We Can Be Heroes

The Candy-Colored Revolution

Robert Rodriguez occupies a singular, almost schizophrenic space in modern cinema. He is the man who gave us the gritty, blood-soaked mariachis of *Desperado* and the noir nihilism of *Sin City*, yet he is simultaneously the architect of the hyper-saturated, unabashedly sincere *Spy Kids* universe. With *We Can Be Heroes* (2020), Rodriguez returns to the latter sandbox, offering a spiritual successor to *The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl* that serves as a fascinating counter-programming to the dominant superhero ethos. While the Marvel and DC machines increasingly lean into trauma, political allegory, and desaturated color palettes, Rodriguez sprints in the opposite direction, delivering a film that looks, feels, and functions like a child’s fever dream brought to life with a nine-figure budget.

To dismiss the film’s visual language as "cheap" or "TV-quality" is to misunderstand Rodriguez’s specific auteurist intent. The aesthetic here is not a failure of CGI, but a deliberate stylistic choice—a "living comic book" sensibility that privileges vibrancy over realism. The world of *We Can Be Heroes* is smooth, plasticine, and radiant, rejecting the texture of the real world for the texture of a Saturday morning cartoon.



This visual artificiality creates a safe harbor for the film’s young audience. When the alien invaders arrive—tentacled, purple, and ominous—they feel less like an existential threat and more like a boss battle in a video game. This allows Rodriguez to explore his central thesis without the burden of genuine terror: the obsolescence of the old guard. The adult superheroes, led by a weary Marcus Moreno (Pedro Pascal) and the preening Miracle Guy (Boyd Holbrook), are not defeated by superior firepower, but by their own rigidity. They are bickering, ego-driven, and incapable of adaptation. They represent a status quo that has become too heavy to fly.

The narrative heart beats within the "Heroics," the children left behind in a government bunker. Rodriguez assembles a diverse ensemble of archetypes—the time-manipulating twins, the stretching boy, the singing telekinetic—but anchors them with Missy Moreno (YaYa Gosselin), a powerless protagonist who possesses the only ability that truly matters: leadership.



The film’s most poignant argument is that "power" in the traditional superhero sense is often a distraction. The scenes involving Guppy (Vivien Lyra Blair), the scene-stealing daughter of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, offer kinetic thrills as she manipulates water and bends steel, but the resolution rarely comes from brute force. It comes from synthesis. Rodriguez choreographs the children’s powers not as individual assaults, but as a symphony of cooperation—a stark contrast to their parents, who fight as solo acts sharing a screen.

There is a subversive undercurrent to the script’s third act that elevates the material above standard streaming fare. Without spoiling the twist, the film reframes the concept of "invasion" and "conflict" in a way that rejects the binary of Good vs. Evil. It suggests that the previous generation’s instinct to fight is exactly what is holding the world back, and that true heroism requires the humility to learn rather than the strength to conquer.



Ultimately, *We Can Be Heroes* is an act of optimism. It is a filmmaker telling his audience—specifically the children watching on tablets and living room TVs—that they do not need to wait for permission to be better than their parents. In an era of cynical franchise building, Rodriguez has crafted something rare: a blockbuster that genuinely believes the future is in good hands, provided the adults get out of the way.