MovieChat Forums > Robert Rodriguez Discussion > career pretty much over

career pretty much over

posted a year ago by filmgeek99 (600)
7 replies | jump to latest

Ever since 2010, Rodriguez's career has pretty much gone nowhere but downhill. His lack of ability or willingness to grow beyond special effects and gimmicks has costed him the opportunity to make the kind of schlocky genre films he used to be known for, as he's now relegated to mainly just director-for-hire work for non-theatrical releases after having made nothing but flops for an entire decade (dude even had to do a Billie Eilish flick to keep the cheques coming).

I suppose We Can Be Heroes can be considered a hit of sorts for Rodriguez, but given how widely mocked and ridiculed it was, it's safe to say that Robby Rod's career is basically at a dead end at this point (I doubt any studio's gonna look at that and decide to give him funding for Machete 3 or whatever).

Even in interviews, the guy seems largely bored and tired now. There's none of the energy or enthusiasm of the old Rodriguez left in him anymore. Dude's like a walking zombie.

Any thoughts?

[–] buzzlightbeer (1815) a year ago

yeah man you and i are on the same page.

dude i have a lot to say about this and it's 2am and i will put some here now but believe me i will be back to say more later. for now....

his early work was pure genius, and i had HIGH expectations for him to rise and rise on up through the 2000s but he just fell flat after the faculty imo. that is where i place the break. sin city was okay but more about technical facility than 'RR' forte material. when he dropped the ball on once upon a atime in mexico i was crushed absolutely crushed. and i held onto hope but really he never recovered after that. he followed it up with spy kids and i was crushed again then after that i pretty much let go and just kept replaying his early stuff over and over. i have all his books and have read them several times. the fire RR had in the 90s was absolutely other worldly, electric. and IMO it appears that he just gave up, just quit caring. maybe it was burnout. i DO NOT understand why he went down the spy kids route, lava boy and shark girl etc. WTF. we wanted more raging RR content and instead he gave us PBS saturday afternoon kid movies????? WTF

IMO he coulda kept rising and kept rising after desperado and would've become a GOD of action cinema, of only he had stayed the course. the kid movie crap is where he went off the rails IMO.

i fixate on his early stuff so much, even now, that it has become lore at this point. i don't know how he was so good back then, how he pulled it off.

maybe he lost his muse after desperado? dunno. but when he phoned it in on once upon a time (which he actually even ADMITS in one of his books. he SAYS this, basically) then went the kid movie route IMO he robbed us all of what could've been a great catalog of awesome movies.

planet terror, give me a break. machete was eh okay, nothing great. yes it did feel like RR to a degree but it was missing the RR magic. he had a knack for story in the 90s that he let go of after faculty. (yes yes yes i realize it was a lame teen movie blah blah blah okay wahtever, yes i know all this but IDGAF it was a fun movie and felt like his work. not desperado, but good enough to hit the mark. unce upon a time? BLECH. sucked)

robert's early films had pathos. they were insanely perfect in his own style. HE LOST THAT and i don't know how or why he never recovered it.

i miss his work so bad yo ucan't imagine. back circa 2004-5-6 i used to hang around his imdb board nearly daily looking for any news of upcoming projects that would put things back right in the RR universe. but all i got was planet terror and sin city (which was okay not great and wasn't even his story, it was frank miller's) then practucally nothing after that. machete (a tiny blip, 'facsimile' of the old RR) and predators (which wasn't even his, he farmed it out)

robert made me believe in movies in a way nobody else ever did. BECAUSE THERE *WAS* NOBODY LIKE HIM, EVER, BEFORE OR SINCE. I wanted to direct too, and follow his lead.

listen, i don't know what T F robert is up to or why he slipped and lost his mojo, but dude let me tell you how i feel right here:

i feel like he abandoned us.

we all bought into the RR thing in 91 with mariachi and it was going great for that whole decade, then he just said FUCK THE FANS and dropped the ball for whatever reason nobody knows. i am truly baffled about it. but the end effect remains: i feel he abandoned us.

he had his big compound in austin. spex equipment, his pet projects, etc. okay great, woopie doo for him BUT HE UN-BECAME HIMSELF. he became the Un-RobertRodriguez.

it's over. he's gone forever. makes me sad but my only condolence is i can still sit and replay all his 90s stuff and reread his books and relive that decade again, back when he was literally on top of the world. worldwide success was his to lose, and lose it he did.

in baseball they call that an unforced error.

