They can be heroes. Just for one day.
We hear certain characters singing the chorus to David Bowie’s classic art-rock masterpiece more than once, and we get the “we can be heroes” message throughout writer-director Robert Rodriguez’s breezy, candy-colored, kid-friendly and cheerfully strange “We Can Be Heroes,” a stand-alone sequel to Rodriguez’s equally loony and upbeat “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D” from 2005.
“Are you saying we could be heroes?” comes the question from one little superhero in the making. “We could be heroes, just for one day,” another mini-superhero sings in reply, and then quips, “Sorry, it was there for the taking!”
Spy Kids or
The Adventures of S
harkboy and Lavagirl, we fell in love with the kid action genre that Robert Rodriguez was creating. I was 12 when
Spy Kids came out, and if I could figure out how to be a spy with a cool tree-house safe home, I’d do it.
What I didn’t realize was that the genre would still hit home as an adult. Watching 2020’s
We Can Be Heroes had me giddy for the world of the Heroics and the stories still left to be told. And now, we are getting a sequel to the Netflix movie, and honestly, GOOD. When I spoke to Robert Rodriguez about the movie, I even asked about a spinoff series with these characters because it is an incredibly rich world to play in, and Rodriguez loves to bring his characters into different genres. (I’m thinking specifically of Danny Trejo in the
Prathibha Joy, TNN, Updated: Dec 28, 2020, 12.50 PM ISTCritic s Rating: 2.0/5
The fact that We Can Be Heroes is rated appropriate for audiences seven years of age and above should be fair warning for what to expect, or rather, what not to from this film. If you, like this writer, have seen director Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids series and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl and decided to watch We Can Be Heroes with certain expectations, since it is supposedly a follow up to the latter, rest assured, it is best you don’t.
The narrative doesn t take long to establish its course. Earth s mightiest heroes, who operate under the organisation Heroics, are all taken hostage during an alien invasion. But Heroics has always been prepared for such an eventuality, and has been keeping the super-powered children of the Heroes under its care and supervision. The big question, though, is are they ready for this challenge and can they work together to get the better of the aliens and res
Nathan with
“One thing I share with my mom is a love of vintage shopping. She knows ALL the best spots in LA and we have a blast doing that together. And of course, I’m always on the lookout for rad 80’s threads,”
Nathan told us.
Check out his 10 Fun Facts below:
1. Since my mom is French-Canadian, she wanted me to learn to speak French. So from pre-K through 5th grade, I attended a full-immersion French school in Los Angeles.
2.I was already way into filmmaking by 6th grade, so for middle school, I attended a Film Academy. It was an amazing 3 years and I got to make my first 7 short films there. Btw, I’m proud to say, all seven made it into film festivals.
We Can Be Heroes is set in the same world and the characters of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
are in the movie (pictured above played by Taylor Dooley and JJ Dashnaw), they’re not taking centre stage this time around – it’s their children who are tasked to save the earth.
In fact,
We Can Be Heroes wasn’t even initially supposed to take place in this particular world: “It started as its own story,” writer and director Robert Rodriguez tells us. “Netflix hired me to write a new original film that was in that space of empowered children. So I came up with what was like a ‘Little Kid Avengers’ story and came up with a tonne of little kids with special powers.