Posted in: Movies, Netflix | Tagged: film, netflix, spy kids, spy kids: armagedon
The iconic filmmaker behind Spy Kids is revealing that the studio once opposed the idea of the Cortez family entirely.
Spy Kids became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon in the early ’00s. Due to its popularity, it has officially earned five cinematic entries to date, with the latest dropping on Netflix. However, despite its legendary status, there was once an ignorant request from higher-ups to remove its (significant) Latino representation entirely. Sigh.
Robert Rodriguez Fought for Representation in Spy Kids
When speaking to De Los about the release of the recent Spy Kids reboot, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez addressed the studio’s biggest concern when it was first pitched. He explains, “You know, usually, the [movie] business is not very innovative. It is very imitative, though. If something is a success, they’ll imitate that, but you need to be the first success. They had never seen a big movie cast with that many Hispanics, so they were like, ‘Why don’t you just make the family American?’ Well, they are American. It’s based on my family. My uncle was an FBI special agent, Gregorio Rodriguez, and we just changed his name to Cortez for Antonio [Banderas’] character.”
He elaborates, “They said, ‘But what if only Hispanics come to see it?’ I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t point to another movie that had done it that would make them feel better about their investment. So you can understand their point of view. Like, if this works, how come no one’s done it? It’s like because no one’s done it! So I say no, it’s based on my family, and I can’t change my family. But that’s not a good enough argument, so I needed to come up with a good point. It finally dawned on me: You don’t have to be British to enjoy James Bond. Being British makes him very specific, and it makes him more universal. It makes you wish you were British. They bought that.”
Spy Kids: Armageddon is available to stream exclusively on Netflix.
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