general period of high adventure, Aztec Batman is preoccupied with historical narrative, even using real people as analogues for characters like Two-Face.

This has caused the project to come under fire for its extremely idealized vision of the Aztec Empire and ridiculously one-dimensional view of the Spanish. This is a literary device, of course, the idea being to recast Batman into a propaganda figure for a certain historical point of view. Being not of Mexican descent I don’t want to dwell on the controversy except to say that I did find the idealized picture of Aztec life and the dismissal of the Spanish as uniformly and nakedly evil to be ahistorical enough to be distracting at points. Historically the Spanish were able to displace the Aztecs because of their nobility’s extreme cruelty to their neighbors and vassals, and so the revisionism was jarring at points.

As stated above Aztec Batman was produced in conjunction with Mexican animation firm Ánima and I found the animation to be smooth, if plain; the character designs to be imaginative; and the action scenes to be acceptable. There’s nothing in it that rivals the work in Batman Ninja but that was produced by top flight directors of Japanese action anime.

I’ve seen dozens of versions of Batman’s origin and even more than one indigenous take on the story. I think the central performance from Jay Hernandez is a little bland and that carries through to the central character. One real problem with the main performances is that both he and Teresa Ruiz, who is playing this world’s Catwoman, both register as too young for their roles and, oddly for an R rated Batman project, as completely chaste in their association. There’s no chemistry between them that you always find between these two characters, and is really the reason the Catwoman character herself is so compelling.

Raymond Cruz, on the other hand, is really spectacular as Yoka and predictably the Joker analogue is going to get all the most exciting stuff to do. After being discredited by a passing comet, Yoka goes mad under the influence of evil gods (and, its implied, his own guilt from the ritual sacrifice and cannibalism practiced historically by Aztec religious caste) and blanches his face in the ashes of burnt human remains, dying his lips in their dried blood.

 This is a very strong conceptual take on The Joker and the film really picks up whenever he’s on screen. Unfortunately, he’s relegated to a secondary villainous role behind Álvaro Morte’s Cortes/Two-Face and that’s a real shame because that’s a much safer, more conventional villain who serves the film’s viewpoint much more directly but is far less interesting to watch.

Extras include featurettes.

Aztec Batman is well-made and has exciting sequences, but it commits the cardinal sin of promising to tell the really interesting story in the sequel, and too many of its analogues feel nothing like their DC Comics counterparts.

Not Recommended.