My thoughts on this telenovela

I saw this novela when it first came out and watching telenovelas was a family pastime for me so knowing that I was going to see a telenovela about Zorro I was surprised and happy because there is a lot of drama in the adventures of Zorro that can be used into a soap opera. The setting was great, the idea that Zorro was created from a secret society and that Diego De la Vega is not an European but half-Mestizo who saw his Indian mother killed by creoles as a boy would prove to be an interesting plot in showing the ongoing struggle that Zorro faces between justice and revenge. The problems that this novela had were many but I will abridge them as much as I can on this post without mindlessly ranting.

First problem was that this novela focused less Zorro and more on Esmeralda which would have been fine but Zorro was hardly shown as the novela progressed making a fan of the hero wonder "where the hell is Zorro?" I mean half the time the adventures were more on Diego rather than Zorro. The novela should have been about Esermalda without having the name Zorro because about 2/3 of the novela was about her and the rest was more about the problems revolving around Los Angeles due to Montero's abuses.

Second problem: The story of Zorro has drama and adventures in its own right, it did not need any of the stereotypical cliches that are famous in soap operas. For instance, Diego having amnesia....this novela did not need the amnesia subplot for God's sakes, it was trying to comedic but Diego pretending to be Diego the fop to his family is comedic in itself, the story wasn't necessary. The switching babies in a Zorro story??? If this was needed, it should have been done in the beginning with Esmeralda or rid of altogether, I think the producers just wanted to add that because they thought "Hey, lets put a Zorro story and have every single soap opera cliche known to man no matter how it fits" but I digress....The only thing that this part revealed at least to me was that Maribel and Montero were surprisingly good parents, I was heartbroken when Montero found out that Alejandro wasn't his.

Third Problem: Esmeralda finding out about Zorro too quickly....She finds about Zorro I think either in the third or fourth episode which ruined sexual tension between the main characters. The opening intro had a clip where Diego looks at his mask and says "tu y yo estamos enamorados con la misa mujer". This gives the impression that Esmeralda is going to be in love with both and Diego is going to struggle in trying to be the playful fop or this crusader almost like Batman. The fact that this secret was shown way too early does not make me care about the romance and a majority of a soap opera's appeal is the main romance so giving the secret too early ruins the tension and it can lose the audience.

Fourth Problem: The lack of focus on the stories. In this version, Zorro meets Esmeralda who is a gypsy princess whose mother is imprisoned in an iron mask and is not only the mysterious queen of the gypsies but also the legitimate Queen of Spain. Combined that with being a crusader for justice in Los Angeles this would be an interesting story already but why where the gypsies needed as well as the Indians? The Indians never did anything and all it gained was the love triangle between the Yumaili and Alejandro. The amazons were so incredibly useless but they were shown in order to create la Zorro but this is suppose to about Zorro which drove the story into different angles that were incredibly bizarre. One story that entirely annoyed me was the royal saga with the mysterious woman in the iron mask...I refuse to believe that this woman who was queen for many years would just simply give up her crown and up the Duke into prison because the legitimate ruler was in prison for nearly 20 years. The queen should have been a villian or the Duke could have been the King, I don't understand why these characters were introduced the way that they were when the show already had a lot of other stories going on at the same time.


I was big, it was the pictures that got small-Gloria Swanson