Robert Rodriguez Reveals Why He May Not Return to His Desperado Franchise

Robert Rodriguez is known for an array of films, and he occasionally returns to certain worlds. In fact, the director's Spy Kids reboot recently hit Netflix. Before he was known for family-friendly content, Rodriguez directed what has been dubbed the "Mexico Trilogy," which includes El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995), and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). Rodriguez recently spoke with The Wrap and revealed why he may not return to that franchise. 

"I would love to revisit the Desperado series," Rodriguez explained. "I thought it was way ahead of its time. It's really hard to do today, for me, anything with guns. Gun violence has gotten out of control. Even those are those are very tongue-in-cheek and kind of fun. It's just hard to do. There's always some terrible shooting and you just go, I don't know if I can responsibly do anything with guns. I really love those films, they are so fun. They're like Spy Kids for grownups, with guitar cases that fired missiles and gadgets galore. It was still made by kid. Still the glorification of it would be hard for me to pull off responsibly." 

Will Machete Kills in Space Happen?

Another adult-themed franchise started by Rodriguez is Machete, the character originally played by Danny Trejo in Spy Kids. While the character may have started out in the kids' film, he went on to star in the much more violent Machete and Machete Kills after appearing in a fake trailer during the Grindhouse double feature by Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. 

Machete Kills teased a third movie titled Machete Kills in Space, and fans have been eager to see the next installment for years. Back in 2019, Trejo said he'd be willing to write and direct the movie himself. In an interview with Discussing Film in 2020, the actor repeated those sentiments about penning the script after giving an unfortunate update about the movie. Earlier this year, Rodriguez gave another update. 

"Danny calls me all the time. He films a whole audience that he's speaking to, and they're all saying Machete in Space!" the director told Deadline. "That's why I put a fake trailer for that on Machete 2, to kind of satisfy them. This is pretty much what it would look like, but you can see it in two minutes rather than two hours. And it never satisfies them, so we have to do it. But you know, the original was just a fake trailer on Grindhouse. I recorded the audience reaction and put it on the Blu-ray of Planet Terror. You can't hear half the trailer. When it first came up people were so shocked. Danny was the lead, Cheech was in it, they're cheering so loud and we're kind of taken aback. They'd never seen a Latin hero."

He continued, "So they would bug us for five years, 'When's that movie coming out?' I said, 'It was a fake trailer.' 'No, but it looked real! When is it coming out?' So we've got to make it for them. So five years later I made that movie. It wasn't meant to be a film, the audience just wanted it. So we have to give it to them. Because when someone wants something that bad, I've never had that with any movie before. Now everyone's still 'Machete in Space!' You can't give 'em enough."

Are there any Robert Rodriguez movies you'd like to see the director return to? Tell us in the comments!