Robert Rodriguez would love to make Desperado sequel but doesn’t want to glorify gun violence

Robert Rodriguez made his feature directorial debut with El Mariachi, an ultra low-budget action movie that launched his career. He followed it up with two sequels, Desperado in 1995 and Once Upon a Time in Mexico in 2003, but the director told The Wrap that he’d love to revisit the series with a new sequel.

“I would love to revisit the ‘Desperado’ series,” Robert Rodriguez said. “I thought it was way ahead of its time.” However, the amount of gun violence featured in the movies gives him pause nowadays. “It’s really hard to do today, for me, anything with guns,” Rodriguez explained. “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.“

El Marriachi starred Carlos Gallardo as a traveling mariachi who is mistaken for a murderous criminal and must hide from a gang bent on killing him. For Desperado, Antonio Banderas took over the role of the title character, who was seeking revenge against the drug lord who killed his lover. In Once Upon a Time in Mexico, El Mariachi is recruited by a CIA agent (Johnny Depp) to kill a corrupt general.

Robert Rodriguez’s latest film found him rebooting the Spy Kids franchise with Spy Kids: Armageddon. “I’ve heard from so many families telling me how much they’ve enjoyed these films over the course of their lives,” Rodriguez said. “And now a lot of kids who enjoyed the first films as children are parents themselves and enjoy sharing them with their kids. The Spy Kids franchise was based on my growing up in a family of ten kids with an FBI special agent Uncle. It’s been very exciting for me and my kids to work on this film together as a family, for other families to enjoy.” Spy Kids: Armageddon premiered on Netflix last month. You can check out a review from our own Alex Maidy right here.

Would you like to see another Desperado sequel?