This year marks the 25th anniversary of Martin Campbell’s “The Mask of Zorro,” the swashbuckling adventure film starring Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Made on a budget of $95 million and produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, it made a solid $250 million at the worldwide box office in 1998 and was widely acclaimed.
To this day it holds up extremely well, sits as one of the best late 1990s action tentpoles and is right up there with Campbell’s two Bond entries (“Casino Royale,” “Goldeneye”) as amongst his most widely adored work.
A big part of that appeal is its old-school approach – a throwback action-adventure with everything done practically utilising stunts and in-camera techniques. CG is essentially non-existent here, though CG had been in use in the industry for years by that time.
Speaking with Yahoo recently on the film’s anniversary, Banderas spoke about a conversation he hand with Spielberg during the film’s production in which the filmmaker touched upon how this film was going to be one of the last of its kind:
“Steven Spielberg said to me once when we were shooting, ‘This is probably going to be one of the last Westerns shot in the way the Westerns were shot in the old days, with real scenes with real horses, where everything is real, [real] sword fighting, no CGI’. Everything was [practical].
And he said, ‘But things are going to change. they’re going to change, and they’re gonna change fast. And so you should be proud of this movie.
And I am, probably even more now than at the time that I was doing it. I don’t know if I was absolutely conscious when I was doing ‘Zorro’ that it was going to have an impact. The impact that it’s had, and especially after 25 years…
It was a very beautiful adventure movie with a lot of ingredients that made it shine in a very beautiful way. I have nothing but good memories.”
Banderas and his co-star Catherine Zeta-Jones reprised their roles in the less well-regarded 2005 sequel “The Legend of Zorro,” and Banderas says he’s been approached before about a potential third film:
“Obviously if I do another movie now, I would play the [mentor] character that Anthony Hopkins did in the first version. I [would] be the character that passes the torch to the new Zorro, which would be great, just to do so. But you know, if it comes, great. If it doesn’t, you know, the other two are there forever.”
“The Mask of Zorro” is available to stream on MGM+ and is widely available on VOD and disc.
