The Spy Kids Cinematic Universe Ranked

Robert Rodriguez may or may not be one of our greatest living directors, but he is certainly one of the our most fascinating living directors. A genuine innovator and unconventional auteur, Rodriguez traffics in both violent exploitation and kaleidoscopic kiddie adventures… and not much in between. He often pushes the boundaries of filmmaking technology all while writing, filming, editing, and scoring his movies himself.

Today we are here to discuss the Spy Kids Cinematic Universe, a series of films spawning from the 2001 hit Spy Kids. In addition to the four movies with the Spy Kids moniker, this also includes the Machete movies — Uncle Machete started as a Spy Kids character — and the Sharkboy and Lavagirl movies. The latter’s connection to Spy Kids is a matter of frequent debate among Rodriguez scholars like myself: there are no explicit textual connections, but plenty of contextual ones. I believe them to be a standalone saga set in the same world. So we’re counting them.

As always, I’ve linked to my longer reviews where applicable, plus provided an “Is It Good?” rating for each entry.

Last year, for Brian’s birthday, his brother Andrew joined to discuss the four Spy Kids movies in an epic two-parter episode of The Goods: A Film Podcast.

• Part 1 (Spy Kids 1 & 2)
• Part 2 (Spy Kids 3 & 4 & extended universe)

What’s not included in this ranking?

• Shorts, the little-seen 2009 film, is out. I suspect it falls into similar territory as Sharkboy and Lavagirl, where it feels like the same universe but isn’t explicitly connected. If I had seen it I probably would have included it, but alas.
  •  Update: I watched Shorts and added it to the ranking below. No regrets.
• Spy Kids: Mission Critical, the 2018 animated TV series, is off the table. Maybe if I had watched it, I’d figure out a way to rank it, but even I couldn’t make the case for carving out 10 hours for a Spy Kids Netflix show for the sake of completionism.
• Because it would defy any common sense or good taste, I’ve closed this exercise off from the extended Rodriguez-Tarantino universe. The second Machete movie includes the “crotch gun,” a novel and wacky piece of production design. If you take this as a clue that the Machete movies appear in the same universe as From Dusk Till Dawn, all the sudden you’re connected to more than a dozen other movies. Similarly, a deleted scene in Machete shows Edgar McGraw, who appears in some Tarantino movies. This also opens up a cluster of potential inclusions on this list. But I drew the line at either of those.
  • If you’re curious on this line of thought, here’s a helpful chart created by Patrick Soucy
• The upcoming Spy Kids movie, with a working title of “Spy Kids: Armageddon,” can’t be ranked because I haven’t yet seen it! Bring it on, Rodriguez!

 10. Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003)

Is It Good? Not Good (2/8)

I wish I could love this movie, but it’s too broken. There’s something admirable about the way it commits to Spy Kids’ escalating deconstruction of self-destructive creators. Here, a terribly miscast Sylvester Stallone crafts a worldwide virtual game-world that the heroes try to topple (plus a bizarre gumshoe detective prologue). There’s quite a lot of narrative connection to Ready Player One, actually. But for the occasionally interesting ideas, it’s just painful to watch, with stretched-out bad-CGI set pieces and a general malaise. Even a nifty-in-theory conclusion that brings together all the villains of the trilogy falls flat.

(Full review here)

9. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (#4) (2011)

Is It Good? Not Good (2/8)

The idea is sound: A “requel” of the Spy Kids movies ten years after the original, with a new spy family. The casting of the adults is great — Joel McHale and Jessica Alba — and there’s even an earnest theme explored of a “Cat’s in the Cradle” dad processing his disconnection from his family via time travel shenanigans. (I’m not sure Jeremy Piven was the right choice for the villain casting, though.) Alas, the film is torpedoed by the most annoying comic relief that I’ve ever seen in a movie: A talking dog voiced by Ricky Gervais who never shuts up, plus nonstop fart and poop jokes. Kill me.

(Full review here)

8. Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (2002)

Is It Good? Not Very Good (3/8)

In retrospect, the first Spy Kids movie is remarkably balanced. The sequel throws out everything other than the digital effects-driven adventure movie thread, reinventing the series as a creature-filled Ray Harryhausen homage. But with shallower characters and a heavy dependence on 20-year-old CGI, the movie buckles under its own ambitions. At least Steve Buscemi kills it as a reclusive weirdo with godlike powers (and delivers one of the greatest lines in all of children’s cinema.)

