Movies such as 1985’s The Goonies and 1987’s The Monster Squad put kids at the center of the adventure. But it wasn’t until San Antonio native Robert Rodriguez’s 2001 hit Spy Kids that young heroes transformed into bona fide action stars.
The idea was so unique, Dimension Films jumped at the opportunity to make it.
“When the studio guy saw the art, I remember him saying he felt like he was looking at Star Wars for the first time,” the 58-year-old director told the Current during an interview last week. “They loved the concept.”
What they didn’t love, however, was that Rodriguez, a graduate of St. Anthony’s High School, wanted a family with a Spanish surname at the heart of the story. Since no one had tried it before, the studio was worried that only Latino families would go to the theater to see it.
“I finally told them that it’s based on my family, but more than that, you don’t have to be British to enjoy James Bond,” Rodriguez said. “It took that kind of courage and pushback early on in order to make it happen.”
Spy Kids follows siblings Carmen and Juni Cortez (Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara), who discover their parents (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) are secret agents. When a villain named Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming) kidnaps them, the kids set off on a mission to rescue their family and stop a plan to take over the world.
On Saturday, July 11, Rodriguez will host a Spy Kids 25th-anniversary screening at the Aztec Theatre. Along with a screening of the movie, the event will include a Q&A with the director and a performance by the Rodriguez Family Spy Band, which will perform songs from Rodriguez’s films.
During our interview, Rodriguez discussed his passion for empowering kids through film, why he thinks Spy Kids continues to resonate today and the one gadget from the movie he still wishes was real.
Do you ever watch family action movies today and notice they’ve been inspired by Spy Kids?
Oh, everybody gets influenced by everybody. I like seeing when [directors] put stuff in their films that they grew up with. I was the same way. I saw Escape to Witch Mountain when I was a kid. I remember thinking how cool it was that the little boy and little girl had powers. After seeing the movie, me and my sister went home and played together. We had never played together before. When I go to these [anniversary] shows, I meet adults who grew up with [Spy Kids], and they tell me how they played spies with their siblings because of the film.
What’s great about Spy Kids is that it’s a rare live-action family movie that doesn’t talk down to kids. Was that always your intention when making these movies?
Well, yes, especially the wish fulfillment part and the messaging. [The film] even ends with [Carmen] directly talking to the camera, giving a family message. Kids tend to watch and support anything that empowers them. I knew this would be very empowering to children, and that they would watch it over and over. So, you want to put things in there that are good for them to hear and to take into their life. Each [Spy Kids movie] was always designed like this.
Besides understanding the importance of family, what’s something that you think younger audiences have learned from this franchise?
My [kid characters] never beat the bad guys. They always turn the bad guy to the good side over the kindness of them being children. So, by the third film, they’ve accumulated all the villains into their family. That was a very Latino thing, but it’s also very Roman Catholic. Growing up that way, you have to forgive everybody and see the good side of everyone.
When you watch the original Spy Kids today, do you see a filmmaker who’s already found his voice or were you still figuring it out?
We just watched the 25th anniversary screening in Austin, and [the film] didn’t seem to age. It felt just as fresh as it did 25 years ago. I was really surprised by that. Even the visual effects, which probably feel dated, work really well in the context of the movie. Because I am from a family of 10 kids and then started to have children of my own, I was at the exact place I needed to be to make that film. The identity of [Spy Kids] comes from somebody who’s clearly a parent and was a sibling to many siblings.
In 2024, Spy Kids was added to the U.S. Library of Congress National Film Registry for its cultural and historic significance to American cinema. Does that designation change how you think about it now?
Yeah, it got that recognition pretty quickly. I remember my film teacher at UT-Austin said, “I’m teaching all my classes about [Spy Kids] because it broke all kinds of records.” It was the first time a Latino family has been in a movie where they’re the heroes. The film got its own McDonald’s meal deal every year. Nobody had had that before. There were so many firsts. So, it made sense that the Library of Congress would recognize it as something that was culturally significant. At the time, it was pretty seismic what it did. It came out of nowhere and did a lot of things that kids’ films weren’t doing at the time.
Did you get any pushback from fans of El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn and The Faculty for making a family movie?
I don’t think there was pushback because they were getting so many of [my other films] too. Once Upon a Time in Mexico came out just two months after Spy Kids 3-D. A lot of these [family] movies came out, and I had [an R-rated movie] to follow it up. The very next year was Sin City and [The Adventures of] Sharkboy and Lavagirl. So, if you didn’t want to see the family film, I had another one at the theater literally months before or after. One day, it was a movie for the big kids, and one day a movie for the little kids. What they all have in common is that they’re all fun comedies.
If Spy Kids premiered today in the age of TikTok, what part of the movie do you think would go viral?
Oh my gosh, it’s probably the part in the movie where [Carmen] puts this little yellow and red package in what looks like a microwave, and it turns into a McDonald’s Happy Meal instantly. Everyone in the audience back then – their minds were blown most by that.
On that note, of all the incredible gadgets featured in Spy Kids, which one are you most disappointed still doesn’t exist in 2026?
The one that has always disappointed me since I was a kid was the jetpack because we dreamt about it. As a little kid, we’d watch stuff like Jonny Quest, and he’s got a jetpack. Where’s my jetpack?! And then, I put it into Spy Kids and thought, “Well, maybe someone will finally invent it.” But no, we still don’t have our jetpacks! Traffic is worse than ever. We could be zipping around. What’s going on? We’re going to Mars, but we don’t have jetpacks!
Spy Kids 25th Anniversary Celebration
$19-$88, 3 p.m. Saturday, July 11, Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St, (210) 812-4355, theaztectheatre.com.
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