With We Can Be Heroes, prepare to see a superhero movie like no other. The Netflix film, which picks up after the events of 2005's The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, imagines a world protected by superheroes called Heroics. However, when the Heroics find themselves abducted by a powerful alien threat, it's up to their children to save the world -- and according to writer-director Robert Rodriguez, that's exactly what sets this film apart from others in the popular genre.

Speaking to CBR, Rodriguez compared the superhero film genre to westerns and space operas, in that audiences enjoy to find characters they relate to within them. He expressed surprise that no one had yet assembled a superhero team comprised of young children and revealed that's what inspired him to create We Can Be Heroes. He also broke down the film's message, why he hopes to deliver it in "a fun way," how kids continue to surprise him and more.

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CBR: In a world that is just packed with superhero films, what is it about We Can Be Heroes that sets it apart?

Robert Rodriguez: So many things! So superheroes are big right now, just the same way westerns were big for a long time. There were so many westerns. It was just a genre that you could express all kinds of morality tales and different types of stories could be explored in that genre. Then Star Wars kind of took over and came up with a new alternative, and even that's still going -- and space stuff, like Star Trek.

Then the superhero genre, once somebody figured out how to take the great comic books and turn them into a movie that was also great (because they weren't always great), then that became a new way of doing the western or the space opera. So that's why it's been around so long. There's really nothing wrong with that. People aren't watching it just because they want to see people flying around with capes. They're really because of the stories and the characters that they can relate to, even though they're represented in a superhero world, the way you would relate to a cowboy even though you never got on a horse, back in the day.

So this one, though -- I was surprised when Netflix asked me, "Could you come up with a family film like Spy Kids for our service, or like Sharkboy? Because kids love those movies and they're live action and that's very rare." And immediately, I thought, "Well, superheroes, of course!" Of all the superhero stuff they've done, which is just about all the great comics -- spinoff side characters are now becoming heroes! TV shows! -- no one's done it with kids! Couldn't believe it. No one's done a kid team -- like really kids, like young kids, not teens, like 12 and under. So I knew I had to do that.

I knew it would be a really great way to tell mythologies and stories for children, preparing them for the world they're about to inherit, which obviously sucks. I mean, we've screwed it all up. So I wanted that to be part of the story, that parents need to partner with their children, support their ideas that are different than theirs, because they are going to come in and take over, and they're gonna have to take over a lot sooner. I saw it happen with my own kids during the making of this film. They're really savvy or really smarter, really prepared, and we need to prepare them even more. So I wanted that to be the story, and it's a great way to tell it in an entertaining way that everybody can enjoy very valuable lessons that are needed for today.

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The film's message becomes very clear at the end, but I'd love to hear why it was so important to you to share it.

It just was needed at the time. I mean, the Spy Kid movies always were like that, too. That was the sort of a legacy of those movies. They never went and beat the bad guys. They always change the bad guy through the goodness of their heart. You would never see that like in a Bond film, for instance.

With a children's film, a family film, you can tell different kinds of stories that children need to hear, and they watch them over and over again. So when they watch things over and over, you want them to be seeing something that's giving them a good lesson on life, how to deal with life. It's another way of parenting! I love being a parent, I love mentoring, I love teaching others because I learn from them as much as they learn for me. So I wanted that as part of this film series-to-be and I told them, "Anything we want to teach our children, we can do through these films, through this mythology, because they're going to love these characters, they're going to want to be these characters."

That's why I didn't want the main character to have superpowers, because I wanted the audience to not think, "Oh, well, before I can go change the world, I have to have this special ability, which I don't have and I'll never have." I wanted the central person to be someone that was like them, and it all hit them really hard. When I showed it to audiences, they all really loved that she was the one that was the hero, was the one who didn't have powers, because they could relate to that and they could see how they can be important in life and be a key person to create change.

So those are the things that work really well in a superhero story, and it would feel like you're going to school if you just did it in a regular movie, where here it's so entertaining that the message is kind of hidden, but you get it in a fun way. That's what good genre films do! That's why superhero movies have been around. They all kind of do that.


Directed by Robert Rodriguez, We Can Be Heroes stars Priyanka Chopra, Christian Slater, Pedro Pascal, Sung Kang, Boyd Holbrook, Taylor Dooley, YaYa Gosselin, Akira Akbar, Haley Reinhart, Andy Walken, Andrew Diaz, Brently Heilbron, Hala Finley, Isaiah Russell-Bailey, Lotus Blossom, Lyon Daniels, Nathan Blair, Vivien Lyra Blair, Adriana Barraza, Brittany Perry-Russell, Christopher McDonald and Dylan Henry Lau. The film premieres Dec. 25 on Netflix.

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