(Full review here)

7. We Can Be Heroes (2020)

Is It Good? Nearly Good (4/8)

Rodriguez’s filmmaking has become less slapdash and adventurous since the mid-aughts, which puts both a higher floor on the quality of the storytelling (see #10 and #8) and a lower ceiling on the avant garde derangement (see #2). We Can Be Heroes is a sugary superhero squad origin story, almost blandly competent on the Rordiguez scale. The biggest swing is the insane and dubious movie-ending twist that’s even bolder than “it was all a dream.”

(Full review here)

7. Shorts (2009)

Is It Good? Nearly Good (4/8)

Stop the presses! I snuck in a screening of this film just before publishing this ranking. Like the Sharkboy/Lavagirl movies, its connections to the Spy Kids franchise are purely circumstantial, but I’m including it. Shorts follows a handful of families and kids as their fate is tied up in a magic wishing rock, with a quasi-anthology structure in the spirit of Pulp Fiction (but with more booger jokes). It has some madcap energy to it and a few moments of real heart (around the theme of technology alienating us), plus much more restrained use of CGI than Spy Kids 3 or Sharkboy vs. Lavagirl that preceded it.

(Bizarrely, as of the publishing of this article, the IMDb page titles the film as “The Notebook II.” I assume someone screwed with the data for laughs.)

5. Machete – Grindhouse Trailer (2007)

Is It Good? Good (5/8)

At first it was a gag: As part of Grindhouse, his pairing with Tarantino in 2007, Rodriguez created a fake trailer for an ultraviolent movie based on Danny Trejo’s Uncle Machete of the Spy Kids movies. (Though the backstory is a bit more complicated than that: Machete was actually conceived of by Trejo and Rodriguez while filming From Dusk Till Dawn in the late ’90s and was initially included in Spy Kids as a joke.) The trailer is a hoot, filled with outrageous religious imagery and cathartic violence, plus a grittiness that’s a hilarious contrast to the Crayola CGI gee-whiz sheen of the Spy Kids movies.

4. Machete Kills (2013)

Is It Good? Good (5/8)

The conceit behind the Machete movies is to honor the trashy energy of ’70s exploitation films. With the second (and unfortunately, last to date) film in the series, Rodriguez also embraces a freewheeling maximalism: Everything is the biggest and most exaggerated version of itself. There’s clones and boob guns and every manner of violent wackiness. It doesn’t quite coalesce into transcendent mayhem, and it sacrifices some of the gritty texture of the original, but is still a giddy good time.

(Full review here)

3. Machete (2010)

Is It Good? Good (5/8)

In which the joke is escalated to a legitimately entertaining film: Rodriguez expands his Grindhouse trailer into a feature film, reusing clips so that the original still works as a trailer despite being made first. A gratuitous frenzy of violence, sex, and political satire, anchored by the machismo of Danny Trejo, Machete could’ve settled at being a bloodbath. But it’s pretty smart, too, weaponizing the hypocrisy of the Christian right and the pre-Trump discourse on immigration into a revenge flick. Great scenery-chomping ensemble, too.

(Full review here)

2. The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (2005)

Is It Good? Good (5/8)

It’s taking some restraint to leave this out of the top spot. I can barely, in clean conscience, call this a “Good” movie, though it may very well be a great movie. A color-blasted, green-screen fever dream, barely coherent as a narrative and overflowing with some of the gnarliest CGI visuals in film history, Sharkboy and Lavagirl is a fantasia of ugliness. Rodriguez let his son, Racer, come up with the film’s content, similar to how Obayashi pulled in his daughter’s nightmares while making House. The outcome is similarly psychedelic and Freudian. Watching this movie is like staring at the sun: it destroys your retinas but gives you a glimpse of the divine.

(Full review here)

1. Spy Kids (2001)

Is It Good? Very Good (6/8)

Once upon a time, Robert Rodriguez got it just right on his very first try. Spy Kids blends kids comic action, bootstrap digital filmmaking, an earnest family story, and some nuanced reflection on his own Hispanic roots. The tone teeters on a high-wire, but never plummets — silly and thoughtful and exciting all at the same time. The script is solid, the acting quite good, even from the kiddos (though Rodriguez should have just bitten the bullet and cast Paul Ruebens as villain TV show wacko Floop), and the entire package polished and fun. Spy Kids is terrific kids movie, and I don’t even feel the need to include the “kids” diminutive in that statement.

(Full review here)

---

Follow Dan on Letterboxd or Twitter. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.