There will always be moments that even people as famous as Antonio Banderas can “remember where they were” when certain shifts in the world take place. For Banderas, one of those was on the set of 1998’s The Mask of Zorro, a film that was executive produced by the legendary Steven Spielberg. The reason the encounter was so memorable was the fact that the man behind watershed films like Jurassic Park predicted the future, as Spielberg told Banderas about what movie-making would be like in the years to come.
During an interview celebrating 25 years of director Martin Campbell’s reboot of the classic saga, Antonio Banderas revealed this recollection to Yahoo. Fittingly, the story you’re about to read took place on a day that touched on the importance of practical effects:
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].
Just imagine being on a movie set in 1997, or any point pre-1999, and hearing such a prediction! It would have felt odd, even though Steven Spielberg’s 1993 dinosaur classic opened the door to the future pretty wide by pushing for CGI dinosaurs over stop-motion.
Of course, at this point in history, one could also assume that Spielberg’s comments were partially based on seeing his friend George Lucas’ work on Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. As both The Mask of Zorro and that first Star Wars prequel were in production throughout 1997, it’s not a stretch.
Even removing this possibility from the equation, with 1999 bringing movies like The Mummy and The Matrix, plus reflecting on the mammoth success that would be Titanic in '97, that particular writing was practically on the wall. Antonio Banderas continued to express that point, through these further remarks:
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.
Steven Spielberg was absolutely right on the money when he predicted that The Mask of Zorro would be one of the final true Westerns filmed in a traditional way. With CGI and digital photography becoming industry standards, it’s now an occasion when a filmmaker like Christopher Nolan commits their projects to actual film and with little to no digital trickery involved.
Some franchises, like Indiana Jones, have kept that practical horseplay in the mix, which yields fun stories like that time Harrison Ford hurled f-bombs at his stuntmen. Considering that Antonio Banderas was also part of Dial of Destiny's cast, his work on that action spectacle probably reminded him of his conversation with Steven Spielberg so long ago. To see it all come full circle must have been amusing, while also a little eerie.
Then again, that's something that tends to happen while working with visionaries like Spielberg. So whenever the man who has dreamed up a world involving aliens, dinosaurs, and artificial intelligence makes a prediction, it's probably best to listen rather closely.
