ANI-MOVIES, *Aztec Batman: Clash Of Empires

For a DC Animated Movie to come out after the conclusion of the Tomorrowverse proves that there's some gas left in their direct-to-video productions, but this doesn't live up to the reputation of former DCAU films. Aztec Batman: Clash Of Empires is an original story set in a parallel universe much like the other DC Elseworlds titles. Warner Bros. teamed up with Mexican animation studio Anima to create a tale that would bring more awareness to colonialism and how it affected the Aztecs, although this really took the wrong approach to it. The quality has severely dropped compared to other Elseworlds animated movies like The Doom That Came To Gotham or Gotham By Gaslight and it's like they took any creative idea for an alternate history and filled the cast with random characters from the Batman roster. The animation is stiff and way below theatrical standards, plus the way the story folds out it seems more like one of compilation films of an online DC animated mini-series being broken up into several chapters, even with their own separate fade out scene changes. The real rusty nail sticking out of the whole affair is that it was done intentionally as the first part of a franchise as if there was any potential for it to get a sequel.

Set in another reality, Coatl is the son of a village chief whose entire population is killed off by Spanish conquistadores from Cuba led by the greedy Cortes who becomes this world's version of Two-Face, who is accompanied by the Azrael placeholder. Coatl trains with his family's retainer to become a masked warrior modeled after an Aztec bat god, plus gains an ally in the disguised thief of Jaguar Woman. A forest spirit who here is a good version of Poison Ivy helps Coatl realize his true destiny as a tool for the gods, all while a corrupt priest accepts the idea of madness and murders his family to appease his own delusionary deity by becoming the Joker of this story. Ultimately, the Aztecs repel the Spaniards for the time being with threat of a token Penguin filler villain that shows up in a post-credit scene.

Even though this took a lot of historical liberties, the movie takes people who really existed and rewrote them into being comics characters. The story fills most of the squares in their Batman bingo card when it comes to a new interpretation of the Caped Crusader, but it takes its time getting to each plot point as the characters fill in their roles as Gotham City regulars. This is an R rated movie, so there's a decent amount of bloody maiming, but there is no replay value in this at all and would've been better off as a comic book story instead of an original animated movie.