It's a Great Day for Aztec Batman Fans

Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires doesn't debut in movie theaters in Mexico (where it is titled Batman Azteca: Choque de Imperios) until September 18th (and it will then debut on HBO Max at a later date), and already, fans who are looking forward to the film have some encouraging news via an exclusive CBR interview with the movie's cast at Comic-Con International at San Diego (SDCC).

At the CBR Lounge at SDCC, CBR's Sean O'Connell interviewed Aztec Batman's director, Juan Meza-Leon, two of the film's producers; Aaron Berger and José Carlos García de Letona (de Letona is one of the founders of Ánima); the voice actor for the Joker in the American dub of the film, Raymond Cruz, and the voice actor of Batman in the Spanish dub of the film, Horacio García Rojas. When discussing the future of this Elseworlds universe (where a young Aztec priest avenges the murder of his father by the Spanish conquistadors by becoming this world's Batman), O'Connell asked the cast and crew whether there were plans for more stories set in this Elseworlds universe, and director Juan Meza-Leon explained, "We hope so. The whole world was created that expands this alternate reality of the universe, not only for the Mesoamerican culture, but also for the DC Universe. We have a whole world where we can explore more DC characters."

What other plans does the film have for the characters of this universe?

Producer Aaron Berger added, "If this is successful, we would like to first add to what we did with Jaguar Woman, which we did intead of Catwoman, where we're integrating the mythological characters from the culture, and we overlay that into this historical reality. And so, by doing that, that gives us the opportunity to expand to many different arenas."

Meza-Leon referenced that overlaying idea earlier in the interview, pointing out how they developed Batman's costume, "First of all, before we started to create the outfit or the armor, we wanted to first find out who's underneath the armor, who's the man or the person inside the armor, because Batman is human. So let's build the human first, and from there, build the suit around him. And so we wanted to incorporate some of the elements brought in from the conquistadors, and we have our young warrior using that technology and implementing it into what he needs to fight them. So the design was based on a lot of actual armor from Spaniards, as well as trying to emulate the warrior outfits from the Aztec worlds, like the Jaguar warriors, the evil warriors. And so they had these helmets that represent the animal, the spirit that they're representing."

What is Aztec Batman about?

Aztec Batman stars Horacio García Rojas (Jay Hernandez in the American dub) as Yohualli Coatl, a young Aztec priest whose father, Toltecatzin, was murdered by Spanish Conquistadors. He begins to train at the temple of the bat god, Tzinacan, and becomes, in effect, the Batman of this world. Meanwhile, the conservative priest, Yoka, descends into madness and begins to seek out human sacrifices, and becomes the Joker of this world.

There are other characters with similar analogues in the Batman universe, like Hernán Cortés, a Conquistador who suffers a severe facial injury and becomes like the Two-Face of this reality (and, of course, we already mentioned Jaguar Woman). Ánima, the well-respected Mexican animation studio, which has been in the business since 2002, is behind the production of the film, in coordination with Warner Bros. Animation.