Machete: The Trailer That Got Its Movie
Machete started as two minutes of mock exploitation cinema, and Robert Rodriguez turned it into a full feature that gave Danny Trejo a long-overdue lead role.
In 2007, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino released Grindhouse, a double bill paying tribute to the cheap genre films that once played run-down American cinemas. Between Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof sat a handful of fake trailers for films that did not exist, made by the two directors and by guest filmmakers. The opener was Machete: a gravel-voiced Mexican former federal agent, double-crossed and out for revenge, with all the excess the format implied.
Grindhouse itself under-performed in American cinemas, but the trailers became the most quoted part of it. Machete, in particular, felt like a character who deserved more than a punchline. Rodriguez had worked with Danny Trejo for years, casting the veteran character actor in memorable bit parts, and the idea of building a film around him had reportedly been in the back of the director’s mind for a long time.
Growing the joke
The 2010 feature, directed by Rodriguez with Ethan Maniquis, kept the trailer’s premise and even recreated some of its shots. Around Trejo it assembled a deliberately eclectic cast: Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Steven Seagal in a rare villain role, and Robert De Niro as a grandstanding politician.
It also made the subtext explicit. The plot turns on a border-state campaign against immigrants, and the film takes clear sides, with Machete as an avenger for workers treated as disposable. That political edge drew both praise and criticism at release, and gave the film a sharper identity than simple pastiche.
What works, and what doesn’t
- Trejo is the reason to watch. His stillness and weathered face carry the film, and he plays the absurd material completely straight.
- The tone is hard to sustain. A fake trailer can be all highlights. A feature needs connective tissue, and the stretches between the big moments sometimes drag.
- The pastiche is affectionate. The scratched-film look of Grindhouse is mostly gone, but the spirit of cheerfully excessive B-movies remains.
Reviews were mixed to positive, and the film did well enough to earn a sequel, Machete Kills (2013), which leaned even harder into the ridiculous and was less warmly received.
Machete also started a small trend. Another of the Grindhouse trailers, Hobo with a Shotgun, became a feature in 2011, and Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving finally reached cinemas in 2023. It is a curious footnote of the era: the jokes outlived the film they were attached to.
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