New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Kim Hollis: Machete Kills, the unlikely sequel to Machete, opened with just $3.8 million this weekend. What went wrong here?

Matthew Huntley: I think the obvious answer is no one was really asking for a sequel to Machete, which opened well enough back in 2010 but displayed absolutely no legs, which coincides with its cult (vs. mainstream) following. I think Robert Rodriguez's shtick for making these types of low-budget movies is wearing thin and he needs to reinvent himself, and clearly I'm not the only one. Oddly enough, I think the release date was good (September and October are prime for movies of this nature), but the problem seems to be the movie itself, which just didn't generate enough interest. I've yet to see it, but it's not at the top of my list.

Edwin Davies: This definitely feels like a case of a director wanting to make a film that an audience just wasn't asking for. The first Machete did okay considering it was an expansion of a fake trailer from another movie that didn't do very well in the first place, but it was little more than a joke that a very small audience would appreciate. A sequel seemed like a step too far to me, and the stunt casting of pariahs like Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson (the latter of whom was all but excluded from the advertising I saw, funnily enough) probably seemed a little desperate. I don't think the film offered anything the people were really looking for, and the whole thing felt like a straight-to-DVD film that wound up in theaters due to some clerical error.

Bruce Hall: This is a joke that only works once. Or at least, once as a fake trailer in a movie, and once as a movie based on that a fake trailer. Machete made $26 million domestically on curiosity alone. That's impressive for what it was, but I'm not sure many people outside the Rodriguez household were expecting lightning (or really more of a strong carpet shock) to strike twice in the same place.

Felix Quinonez: I think this is just a movie that nobody was asking for. The grindhouse joke is old and was never that popular to begin with. As it's already been mentioned the movie this "franchise" came out of (Grindhouse) was itself kind of a flop so clearly Robert Rodriguez needs to move on. I mean look at his Grindhouse partner. Since Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino has made two Academy Award winning movies that also happened to be his biggest grossing movies. On the other hand, Rodriguez is still trolling in the grindhouse playground. And besides that, he made a desperate attempt to revive a kids franchise that was clearly past its sell by date (Spy Kids) and he also made Shorts, which I honestly know nothing about. What happened to the director that showed so much promise early in his career?

Kim Hollis: It looked pretty schlocky, which I guess was the point, but there was a very small audience for that sort of thing in the first place. It’s not like the first Machete is remembered as some masterpiece of theater, grindhouse or otherwise. Throw Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson into a marketing campaign that reeked of desperation, and you had all of the ingredients for a collective shrug from potential movie-goers.

Continued:       1       2