(maybe self inflicted wound fits better?)

i still love the guy i am just heart broken.

cheers mate, i hope i didn't type too much lol

[–] cyguration (3874) 8 months ago

I totally understand what you're saying, and it's truly sad how so many classic directors have just fallen off, from John Carpenter and William Friedkin (rest his soul. It's sad he never made another classic quite on par with his old stuff, but The Hunted was still pretty cool), to John McTiernan and Robert Rodriguez. Basically all of the talented directors have kind of fallen off the bandwagon of quality filmmaking.

And Ridley Scott? Man, don't get me started there.

But you're 100% right about Rodriguez having the potential to be a director for the ages, making classic action films for all of us to enjoy, but I always felt he got lazy and just didn't bother after he got his cheques and called it a day.

[–] HarlemEagle42 (16250) 8 months ago

It seems he's going to get to make Alita 2 and 3 now with James Cameron.

https://screenrant.com/alita-battle-angel-2-development-confirmed-james-cameron/

[–] TandyMan (10398) 8 months ago

I think he was only getting work cause of the Weinstein connection. After he went down Robert disappeared.

[–] filmgeek99 (600) 8 months ago

Not buying this one. The reason he got to make any type of film he wanted prior to the 2010's, was because they were all mostly pretty successful. It wasn't till Spy Kids 4 where we began to see Rodriguez's career really start to slip up, as he followed it with the likes of Machete Kills, Sin City 2, Alita: Battle Angel, and most recently, Hypnotic (all largely bombing at the box office).

Like I said earlier, the closest thing he's had to a hit for the past 12 years was We Can Be Heroes, which went straight to Netflix and was only even mildly successful because it came out right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of the day, it's really him who's responsible for where his career's at right now. Unlike his buddy, Quentin, Rodriguez has no skill or discipline in the art of storytelling in any way whatsoever, and it's this lack of ability of his to grow beyond special effects and gimmicks that's made him lose much of his audience over the years.

[–] e3e34ifj (1342) 8 months ago

I've been really hoping this guy could make a comeback but after Hypnotic, I'm kinda done with him. He was the kid who made $7k look like several million. Hypnotic cost $70 million but looked direct-to-DVD. Hypnotic was his real final straw for me...he hyped that film up and said it took him 20 years to write, and it also had by far the largest budget he had ever worked with, and it was a terrible bloated mess with awful acting from good actors. I think his passion is long gone. The only thing he could do to maybe garner my interest again is another Desperado film with 65-year-old Antonio Banderas, or if he ever makes Machete In Space with an 85-year-old Danny Trejo. Both I'm sure would be awful. He loves John Carpenter and has emulated the tailend of his career perfectly.

[–] filmgeek99 (600) 8 months ago

The problem with him is that he never evolved his craft whatsoever. Not only does he work from the same approach of just "getting it done", as he had back when he had no money, but his sensibilities as both writer and director have not changed at all in the 30+ years he's been making movies for. He still seems to favor coming up with just cutesy, one-note gimmick plot lines over complex, meaningful, feature film narratives, and he'd much rather do everything himself (writing, shooting, editing etc) than hire actual competent professionals.

His way of working is okay for someone starting out, but when you've made as many films and has been doing it for as long as he has, you should be far beyond this stage by now. The guy's in his mid-fifties, there's no excuse why he can't be bothered having at least once tried making more personal, thoughtful films. Even Kevin Smith has at least tried making films outside of the usual Kevin Smith brand a few times (to no success, but still), whereas Rodriguez is still going around making movies like a first-year film student.

The guy really needs to take some time off to rethink his life a little. Or better yet, maybe just open a restaurant and ditch the whole moviemaking business while he's ahead (dude honestly sounds more passionate in his Ten Minute Cooking School videos than he's ever been with films).