Robert Rodriguez has had an interesting career making both extremely violent, extremely adult horror and action films like Sin City and From Dusk Til Dawn, and also extremely kid-friendly action films like Spy Kids and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, the latter a 2005 adventure based on characters invented by Rodriguez’ own children. A lot of filmmakers are very good at one or the other. Rodriguez is one of the few guys who does both.

According to Rodriguez, those old children’s action movies have the most “rabid fanbase” of all his movies, and have been extremely popular on Netflix, where kids find them and watch them over and over. That explains why Netflix wanted Rodriguez to continue the Spy Kids franchise in an animated series, Spy Kids: Mission Critical, and why they’ve now got Rodriguez working on a live-action movie called We Can Be Heroes in the same thematic vein.

In fact, We Can Be Heroes looks to be a kind of legacyquel to Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Talking to Collider, Rodriguez revealed that the title characters appear in We Can Be Heroes “as superhero parents who now have a daughter who has shark and lava powers. (The director later clarified, ‘The only speaking role is for Lavagirl.’)” What do you call a girl who has shark and lava powers? Sharklavagirl? Lavashark Lass? Bitey McHothands? Should be fun to find out.

According to a plot synopsis, the film is about “the children of Earth's superheroes” who “team up and learn to work together to save their parents” after they’re kidnapped by aliens. So not only does the movie feature the returns of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, it’s got almost the exact same plot as the original Spy Kids, where two master spies are kidnapped and their two kids need to team up and learn to work together to save them. When your target audience likes to watch the same thing over and over, that kind of narrative rehashing may be by design.

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