‘We Can Be Heroes’ Director Robert Rodriguez Breaks Down His Imaginative, Belated Pseudo-Sequel

Though they may not know it, millennials can thank Robert Rodriguez for some of their fondest childhood memories. Now, the writer/director behind Spy Kids, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and most recently, Season 2, Episode 6 of The Mandalorian is ready to introduce a new generation to the wondrous land of the Rodriguez imagination with We Can Be Heroes.

Rodriguez’s new Netflix movie, which began streaming Christmas Day, is technically a standalone sequel to 2005’s Sharkboy and Lavagirl; but, as Rodriguez told Decider in a phone interview, it’s “not really a sequel to that movie.” Sharkboy and Lavagirl do make an appearance—Taylor Dooley returned as Lavagirl, but Twilight star Taylor Lautner has been replaced by JJ Dashnaw—now as adults with a super-child named Guppy (Vivien Blair). Guppy, who controls water, is just one of eleven super-kids who make up the film’s junior Avengers-style ensemble cast. There’s A Capella (Lotus Blossom) who can move objects with her magical voice; Facemaker (Andrew Diaz), who can perfectly copy any face; Rewind and Fastforward (Isaiah Russell-Bailey and Akira Akbar), who have the power to, well, rewind and fast-forward; and Missy (YaYa Gosselin), who doesn’t have any superpowers but is the gang’s fearless leader nonetheless. When the kids’ parents are captured by aliens, Missy takes charge to get her father (Pedro Pascal) home safely.

Decider spoke to Rodriguez about writing and directing for a young ensemble, his imaginative family brainstorms, what happened with Taylor Lautner, and the lasting legacy of that Steve Buscemi line from Spy Kids 2.

Decider: Tell me how and when you came up with the idea for a standalone Sharkboy and Lavagirl sequel.

Robert Rodriguez: Well, it’s not really a sequel to that movie. It started as an original film for Netflix—they asked me for an original film series in the vein of Spy Kids or Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Action, not animated, because they’re so rare, and those always did so well on their service. So I came up with this idea of a superhero team that has superhero children. It was closer to shooting that I was thinking, “Well, no one’s really heard of this adult superhero team. But if I borrowed from the other studio, Sharkboy and Lavagirl, put them on the team as adults, people in pop culture have heard of those names at least.”

And then selfishly, I could have one of the kids have a combination of their powers. Because I was creating all these new powers for kids for the movie, and I thought, “Gosh, I wish I could use shark strength. We cracked the code 15 years ago.” That was such a good one, and kids loved the empowerment of the shark powers and the lava powers. This kind of solved the problems, bringing them in as parents and being able to have a child that has both of their combined powers. That’s the story as well, that our children should surpass us and be better than us. We should mentor and partner with our children so they can help rebuild the world that we’ve obviously screwed up. So it was on point storywise, and it was just going to be fun for a new generation of kids to discover those special powers. My own son had come up with Sharkboy and Lavagirl when he was seven, Guppy’s age, way back in the day!

This definitely felt like a classic Robert Rodriguez film, with all of those imaginative superpowers. What was your creative process for coming up with them?

This one was the first one I got to really work on with all my kids. My last baby just moved out of that age group [for the movies]. She just turned 13, so we just wanted to go back and come up with our ultimate family movie based on our experiences together. Spy Kids and Sharkboy were more based on my growing up with my siblings; this one was more about me being a father with my children. It’s witnessing them, their growth, and their expertise as they got older. We sat down and said, “Let’s come up with as many superpowers as we can for a kid.” And the dreaming just kept going. Like the scene where the little girl throws the guard and kicks him across the room with shark strength—I came up with that the day before. Because after seeing how cute that little girl was, I was like, “She would be the most unexpected one to get them out of the room. And she’s got shark strength!” Constantly, you’re just dreaming up new things. That’s why it feels so layered, it’s because we’re constantly adding layers as we go. That’s what makes them feel very rewatchable for kids, they get to pick up all the details by the second or third time they’ve watched it.

Was there a superpower that you were particularly proud of? Rewind and Fast-Forward were pretty cool.

Those are my two favorite ones because they’re two-dollar production versions. I love doing a low-budget trick. If you think about it, that effect costs no money. All [Rewind] is doing is rewinding footage that we already shot, and Forward is fast-forwarding footage that we shot already. And I put a little analog rewind sound on there: “Zz-zz-zz-zz!” And that’s it! The rest is just the magic of your imagination. I love those tricks that don’t take any special effects. It’s just the big idea and they’ll go, “Oh wow, I can rewind.” The impact of the idea has more power than the actual effect you’re watching.

You’ve made a lot of successful movies with young casts, but this is your biggest ensemble yet. How do you approach writing for and working with that many children on set?

