So yeah, the last time I did one of these articles, it didn’t swing my way.
But I’m slow to learn, so here we go again. This week it was announced that Fox studios, who are already in cinematic bed with Robert Rodriguez on the movie Predators, would be distributing Machete, the feature film version of the popular trailer Rodriguez did for Grindhouse.
Since then, there has been rampant debate whether Machete would suffer the same fate as Grindhouse, and crash and burn at the box office. My thoughts are it will do just fine. Part of the issue with Grindhouse was that it was three hours long. If you’re a movie fanatic, then that’s basically heaven. You got two movies for the price of one, plus some really awesome fake trailers.
But if you weren’t a film buff, the concept was hard to sell. The marketing team at Dimension had a hell of job in front of them, and they tried their best. By opening weekend, it was pretty clear that audiences were confused: so it’s two different movies? Were they connected in some way? Why did it look so cheap? What’s a grindhouse? The title alone probably scared some of the curious off. Plus it was three hours. Was there really a big part of the population that wanted to spend three hours watching intentionally bad cinema?
Machete, on the other hand, seems to have no such issues. One, it’s easy to sell. The tagline, They Fucked With The Wrong Mexican, sells itself. You know exactly what you’re getting into. Second, whereas Grindhouse’s ad campaign had to explain what the genre was as well as the movie, Machete can be marketed as a full on action/revenge flick. In the past decade, the revenge flick has been able to open steadily, as long as it wasn’t Punisher-related.
Finally, they have the cast. When DeNiro joined this thing, you knew something good was going on. Add in Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, and career-ailing LiLo, you’ve got a pretty crazy trainwreck cast that’s worth at least one viewing in the theater.
Machete has all of the promise of Grindhouse (a fun, throwback night at the movies), without the baggage. The only question now is which cult movie theater is going to play the Machete/Expendables double feature?
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