Is Robert Rodriguez an Auteur?

Eva Green in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

With the release of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For this Friday, it is time to take a trip down to the land of debauchery and specific colors. For many, the nine year wait is a thing of joy and excitement. However, for those that don't look at the film and instead at the director, Robert Rodriguez, a far more interesting question is raised: Is he an auteur? At first, the question does seem a little silly and kind of pointless when considering that auteurs also reference Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, or even Hayao Miyazaki. Rodriguez's best is none of these people's worst. However, this question seems more relevant nowadays when he is making the films that he wants and even producing his own TV network known as El Ray. So, is Rodriguez an auteur or not?

The voice of an auteur is defined by his ability to make films that are distinctly theirs. When we look at a scene or sometimes even a frame, the results speak of their craft. For awhile, it did seem like Rodriguez was bound to be in that camp. As chronicled in his book "Rebel Without a Crew," his work on his directorial debut El Mariachi is a storied production of independence at its highest ambitions. He made heroes for a Mexican audience with films like Desperado and later Once Upon a Time in Mexico. He was at times campy, but always knew how to make the action pop on screen. He was a master of quick turnarounds and making films on the cheap that looked like quality.

Having become buddies with Quentin Tarantino, the two worked together and produced a lot of their wildest films in the 90's. He created videos such as "Ten Minute Film School" to show people how to make films quickly. His embracing nature of b-movies and grindhouse were beginning to become a more prominent mainstay in his films with From Dusk Till Dawn and the comedic violence was becoming more stylized in ways that pushed his credibility. Even when he was making some of his arguably campiest films, he was still doing it his way.

Alexa Vega in Spy Kids

But is this reflective of a personal style? The simple answer could be that he is an auteur for Mexican filmmakers by making films geared towards that audience. With a familiar camp of actors, most notably Danny Trejo, he creates universes that don't hide behind cheapness, but instead embrace them. Even as he moved into the latter years and turned to family films like the Spy Kids franchise as well as The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl and Shorts. The two latter films don't necessarily look the greatest from a special effects division. Even the first two Spy Kids films didn't have the necessary flair that major studios had.

What they did have was the same cadence and whimsical nature as lead by a predominantly Mexican cast. With child actors Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara leading through a series of madcap ventures, the films managed to feature his fun-loving style in a way that was accessible to family audiences and eventually made the first three his highest grossing films to date. Outside of this, he isn't as financially successful in translating films into box office revenue as Tarantino. Then again, that hasn't been his draw. Not entirely, anyways. 

But what exactly can be made about his non-Mexican films? Shorts, Grindhouse (specifically Planet Terror), and Sin City are all non-race specific and instead focus on groups of people reacting to their situations. What exactly fits them into the auteur theory? For starters, they all share a gritty conformity that were present in Desperado or From Dusk Till Dawn. While Rodriguez has always embraced his b-movie roots, it only became more blatant as he became successful. After Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, his films began to feel more assuring of this. Maybe it was to compensate for lack of budgets, but with over 20 years of making film, there must have been some need to rely on studios.

Danny Trejo in Machete Kills

For better or worse, Grindhouse is the turning point between a filmmaker who was doing challenging films full of wit and crazy action and simply became an advocate for b-movie film styles. Yes, all of his films featured traces of this prior. Even Spy Kids had some campiness reminiscent of the low budget films of Rodriguez's childhood. This isn't a problem, though it eventually overtook him and defined his work in unfathomable ways. Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World (arguably his least essential film) relied on Smell-O-Vision tactics as audiences were given scented cards to interact with the film. This is fine, but considering that the film already had the least interesting premise, it was a gimmick that nonetheless was an aspect that hearkened back to John Waters films and didn't do much beyond give audiences scented cards. 

He embraced the trashiness and applied it to everything. When Grindhouse bombed, it didn't stop him from creating a spin-off film called Machete, which starred Trejo in his most iconic role to date. As a machete-wielding vigilante, the Mexican tropes were at their peak and Robert De Niro stopped by as a campy villain reminiscent of George W. Bush on the subject of border control. It was delightfully strange and with the cards at the end promising more films, it was the moment where Rodriguez almost seemed to stop making new films. Since Machete, he has only made sequels to pre-existing films. 

With that said, grindhouse and horror films are all reliant on franchises. Rodriguez doesn't need to prove himself anymore. He is fine finding ways to alter the phrase "Machete don't text" as a running gag in his films. It is both the height and destroyer of his potential as auteur. Moving over to TV at least has made his intentions more clear and while one of the shows is based off of From Dusk Till Dawn, he has gotten back to promoting Mexican cinema. While his films continue to get more diverse and wrangle in prestige actors in smaller roles, they all have the ridiculous features that have always made him a specific voice. Maybe it isn't one that is as tangible as Tarantino, but he is making films that are distinctly his own. Despite Machete Kills suffering from potentially too much absurdity, they remain fun films that appeal to those that like gritty, stylized action sequences and a lot of innuendos. He embraced his deepest instincts and he seems to simply update the films as opposed to reinventing his proverbial wheel. 

While I do feel like Rodriguez's work hasn't been consistently great, I do feel like he is an underrated auteur. After all, franchises deserve to have a singular voice. Even if Spy Kids and Machete are two different coins, they both have distinct styles of humor, intentional special effects, and normalizing ridiculousness. It may have gone overboard since he embraced b-movies to an extreme degree, but he is an auteur of making shlock a more accessible and less sleazy format for mainstream audiences. At his most violent or even sexist, he has a drive to make films the way he does, even editing and most often providing the musical component. He may not be a great auteur, but his influence on Mexican cinema has definitely made him a unique voice and one that has deserved whatever status he wants to throw on himself. He is just that confident and independent.