I’m enjoying the new “Zorro” series on Amazon Prime Video but it has prompted me to wonder about something: How do networks and streaming services create their subtitles and closed captions and why are they so different, sometimes, from the actual dialogue?

I’ve been watching most TV shows and movies with subtitles – when they’re available – for much of the past year now. Uneven sound mixes prompted me to do that, and while I still consider subtitles kinda distracting, they’re helpful in catching asides (as in series like “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” with rapid fire, often humorously-phrased dialogue) or series like the wonderful “Derry Girls,” where subtitles are handy to catch all the jokes.

But in keeping an eye on subtitles, I’ve noticed they often vary from the actual dialogue on screen. I’ve wondered if subtitling was done from a script or literally just what the people who write closed-captions can make out. The number of times a caption includes the phrase “unintelligible” makes me think it’s the latter.

And now comes “Zorro,” a Spanish TV production acquired by Prime Video that is obviously dubbed. But here’s the odd thing: The subtitling/captions frequently don’t match the dubbed dialogue.

The dubbed dialogue will be something like “Quickly, we must go outside,” and the subtitle will read something like, “Hurry – we need to catch up!”

So, close in spirit but not in details.

Other than that, the most egregious case of dialogue and captions that don’t match, “Zorro” is good fun so far.

I’ve always been a “Zorro” fan, having caught the original 1957 series starring Guy Williams in reruns. I’ve always loved how the original Johnston McCulley stories – which debuted in 1919 and were adapted into movies ranging from the Douglas Fairbanks silent movie in 1920 to the 1988 film staring Antonio Banderas – clearly influenced the early elements of the Batman comics, including secret lair (often hidden behind a fireplace or bookcase) black horse/Batmobile, preference for dispensing justice in old California with a sword or whip versus a gun, etc.

The new Zorro/Diego de la Vega is played by Miguel Bernardeau, with Renata Notni as Lolita, his headstrong romantic interest and, most intriguingly, Dalia Xiuhcoatl as a Native warrior who trained to succeed the old Zorro, who is ostensibly killed in the series’ opening scenes, along with Diego’s father.

“Zorro” has a cast of familiar characters, played by striking actors, with some interesting twists and additions. I’ll keep watching, with one eye on the subtitles and an ear out for the unmatching dialogue.

I generally like “end of the world” thrillers. I don’t even mind those with endings that leave me hanging. That’s probably why I liked “Leave the World Behind.”

About a year ago, I wrote a piece for Gutter Review, “Apocalypse Then: The Superiority of Bygone Disaster Films,” about how in general I thought classic end-of-the-world films like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “The World, the Flesh and the Devil” were better treatment of the kind of apocalyptic stories that were the currency of science fiction literature of the first 60 years of the 20th century than their modern counterparts.

So I went into “Leave the World Behind,” director Sam Esmail’s thriller for Netflix, kind of cautiously. What happens if I hated the film, which grew out of a production pact with Barack and Michelle Obama and starred a great cast, including Mahershala Ali, Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke? I’d hate to hate it.

No worries. The film, while long on set-up and short on “Panic in the Year Zero”-style payoff, is satisfying.

Actually, there’s a very contained version of “Panic” – released in 1962 and starring Ray Milland as a hard-nosed survivor leading his family group through the hours and days after nuclear war – in “Leave,” with the same kind of “I’m sure they’ll figure it out soon” vibe.

Added to that end-of-the-world flavor is a treatment of race and class. Roberts and Hawke play a New York City couple who, along with their kids, go for a weekend in the country to a luxurious house. They’ve barely settled in when the Internet goes out and the owner of the house (Ali) and his daughter show up. They’re unable to get to the city and need to stay over at their AirB&B. Roberts’ character is uptight and – much is made of this – hates people. Roberts’ reluctance to let the visitors move back into their own house is noted by Ali’s daughter, played by Myha’la.

Once accommodations are figured out, the next order of business is to connect with the outside world. There’s not as much “Panic”-style panic as in most movies of this type, but there is some meeting of the minds and meeting of the neighbors, a herd of deer.

