Werner Herzog’s Mexico

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

In the 1990’s film director Werner Herzog wrote a screenplay for a planned film about the Spanish conquest of Mexico, told ftom the point of view of the Aztecs, depicting the conquistadors as literal aliens. Because it proved impossible to finance the film, which would have been on a far larger scale than his earlier Aguirre, Wrath of God, it never went into production.

Today, however, that screenplay has been published.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/mexico/werner-herzog/9781942782698?sv_campaign_id=78888&sv_tax1=affiliate&sv_tax2=&sv_tax3=Skimlinks&sv_tax4=theguardian.com&sv_affiliate_id=78888&awc=3787_1725465811_6460292a98e3534eab9a8d26c8ea837b&utm_source=78888&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Skimlinks

Edit: It is also available - and in stock at - Amazon, from whom I have just ordered a copy.

[Dags]

Good find 

[carlos marighela]

Indeed, good find! Aguirre is one of my favourite films, right alongside Fitzcarraldo.

One can only hope there will be an audio book featuring Werner Herzog's voice.

[Inkpaduta]

Okay, who is going to be first to game the Aztecs fighting aliens?

[manchesterreg]

Good find, just ordered it.

[Dags]

One can only hope there will be an audio book featuring Werner Herzog's voice.

*when* I win the lottery I'm going to hire him to narrate a day in my life

[carlos marighela]

That would be something worth paying a king's ransom for.

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

For those who wish to delve further, this was my source:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/sep/04/werner-herzog-wildest-mexico-goalkeeper-vomited-typewriter

By a remarkable coincidence - or perhaps other inexplicable mechanism of the universe - on the very day the above article appeared, so did this:

[manchesterreg]

Well, i have now read it. Have to say it would have been a brilliant film, sadly the money is not there for it. Great screenplay and sticks close to history.

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

It does seem a sad loss. However I’m now feeling a deep sense of trepidation that Jeff Bezos might read it and scream to his secretary “Get me Harry Styles’s agent, yesterday!”

[anevilgiraffe]

I wonder if he'd do it as animation?

[manchesterreg]

I wonder if he'd do it as animation?

I can only see this as a massive film, using CGI, it deserves it, his screenplay just screams 'epic'

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

Quite seriously, the only person I can think of who might take this on - and certainly has the clout to do so - would be Mel Gibson. Of course, the Aztecs would now actually speak Aztec, rather than the English that Herzog prescribed for them as the POV characters. The Spanish, on the other hand, being the  invaders, will have to speak English, and in an English accent to accentuate the depth of their evil. Perhaps Neil Young can be roped in to provide the theme tune.

[carlos marighela]

Or.... it will be co-opted into some sort of Marvel franchiseverse and churned out like the rest of that pap.

The fly in the ointment for the Mel theory is his Uber-Catholic sentiment. Aien Spanish invaders? The people that brought the light of Jesus to the benighted? Still, you're right, the baddies would have RP accents.

The best option would be that the script is optioned by a Mexican or at least LatinX director.  Iñárritu  would be the best pick but either of the Cuarón brothers could pull it off.

[Cholmondely Percival IV]

I’m still only two thirds of the way through the screenplay, which is more realistic than I’d anticipated based on the Guardian interview. I had envisaged it as depicting what was going on inside the heads of Motecuhzoma and his inner circle rather than the near-reportage style actually adopted, with the only fantastical elements being in the terms used by the Aztec emperor and advisors to describe the Spaniards, their ships, firearms, and animals, all of which are alien to them.

Thank you for your comments, Carlos. I’d totally forgotten Gibson’s fervent Catholicism, which I accept does rather undermine my theory.

You may be onto something re the Mexican directors. Cuaron’s experience in the Harry Potter franchise would undoubtedly serve him well, at least as far as studio executives are concerned. (Come to think of it the Conquistadors seem an excellent metaphor for Hollywood execs, with the formers’ lust for gold translating easily to the latters’ insatiable greed for profits and, still more, power). Inarritu seems to me to have less commercial clout, though he has one or two English language films to his credit, so is not an unknown quantity in Hollywood. However, I’ll throw one more name into the hat: Michael Bay.

Joke! I meant Christopher Nolan, but some of the suits would surely argue for Bay, with Vin Diesel as Motecuhzoma.

Edit: I overlooked that you mentioned “the Cuaron brothers”. In my defence, I only know of Alfonso. Another director from that country who now springs to mind is Guillermo del Toro, who, I feel, would undoubtedly maximise the fantastical elements of the story, literally depicting the Aztec POV. For this very reason, however, the project would be not only hugely expensive but of limited commercial appeal, rendering him, sadly in my view, the least likely of the potential candidates to be hired.