Will "Machete" Battle Mel Gibson?

In case you've been living under a rock, Mel Gibson seems - at long last - to finally be near "the bottom." I've long rejected the idea that there could be (or need to be) anything 'wrong' with him other than garden variety anti-semitism and Christian whackjobbery, possibly exacerbated by alcoholism... but you can't listen to that Joe Esterhasz tape and not conclude that there may actually be something profoundly broken in the way this guy is wired - he could very well have a serious mental illness.

In any case, he's in deep shit career-wise: "The Beaver" tanked, his new movie is going straight-to-DVD, nobody wants to make his Viking movie and the Maccabees project is almost-certainly dead. At this point, he's only slightly more employable than Lindsay Lohan or Steven Seagal... and, appropriately, he may next be going exactly where they did: A stunt-casting guest-spot in an in-betweener Robert Rodriguez "Machete" movie.


Yeah. Not a joke. Deadline reports that Gibson is close to signing on for an unspecified role in the sequel "Machete Kills," which is supposed to involve Danny Trejo's titular vigilante being conscripted by the U.S. and Mexican governments to stop a druglord's plan to launch a rocket into outer space because... whatever, it's "Moonraker" but with Machete. I'm wondering if they plan to keep playing the political angle from the first movie - tongue in cheek or not, setting Machete up as striking back against the then-raging anti-immigrant fervor in the U.S. did a lot to elevate the film above the usual Rodriguez grindhouse homage schtick.

FWIW, Rodriguez said in the past that his grand plan was for "Machete 3" ("Machete Kills Again") to be a "space opera." I'd kind of love it if he was serious, and the "space rocket" stuff in this one led to Machete winding up on an alien world a'la Flash Gordon or John Carter at the very end. If nothing else it'd "go" nicely with Rodriguez next big planned movie after this and "Sin City 2;" a live-action remake of the Ralph Bakshi/Frank Frazetta collaboration "Fire & Ice."