We came up with so many superpowers we loved. Originally, the first draft had 16 kids, not 11/ I was like, “Okay. They’ll never fit in a frame together.” It’s not like an Avengers film where Iron Man and Spider-Man run off into space and do their adventure while the other guys—they split the team up, always. It’s hard to keep that many people in a scene, but this is a genesis story. They start in the classroom together and they leave the classroom together, and they go all the way to the end of the movie together. We can’t split them up; they’re all on the same adventure. I had to shrink it down to 11, which is still probably the biggest little kid cast—probably ever. It’s tough to figure out how to even shoot. That’s why I’m my own DP and my own editor, just to figure out how to photograph and edit it. We ended up only having the actors for six hours a day. We had to get all of our work done in half the time each day because since they’re all together, the clock runs out on them pretty quickly. You have to have great, great actors. All these kids were fantastic. They could just nail it, doing their own stunts. A lot of them have parkour and martial arts training. There are no stunt kids. All the action you see, those kids are actually doing themselves.

When the trailer for the movie dropped, a lot of fans were wondering what happened to Taylor Lautner as Sharkboy. So I have to ask: Was there an attempt to get him back? 

I mean, it was never meant as a sequel to that movie. This was always an original film for Netflix. So I asked Taylor Dooley if she could be a lead. It wasn’t about them, so there wasn’t a lot of dialogue. There’s a little bit with her and her connection with the daughter, and she was up for coming back, coloring her hair. But I did call Taylor [Lautner] to let him know, “There’s no dialogue. It’s not about the parents. It’s not really a sequel — you’d have your face covered the whole time.” I wanted him to kind of look like Batman. There wasn’t a big enough role for him to do. It wasn’t about those characters. It was fine if he couldn’t be in it, because it would draw more attention to it. He became such a big star after Twilight that he would have an expectation. Could you imagine if he was in it, and then they see it and they’re like, “Wait! His face is covered the whole time! Hey, he didn’t have any dialogue!” It’d certainly look like a demerit against him, and I wouldn’t want that. It wasn’t about him, it was just to use the characters more than the actors. Maybe if this is really successful and there’s a bigger play later, it’d be more worth his time. But the way it was, it was not a big role at all. As you can see.

I once read an interview with you where you mentioned that there was resistance from producers to making the family in Spy Kids Latino. Obviously, you’ve made a lot of films since then that are centered on Latino characters, including this one. Has there ever been a problem since?

The problem was more just systemic. They’d never seen that before, so they were wondering, just as businesspeople: “Wait, why are you making them Hispanic? Why don’t you just make them American?” I was like, “Well, they’re American! Hispanic-American.” It was based on my family. “But aren’t you worried that maybe only Latins will go see it?” And I was like, “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I didn’t have another Spy Kids to point to, to say, “No, remember like in this movie?” There was nothing to point to. So of course, anyone with money might be nervous that you might be doing something that’s gonna shrink the audience, back then especially. But somebody’s gotta be first, right? So the next person can be like, “Like in Spy Kids, remember?” There are four of those now, and a TV series. But it was tougher in the early days to do it.

I realize it was just a systemic problem: nobody was writing those roles, because there weren’t enough hispanic writers to write the role to make that argument. If I wasn’t Hispanic, and they had said, “We should change it just in case you lose the audience.” I probably would have changed it just to get the movie made, if it wasn’t part of my life. But it was, because it was based on my family. My uncle really was Gregorio Rodriguez—Gregorio Cortez, who Antonio [Banderas] is based on. He was a special agent in the FBI. He was the only one to bring down two Top 10 criminals. I was very proud of him. I wanted to make a character based on him. That’s I kept the fight going until I could get that pushed through. It wasn’t even much of a fight, I just had to come up with a reason that made sense. I said, “You don’t have to be British to enjoy James Bond. In making them that specific, it actually becomes more universal!”

I recently rewatched Spy Kids 2—great movie. Are you aware of the internet legacy of Steve Buscemi’s line about god staying in heaven?

I’ve seen a few things, but people love it. I love that! It was just one of those things where I was writing about a creator, and I was realizing he had godlike powers. I was trying to make sense of why he would hide, and it just came to me. I gave him that line. I remember he read it in a certain way, and I was like, “Can you give me a haunted look from this take and give me the line reading from this?” He did it again, he just gave me exactly what I asked for. It’s just so haunting and perfect. I literally thought nobody would notice it. But it meant something to me at the time. I thought, “That theory kind of makes sense!” And you normally discover those kinds of things through art when you, yourself, are creating characters. Sometimes you get to get into the mindset of what a creator feels and could be going through. It kind of made sense, what he was trying to say. “Maybe this is why.” It’s so cool to see that people post that. My kids will say every once in a while, “Hey, people still really like this line!” I’m very proud of that line.

You also recently directed an important episode of The Mandalorian that Star Wars fans are loving. How did that feel? [Editor’s Note: This interview was held before it was announced Rodriguez is producing The Book of Boba Fett spinoff.]

Oh, gosh. So fun. It wasn’t work. You get to go play in Star Wars land with all of the coolest characters and work with Jon Favreau. It feels more like you’re going away on vacation than going to work anywhere. It was such a blast. People loved what they saw—it’s incredible how many people were watching it that night. My heart was pounding. It was so fun to think, “Wow, so many people around the world are watching this episode that was so fun to make, and they enjoyed it!” I think there’s just a lot of joy on that set. People were trying to make something that’s very joyful and celebratory, yet have its own point of view in the story. It’s such magic alchemy. And like [We Can Be Heroes], it’s about parenting and a child. That kind of relationship is very resonant with any audience. We’ve all been in that relationship.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Watch We Can Be Heroes on Netflix