Review: Aztec Batman serves up endless fan service instead of capitalizing on its unique setting

Earlier this year, Batman returned to feudal Japan for another round of Batman Ninja, in which he faced off with reimagined versions of his rogues gallery. This kind of cultural displacement is pretty commonplace in the world of comic books (and thus, comic book adaptations): you take a well-known character, give them a fresh coat of paint in a different time and place, and voilá, you have a "new" story and maybe get some points for centering an under-represented demographic. 

And I get it. In some ways, it feels like an ideal way to churn out these animated comic book movies that aren't looking to set the world on fire. It gives each new release its own flavor without requiring too much work to dig out the story. It almost feels like an assembly line where most of the pieces are the same as always, but then the final step or two is slapping on a fresh coat of paint and a few culturally-specific bells and whistles.

Reader, I grow tired of these comic book reimaginings.

The latest is Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires, which imagines what Batman would've looked and operated like in 1519 as an Aztec prince facing the arrival of Spanish colonizers. It's ripe ground for a radical new take on the character, and I'll give credit where it's due: in a lot of ways, this doesn't feel like a familiar Batman story. Sure, there's a parental death that serves as the inciting incident to drive Yohualli to take on a new identity, and a lot of familiar characters pop up in new forms, but this is a pretty unique setting that goes a long way toward making this movie feel pronouncedly different from other animated Batman movies.

But still, this so often feels like a fanboy Easter egg hunt, like it's dangling keys in front of frothing Batman lovers' faces, begging the viewer to guess who these different new characters will ultimately become. For instance, the Aztec king Moctezuma has a spiritual advisor with a long face and green adornment on his head. Hmm, who could that be? Too hard to guess? Here's a hint: the character is named Yoka. 

It's like this movie, and others like it, want to have their cake and eat it, too. It wants to set out into new story territory, plopping us into a cool setting with lots of possibilities, but then it's always pulling us back to the familiar. Yeah, the villain is a colonizer, but he's also (eventually) Two-Face. There's a nature goddess who aids Yohualli on his quest, and obviously she's a spin on Poison Ivy. Watching this movie feels like watching a film that has one narrative foot firmly planted in the realm of fear: it feels like the filmmakers don't want to stray too far from the well-known source material and beloved characters for fear that the audience might lose interest.

And to be fair, I bet that's true of a lot of the audience for a movie like this, so maybe this is making the right moves in how it approaches its story and characters from a capitalist point-of-view (which, sadly, is the one that matters most at the end of the day in Hollywood). But with the recent downturn in box office returns for big superhero tentpoles, maybe studios should start being a bit bolder, less fearless in their story-telling. Maybe now is the time to free these stories from the constraints of being so tied to what has come before. Maybe this story would've been better if it was just Batman kicking a bunch of colonizer ass without there needing to be Two-Face and Joker in play. 

But then, that feels like me asking DC to make a movie that isn't a DC movie, which is a dumb (and frankly unfair) ask. I guess that's why I find this so hard to engage with, much less like: it's just a frustrating prospect for me all around.

And all of this has just been me trying to untangle my feelings about the movie being what it is. Then there's the matter of how it is what it is: the ugly animation with its heavy movements and ho-hum action, the bizarre pacing that feels like it's at odds with the story-telling, the completely undeserved cliffhanger ending that feels more like a threat than a promise because everything that came before it was so unexciting and bland.

I want better from these DC animated movies, and a lot of their recent releases have been good (just look at last year's Watchmen two-parter). But there has to be a better way to transplant well-known characters into unique settings that allow the setting to be more meaningful, and to let the characters be a little more free to fly. If they can't figure that out, maybe we need to ground these sorts of outings for the time being.