El Macho

**Eduardo Perez,** better known by his supervillain name **El Macho**, is the main antagonist of the 2013 Illumination film Despicable Me 2 (the sequel to Despicable Me 2). He is a Mexican supervillain who kidnapped most of Gru's minions and turned them into feral killing machines with the PX-41 (in which he stole from a secret laboratory in the Article Circle) so that they can help him take over the world. He is also the founder and owner of Salsa & Salsa, Antonio's father and Polito's owner, boss and leader.

He is voiced by Benjamin Bratt.

## Despicable Me 2

In the beginning of the film, a magnet ship heads to the Article Circle to steal the PX-41 serum (along with the secret laboratory where it is being developed). The Anti-Villain League recruits the former supervillain Gru (who is now Margo, Edith and Agnes' adopted father and a jelly manufacturer) to seek out the culprit along with agent Lucy Wilde. They are assigned to infiltrate the Paradise Shopping Mall and find out who it is.

During their first day on the job, when the two heroes are trying to figure out who stole the Px-41. Gru and Lucy meet Eduardo Perez and he tells them about his upcoming Cinco de Mayo party as well as ordering them to make 200 cupcakes decorated with the Mexican flag for his Cinco de Mayo party. Just as he is leaving as welcoming Gru and Lucy to the mall, Gru recognizes him as El Macho (a supervillain who had a reputation for terrorizing Mexico before seemingly committed suicide by riding a shark with 250 pounds of dynamite strapped to his chest into an active volcano) and decides to break into his restaurant with Lucy to see if they can find evidence to proof that Eduardo is El Macho and the culprit. That night, after Gru and Lucy breaks into Eduardo's restaurant, they are spotted by Eduardo's pet chicken, Polito, who happens to be the restaurant's security guard. After Lucy subdues Polito after the chicken attacks Gru as well as trying to attack Lucy, they break into the kitchen, but only found a jar of salsa.

Eduardo soon returns and discover that someone broke into his restaurant. As he started looking for the people that broke into the restaurant, he saw Polito trapped in the epoxy that Lucy trapped him with. While tending his chicken, he hears the sound of someone eating chips with salsa in the kitchen (unaware that it was Gru and Lucy), he prepares to attack them but Lucy blinds him with epoxy. Managing to get it off, Eduardo runs outside looking for the trespassers with four knives in each hand. As he was about to find Gru and Lucy, Dave and Stuart hit Eduardo with Lucy's car. When Eduardo wakes up, he sees the heroes escaping with the car from the mall. The next morning, he appears in his restaurant as usual and performs a small tango performance for the diners. Eduardo then meets Gru with his adopted daughters and during that, he greets Gru and hugs him as well as convincing him to sit and have any food to eat at his restaurant. When Polito appears and almost attacks Gru, Eduardo cradles him and apologizes at Gru for this as well as telling him that Polito had a rough night. He later invites Gru and his family to his Cinco De Mayo Party so Margo and Antonio (who turns out to be Eduardo's son) can know each other better considering that he notices that Margo had a crush on his son.

At the party, Eduardo greets Gru who is sad due to Lucy being relocated to Australia. Eduardo notice this and sympathizes with him and tells him that he also felt sadness too. When Eduardo tells Gru to enjoy the party, he leaves to his secret lair. Gru decides to follow him and see what he is really up to. At the secret lair, Gru discovers that Eduardo is indeed El Macho and the mastermind behind of the PX-41 being stolen. El Macho then announces that he is "making a spectacular return to evil" and brings in Gru's elderly assistant Dr. Nefario (who turns out to be working for El Macho). El Macho reveals that he had Dr. Nefario kidnapped most of Gru's minions and use the PX-41 to turn into an army of indestructive mindless killing machines with purple fuzzy hair. El Macho proclaims that he will use the minions to rule the world as well as the fact that if anyone tries to stop them, they will get killed as well as their cities getting eaten.

He convinces Gru to join forces with him, saying that he has admired his work as a villain for years, especially with him stealing the moon. However, Gru pretends to be on El Macho's side as well as leaving with his daughters. Not being so convinced that Gru is on his side, he sends a mutated Kevin after Gru. Antonio has also left Margo for another girl, so Gru freezes him with his freeze ray. After they leave, Lucy arrives at the party to find Gru due to being in love with him. Upon entering the party, she is attacked by Polito who gets a hold of her purse in order to find her wallet. Eduardo then picks up Polito who tells Lucy that he isn't usually hostile. Then when Eduardo is about to give Lucy her purse as well as seeing her wallet and noting Pollito having the same reaction with Gru, he discovers that Gru and Lucy are working for the Anti-Villain League, so because of that, he kidnaps Lucy. Dr. Nefario witnesses this and changes his mind about working for El Macho and sides back with Gru as well as also telling Gru that El Macho is on to him due to now knowing that he is working for the AVL and holding Lucy in captive. Gru heads to El Macho's mansion in order to save Lucy.

At El Macho's mansion, El Macho himself is seen bringing the rockets to prepare the mutanted Minions to be stuffed in the rockets to be ready to terrorize various countries as well as also making an evil laugh. However, at Gru's house, Dr. Nefario created an antidote for the PX-41 serum and puts it into the jelly they were making earlier in order to cure the minions. They later return to El Macho's lair and restore all the Minions back to normal by firing the antidote at them with guns. Now knowing that Gru has almost foiled his plan, El Macho kicks Tom to Gru in hopes of defeating him, but Tom is cured instantly instead. Gru then confronts El Macho and demand to know where Lucy is. He shows Lucy tied to an enormous rocket and reveals to Gru that he will kill Lucy by sending her with the rocket into the same volcano where he faked his death.

