Great movie. First time seeing a ’20s silent film and I didn’t expect anything extraordinary but the story was good. In my view, the film is a typical Good vs. Evil scenario in which Zorro is the hero with good moral values who triumphs over the bad guys (corrupt government).  In a way I can see this film could’ve been an inspiration for many action movies or superhero movies of similar scenarios and storylines. In particular Zorro reminds me a lot of Batman. Although the this story of Zorro takes places during the Spanish rule of California in the early 19th century, the film is very Americanized (obviously) and I hardly felt any sense or feeling of “Spanishness” in the film maybe except for the fact that the use of certain Spanish words ‘cabellero’, ‘don’ and hacienda gives a little character to the movie in order to give the audiences the information that the setting of the film takes place in Spanish California.

The acting of the acting of the characters were very comical and over-dramatic but I can see why they intentionally did that due to having no spoken dialogue, the actors had to exaggerate in order to show and progress the story. Don Diego/Zorro in particular was very well-introduced into the movie. Don Diego’s ignorance and meek behavior in a way hides the “masculine” hero that is Zorro and perhaps Diego was intentionally acting this way in order to test the waters of his environment or to harbor information about others. This type of scenario reminds me a lot about the Batman films.

One thing that kind of disappointed me was how the film didn’t explore the themes of political and social corruption in the settings. The film briefly tells us that Zorro is fighting the oppressive government of Spanish California but we only see the corrupt governor a few times without knowing any character or background of him and the main antagonist just only seems to be Captain Ramon who is a mere soldier of the corrupt system. I would say the film portrayed too much on the self-interest and the life of Zorro rather than also portraying the outside environment and the everyday lives of the common folks that Zorro claims to champion for. Overall I liked the film very much and maybe someday Hollywood will make a reboot of this film and maybe they could add in more authenticity of the settings and give more background and stories to the other characters rather than focusing too much on Zorro.