Robert Rodriguez talks inspiration behind 'We Can Be Heroes'

Writer and director Robert Rodriguez talks about inspiration behind his latest film, "We Can Be Heroes," and how he made it into a family affair.

Video Transcript

- Welcome to heroics headquarters. You will be staying in an underground stronghold. As the children of superheroes, you are all in danger.

KEVIN POLOWY: "We Can Be Heroes" is the story of this group of preteens, all kids of superheroes, who go into battle, and they become humanity's only hope against invading aliens. What are you saying with this film? Like, kids should be required to serve in the military? Is that--

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Kids are going to have to take over sooner than later, obviously. Us parents have screwed this place up. That was first and foremost in my mind.

I just raised five kids. My daughter, who inspired Missy, Ojo, and A Capella, the singer, the ones you mentioned, and Face Maker-- she says all those things. Draws on an iPad, sings-- she actually did all the drawings that are in the movie.

They just left that age. And I remembered it so well. I love that age, that preteen magical sort of age where kids don't really know yet that they are going to be stepping into the role of having to run this place, and we've left it in disarray.

And I wanted there to be an adventurous, kind of fun way to show that parenting is more about partnership and mentorship, as it goes both ways. You learn as much from your kid as your kid is ever going to learn from you. They're going to have new ideas of how to do things.

They'll work together better. They'll be able to function better. We just get more involved as time goes on.

So I wanted to do it in an inspiring way. The message of the story was really the kids will take over. They need to take over, and let's support them.

Let's give them the love and support and mentorship, them to have the runway to help save the planet. And it's done in a heroic way. You know, the superhero myth is a great way to tell a story like that in a way that kids can digest.

KEVIN POLOWY: You said your kids helped inspire this one, which is awesome. Are they giving you, like, feedback along the way?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Beyond that, that was the old days. And now they're all actually working on the film. So my daughter was the one who initially did all the drawings.

She had to draw them on the spot because we didn't know where kids were going to be standing or what the set was going to look like at that time. So she would draw in real time and give them to me. My 15-year-old designed all the alien interiors of the strip-- you know, like that big room they're in with the pyramid. He did it in his game engine.

And I showed it to my crew. They were like, your son did this? I go, I know.

It's just like in the movie. That's what happens. The osmosis goes both ways.

They're surpassing us already. My 20-year-old, I brought him on.

He'd written some music for me on a keyboard, some of my low budget stuff. I want to teach you orchestration. I used-- I wrote the orchestral score for "Spy Kids."

Come work with me and we'll mentor you and teach you something about orchestration. Boy, he schooled me. He took over.

He wrote the whole score. I could not write at his level. He'd been playing piano since he was five, learned theory suddenly in a few months off YouTube, and was, like, writing like John Williams.

I brought him on so that he would help me write kind of a kid's score. And the joke was it was so sophisticated, if you listen to the music, it's more sophisticated than any kid's score would be. It sounds more like, you know, something the Avengers would be envious of.

And I was floored. And then my 23-year-old producer Racer [INAUDIBLE], he's the one who created "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," co-writes with me. So the kids do take over, and they do surpassed us.

And we all came up with the characters together. Originally came up with 16 superhero kids. That's how many abilities we came up with but then had to narrow it down to 11. It was just-- 16 would have been way too many kids.

KEVIN POLOWY: It's obviously launched from "Sharkboy and Lavagirl." How do you classify it? Is it a sequel? Is it a spinoff?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: No, it's actually-- it's its own movie. It wasn't attached to that film at all originally. I wasn't doing a sequel or a reboot.

When I went to Netflix, they wanted an original film, original story in the vein of those films because they said-- they came to me and said, those films played so great on our service. Kids have watched them again and again. It's very rare to have a live action family film like that where the kids are empowered and doing-- actually, that's the only-- those are the only kids who have a genre like that are the ones in your film.

So do you do one like that for us? So I came up with "Heroes." And the whole time, I was coming up a little kid powers.

And I wish one of these could have shark strength. Man, we cracked the code 15 years ago. That was a good power. The lava, the shark-- I had already turned in the script.

And then as we're getting close to make it, I thought, you know, Marvel borrows "Spider-Man" from Sony. Maybe I could just borrow Sharkboy and Lavagirl to put them on the team, the adult team, because people would know those names, and [INAUDIBLE] it would legitimize the adult team in a way to feel like a superhero team. We ended up bringing them in more as an afterthought.

KEVIN POLOWY: I can't believe Sharkboy and Lavagirl, like, have a kid already. Like, speaking of, Taylor Dooley reprises her role as [INAUDIBLE].

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: They didn't have to reprise the roles. I was really borrowing the characters more than the actors because it wasn't about the parents. But I went ahead and called her in particular just to see, you know-- we do see your face.

I wouldn't see Sharkboy's face because I wanted to be more like Batman by that point. And there's no dial-- he didn't have dialogue. It wasn't-- I couldn't expand those roles more because it was about the children.

This was a movie about children, not about adults. It wasn't enough to bring Taylor on. He's such a big star now.

And for him to not have dialogue and have his face covered, fans would be in an uproar. You saw how they were when he wasn't even in the movie. [INAUDIBLE] a sequel and that character expands, maybe I could write a bigger role, make it worth your while.

But Taylor really wanted to come back, Dooley. And she said, I want to dye my hair. I said, you can wear a wig.

No, I want to dye it because I am Lavagirl. I've owned it over the years. I want to be Lavagirl again.

I love that time period. So she came and did the whole thing. She was great.

KEVIN POLOWY: Between "Mandalorian," which, you directed it, and this, "Wonder Woman 1984," Pedro was just like killing it. He's all over the map. What do you think has made him sort of one of the most hireable, popular actors in the business lately?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Well, a lot of times, when you're-- as a director, as a writer, you're looking for somebody that people can relate to. And he's very an everyman, very much like Harrison Ford was, Tom Hanks was, you know, where he just plays what you call everyman. Everyone kind of relate to [INAUDIBLE].

And he has a huge range. Like George Clooney, he could be the pediatrician on "ER." He could be the hard killer in "From Dusk Till Dawn." He can play anything in between, which is why you see a wide range in his work. And he just feels, like, very representative of just someone that people can just relate to.

- A deal is a deal.

KEVIN POLOWY: It's really interesting to look at the divide in your filmography. Like, on one hand, you have like a lot of very dark, very violent action thrillers. On the other hand, you have "Spy Kids," "Sharkboy and Lavagirl," now this-- very, very family friendly adventures. Like, to what do you attribute that that really sort of sharp [INAUDIBLE]?

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ: Oh, just good fortune and luck because it's rare for somebody to be able to have in their work the duality that exist in their life, you know? In your life, you have that duality. You go to work.

You go out with your buddies. You're one guy. You're "Machete."

You're "Sin City" when you go to Vegas. But when you come [INAUDIBLE] with your kids, where are you?

You're "Sharkboy" dad. You're "Spy Kids" dad. You're Pedro in this movie making the eggs.

You divide those two parts of yourself. And most people don't get to explore that in their work. They do one or the other, right?

I'm-- it's a rare privilege to get to explore both sides because I love the action stuff. I love being able to do that stuff. But doing stuff with family, that's the biggest part of my life.