Before El Macho can press the button on his remote control in order to launch the rocket, one of Gru's minions takes it from him and accidentally throws it away when hitting El Macho's mansion, leaving it unreachable. El Macho, sad that he and Gru are unable to rule the world together, tells the redeemed supervillain that he is now going to die by drinking a vial of PX-41 and transforms into a very powerful purple monster (with his belly soon slacked down, much to his embarrassment). Gru attempts to take down El Macho but realizes that he has ran out of antidote from his gun. The mutated El Macho tries to smash and kill Gru and the latter freeze El Macho's arms, but El Macho gets rid of the ice by smashing his arms against the ground, forcing Gru to stay away from villain and hold onto a metal pillar, which soon collapses and drops. El Macho then picks up the metal pillar in an attempt to kill Gru, but Gru however uses Lucy's lipstick taser to defeat El Macho. As El Macho lies down defeated, the minions surrounded him, of which he claims he is not afraid of their jelly guns. Dr. Nefario, who has turned on him earlier, arrives and fires a Fart Gun at El Macho, leaving the villain to be unconscious.

It's unknown what happen to El Macho after his defeat but it's likely that he got arrested and taken into custody by the AVL considering that he is the mastermind behind of the PX-41 serum being stolen. Whether or not he returns to normal remains unknown.

## Personality

According to Gru, El Macho is "ruthless, dangerous and as his supervillain name implies, very macho". However, despite this, Eduardo has shown to have friendly, acquiescent and good-natured personality which is whenever someone isn't trying to stop his evil plans. He remains a very sociable, gregarious and interactive owner of Salsa y Salsa, and shown a degree of love for his pet/minion chicken Pollito and son Antonio. El Macho is also shown to have affable in his supervillains years as while he did drink alcohol in the most dangerous way as well as throwing the bar's bartender, he still paid for it.

Underneath his confidence and calamity, El Macho is shown to also carried something of a sad and despondent side. Presumably having been forced to retire from villainy, he had a straightforward and genuine conversation with Gru claiming that he knew the "look of a broken heart" and contemplated that he once attempted to "drown his sorrows in gucamole".

El Macho is also smart, considering that he faked his death 20 years ago, hired Dr. Nefario and had him kidnapped most of Gru's minions as well as injecting them with the PX-41, framing Floyd Eagleson (owner of Eagle Hair Club) by putting an almost empty container of the PX-41 in his shop as well as eliminating evidence of him being the culprit in his restaurant.

## Appearance

Eduardo is a short, overweight Mexican man with short black hair that reaches his shoulders and thick black moustache and beard. His arms are large, and his legs are stubby. He also apricot skin and brown eyes. According Gru's flashbacks. twenty years, Eduardo was large, tall and much muscular than he is in the present day. In the present day, Eduardo only stands at 5'4, which is below Gru's shoulder height. Eduardo also has a lot of chest hair and stomach hair, which is shown when he displays the Mexican flag tattooed on his chest. He also has a lot of hair, arms, legs and armpits, as seen when he wears his villain outfit.

When dressed as El Macho, He has a red mask with black star and lines as well as wearing a blue shirt, a yellow necklace in which has the word M (in which stands for his supervillain name) a red cape with a black star and having blue foot flip flops.

When drinking the PX-41, his skin becomes purple, and he grows thick purple fur all over his body. He becomes 25 feet fall and he becomes very muscular. However, he still has his pudgy stomach, much to embarrassment.

## Trivia

* Eduardo/El Macho was supposed to be voiced by Al Pacino, who is known for roles such as Tony Montano from Scarface, Micheal Corleone, from The Godfather trilogy, and Willy Bank from Ocean's Thirteen. This somewhat explains Eduardo's physical similarities with Pacino. However, Pacino had left the film project due to creative differences about how his character should come to life as well as being replaced with Bejamin Bratt. Panico's name still appears on some trailers of the film.
* El Macho's home and lair has a lot of Aztec style decorations, almost sort of a motif for his splendiferous extravagance
* The only way to get into El Macho's lair is by dance-stepping on musical tile buttons a la' Dance Dance Revolution and Simon Says sounding the musical note of the iconic Mexican song La Cucaracha. If the wrong button is stepped on. Indiana Jones-esque booby traps are set off to kill intruders of any sort.
* El Macho also appears as a boss in the game Despicable Me: Minion Rush.
* He did not seem to be aware of Antonio being frozen by Gru, as he was not seen later in the film as well as Eduardo/El Macho not mentioning about this towards Gru in the climax.
* Eduardo's supervillain name "El Macho" means "The male" in Spanish.
	+ The word "Macho" means showing aggressive pride in which El Macho is (revealed in the scene where Gru explains to Lucy about who El Macho is).
	+ His last name" Perez" is a common surname with the former Spanish colonies such as Mexico.

* According to a concept drawing, El Macho was going to have a yellow mask and yellow cape (but with the same designs), but it later got changed to red.
* A storyboard of the film shows that El Macho was going to head to Paris and steals various stuff there in the beginning rather than going to the Article Circle and stealing the PX-41.
* It's never explained why El Macho faked his death. It's possible that he either wants to retire or get his enemies off his back. It's also never explained how El Macho survived and faked his death. However, it's likely that he jumped off the shark and took off dynamite that was strapped to his chest during the time he and the shark fell into the volcano.
* El Macho is the only character affected by the PX-41 to retain his sentience while mutated.
* In his monster form, he resembles Grimace, one of the characters of the fast food chain restaurant McDonald's.
* El Macho is the only main antagonist in the Despicable Me trilogy who does not abduct Margo, Edith and Agnes. Instead, he abducts most of Gru's minions and Lucy.