There’s more made of a quest of the youngest (Farrah MacKenzie) to find the final episode of “Friends” streaming somewhere than a quest to answer what the hell is happening, and the most prominent theory, from a survivalist neighbor played by Kevin Bacon, is about as close as we get to an explanation – until the final shot.

“Leave the World Behind” is a prime example of the type of apocalyptic story that focuses on the point of view of the everyman-and-woman rather than “Deep Impact”-style deliberations by POTUS deep in the White House bunker. I like a good presidential speech summing up the disaster and urging people to remain calm as anybody, but this is a good change.

I have to admit I’m fascinated by death – which is probably understandable for a writer of true crime and crime fiction – but I’m especially fascinated by everything that follows death.

The picture above – forgive me for its “shot through glass” quality – is of a death crown, or angel crown. I’m writing a piece for CrimeReads about these bizarre artifacts of death, so I’ll save most of my explanation of death crowns for that, but I can tell that death crowns are a wreath, basically made of feathers from a feather pillow.

Folklore, especially Appalachian folklore, tells us that death crowns were found in the feather pillows of people who had recently died. I’ll tell you more in that upcoming CrimeReads article.

I’m not sure where my interest, even fascination, with death and funerals and cemeteries began. It probably had something to do with being exposed to so many funerals of extended family members when I was young. Complete with open caskets. It probably also had to do with the macabre stories and movies that I grew up on. I’ve written about that previously for CrimeReads.

Without quite realizing it, I’ve turned this interest in death into fodder for my fiction writing. I’ve written short stories about cemeteries and my crime novel “Seven Angels” is about a small town in Tennessee that was literally built around the graves of early 1800s settlers. The graveyard that is central to the story is based on my dad’s family graveyard down here in Tennessee. My main character is a woman who returns to the town of Seven Angels to help run her family’s funeral home and ends up as county coroner. The book won the Mystery Writers of America Hugh Holton Award for Best Unpublished Novel and I’m going to be working to get it out there in front of people in 2024.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get over my fascination with death and what follows, and I’m not sure I want to. It’s been more than a fascination for me. It’s been an inspiration.

Momentum is a thing. Honestly, I think it’s even more of a thing than franchise fatigue.

Remember back in 2016, before Twitter went to hell and took a little bit of our democracy with it, when the biggest thing online that spring was whether you were Team Iron Man or Team Captain America?

It was a silly twitter hashtag stunt, of course, intended to drum up publicity for “Captain America: Civil War,” which came out that summer, introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and helped build momentum for the final Avengers films in 2018 and 2019.

Momentum, all but wasted over the next couple of years by Covid-delayed MCU movies and Disney+ series that seemed too little, too late.

And I liked a lot of them. I was one of the people who really liked “The Marvels” a couple of weeks ago.

Now Marvel and Disney’s momentum is lost, thanks to assholish behavior by the studios that led to actors’ and writers’ strikes that, ultimately, proved only how greedy the studios and streaming services were.

So where do Marvel movie fans like me go from here?

I’ll certainly be seeing the third “Deadpool” movie when it comes out in July 2024. It’s the only “real” Marvel movie coming out during the year.

But then … 2025 and (barring more schedule shuffling) “Captain America: Brave New World,” featuring the starring debut of Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, the new Cap, then “Fantastic Four” and “Thunderbolts” and “Blade.”

I’m so excited to see how “Fantastic Four” shakes out because the FF were my favorites, along with the Avengers, when I was a comic-reading kid.

But I’m probably most hyped to see Mackie continue wearing the shield he won in the “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” series.

There’s a moment in the first “Iron Man” movie when Rhodey (then played by Terrence Howard) looks at Tony’s spare suit and says, “Next time, baby,” and the crowd in the theater with me fairly screamed at the possibility of the larger Marvel universe finding its way on screen – a possibility that seemed to be a real thing when Samuel L. Jackson showed up in the end credits,

I was ready then. I’m ready now. For more Marvel.