Marvel Lucha Libre Edition

I had a bit of hope for this show, since the trailer made it seem like the show could bear a resemblance to Lucha Underground, but with Marvel characters.

For those unfamiliar, unlike other wrestling promotions like WWE or AEW that have storylines but otherwise they mostly try to emulate a real sports league, Lucha Underground is very storyline driven, drawing from prehispanic mythology and incorporating crime and cartel movie tropes, but featuring wrestling as its main narrative device. With Marvel rich diversity in stories and colorful characters, there was potential for something great.

However, this show isn't it.

The show is all over the place, trying to do several things at once and failing to connect in all fronts, a problem made obvious by its excessively short run time, each episode running for less than 20 minutes, and since there's only 5 of them the whole thing runs for what essentially is a 90 minute film.

It's filmed as a mockumentary, treating the Marvel characters as tho they were real people, with real life stories, but then it also works as a documentary, featuring interviews and explaining the history of wrestling in Mexico, and then it kinda blurs the line since all interviews are in "kayfabe" (Meaning that pro wrestling is treated as if it was a legitimate sport).

Then, there's the Marvel storyline, each episode explains the backstory of one of the featured wrestlers, and progresses the story about a tournament between the Técnicos and the Rudos (Good vs Evil), which is kinda cheesy and basic, so it makes it seem like the show is meant for kids, but it kinda goes against the documentary parts that, while informative, can be kind of slow.

And to be honest, the story is pretty bad, very generic and there's not much of Marvel elements, except for a few mentions of S. H. I. E. L. D. and Hydra. The story being bad wouldn't be much of a problem, but there's a glaring flaw that really knocks this show down.

There's barely any wrestling in the Lucha Libre show, and that's the biggest disappointment for me. Each episodes features only a few minutes of wrestling, but only the last episode features a real wrestling match, the others featuring choreographed segments of wrestling filmed with no audience (Yes, wrestling is not a real fight, but it's not exactly choreographed either, it's more like an improv show with body builders doing stunts and acrobatics). Even then, the last episodes wrestling match is taken from a wrestling show that took place back in 2020 (if my memory serves right), and while it's longer than other episodes segments, it wasn't even shown in full.

To boot, they cast Franco Escamilla as their narrator. Franco Escamilla is a kinda polarizing stand-up comedian, but is generally well liked (Personally, I don't think he is bad, but I feel he's a bit overrated), however, the format of the show didn't favor him at all, first of all, since he's a comedian foremost, and not an actor, his lines don't sound really natural at all, and second of all, his stand-up routines are adult oriented, with swear words and mature themes, and this show, being kid oriented, really cuts his strenghts down, lesving him with weak cheesy joked that fall flat.

Overall, the individual sections are good, the interviews are cool and informative, the wrestling is very well done, (since they have world class wrestlers playing the heroes and villains), the storyline, while basic, could have served as a backbone to the show, giving it a cohesive narrative.

But all of it was put together so poorly that nothing really shines through. I feel like giving the show a longer runtime would have helped greatly, and that time should have been used to showcase full wrestling matches, something resembling the tournament mentioned in the story.

I frankly don't recommend the show, unless you want a quick intro to Lucha libre history, but since it's so short, you might as well give it a shot and you won't waste a lot of time.