First and foremost, I would guess that the sequel does have a significantly smaller budget. It's been nearly ten years since the original, which indicates that the studio wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to go back to that well, nor does Rodriguez exactly blow the doors off the box office when he puts out a film. I can't find any info on the budget but Google does show me press releases that the VFX for the sequel are being handled by Prime Focus -- who on the fast-cheap-good triangle have the reputation (and track record) of being squarely the fast-cheap choice.

Rodriguez's recent efforts are plagued by the fact that he was never a particularly good filmmaker to begin with -- the method and attitude with which he approached filmmaking were far more interesting than the final results -- compounded by the fact that since GRINDHOUSE he's discovered that there is an audience that enjoys deliberately cheesy shit like MACHETE, and he's riding a sweet spot of spending just enough to be a cut above ASYLUM films, but not so much his films are actually financially risky.

The first SIN CITY was made by a guy who was still growing as a filmmaker and trying to elevate the material artistically and bring it to life. This one is being made by a guy whose whole schtick has settled into deliberately targeting so-bad-it's-good absurdity. Why spend the money and time when his target audience doesn't care?

100% guessing, of course. No inside knowledge of production and I'm not the dude's therapist or anything.

I don't know. The lines on the prosthetic chin are really obvious in that second clip at around 6 seconds. Maybe Rodriguez was never happy with it and decided to go with something different, and that turned out just as bad and more exaggerated.

But I agree with Michael. Rodriguez never grew into the film maker he showed promise of. He probably thinks he's just cashing in on a grindhouse trend until he busts out a blockbuster, but I think he may find himself stuck in the grindhouse permanently.

He should pull a Spielberg and produce films to support that stuff, only directing when there's something he really wants to do. However, it's also possible that those ARE the films he artistically wants to create.

There should be a Stonecutters-type secret society of directors who started as great and progressively got worse. The Downhill Club. (Shamaylan's the chairman.)

I have a soft spot in my heart for those guys. It's like someone whose greatest achievements were in high school, and the rest of his life is just a succession of failures.

I think you're talking about different things here though. The case of guys like Rodriguez and Kevin Smith is that they never got to the point where they were making great movies in the first place. They had a promising debut film, then chased all their worst impulses and never made anything that significant again.

And either way, I wouldn't throw Ridley Scott or Scorcese into your category. Scorsese has made great movies across 4 decades (with some misses in between, no doubt). Ridley Scott has always been hit or miss, he's alternated between massive highs and lows his entire career, and while he is admittedly on a bit of a downslope for 3 movies now, I'm quiet looking forward to Exodus.

Yeah, I actually prefer Scorcese's more recent stuff to be honest.

Didn't Prime Focus just buy DNeg, too?