Film Review: We Can Be Heroes (2020)
by Emily Nagle
[usr 3]
“We Can Be Heroes” released on Netflix on Christmas, and quickly became the number one film on Netflix that weekend. Not even a month after its release, Netflix announced that it would receive a sequel. Nearly six months later, it’s still in the platform’s Top 10, and even though it’s clearly made for kids, I can see why it has such a broad appeal. The adults who watched “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D” as a kid will be thrilled to see Taylor Dooley return as Lavagirl (Taylor Lautner does not reprise his role as Sharkboy, who is instead played by JJ Dashnaw). Personally, I liked “Sharkboy and Lavagirl” a lot as a kid, mainly for how imaginative it was, and for the crazy, colorful CGI that brought to life ice cream mountains, a milk river with floating cookies, and plug hounds. I knew for over a year that a sequel was in the works, and was excited to see what Troublemaker Studios would come out with.
Prior to its release, a lot of people referred to “We Can Be Heroes” as a sequel to “Sharkboy and Lavagirl”, which is true – Sharkboy and Lavagirl, now married with a daughter, are part of the team of superheroes that gets captured by aliens. However, it’s a little different in the sense that it’s not really about Sharkboy and Lavagirl, instead focusing on the children of the superheroes teaming up to save the world from an alien invasion. Therefore, if you haven’t seen the 2005 film, you won’t feel lost at all.
The film starts off with Missy (YaYa Gosselin), daughter of former Heroics leader Marcus (Pedro Pascal), suddenly getting pulled out of school when she is whisked away to Heroics Headquarters and forced to hide in a vault filled with other kids of Heroics. She gets along pretty well with them, but there’s only one problem: Despite being the child of a superhero, Missy doesn’t have powers (unlike the rest of the kids). Because of this, she doubts herself when the Heroics are all captured by aliens threatening to take over the world and the kids decide to band together to save their parents (and the world). Missy doesn’t have elastic limbs, waterbending powers, or the ability to alter time – what use does she have in saving the world?
Inspired by her dad, whose last words before his capture were that “A leader leads by example,” Missy takes charge of the team, and realizes that she doesn’t need powers to be a valuable teammate. By the end of the film, all the kids figure out how to work as a team. They are reunited with their parents, and discover that the whole thing was just an elaborate training exercise to prepare them to become the new generation of Heroics (with Missy as the leader!).
Something I liked about the story was that Missy never got powers. I spent the whole movie thinking she would end up getting them later on, maybe because the beginning where all the superhero kids were in a room together, along with Missy, who doesn’t have powers, gave me serious “Sky High” vibes, where there’s a kid at a superhero high school who takes a little while to get his powers. To my surprise, Missy didn’t get powers at all, instead coming to a realization at the end that it’s not powers that make a good team member. I’m glad director Robert Rodriguez made the decision not to give her powers later, because I feel like the whole thing of the protagonist going through their whole journey and then obtaining their powers is a little cliche.
Visual effects is what Rodriguez’s studio is known for – Troublemaker Digital is the company’s visual effects sector – and they were pretty good in this movie. I went into the movie expecting it to be like the CGI effects in “Sharkboy and Lavagirl”, which were pretty good for the time it came out, but the effects in “We Can Be Heroes” were actually even better. My particular favorite CGI creations in this movie were when Guppy moved water around, particularly at the end when she made liquid metal into a giant shark that she rode to attack the aliens.
My final thoughts? This movie was okay – I’d watch it again. However, because I wasn’t the target audience, that might have affected my viewing experience. Still, I found it to be creative and fun, and reminded me of the Avengers but for a younger audience. I recommend watching it if you grew up with Robert Rodriguez films like “Sharkboy and Lavagirl” or even the “Spy Kids” series, or if you’re a kid (or have your own!).