Instead of the villain being a beloved children’s TV show personality, he’s a video game creator who the kids look up to. This time around, the kids are a little younger and way more tech-savvy, even though their father is super strict about their allocated screen time. As with the first movie, their parents get kidnapped by a supervillain, and they have to step into the big spy shoes to save the day. Like the original Spy Kids, Armageddon follows two kids - this time out, Patty (Everly Carganilla) and Tony (Connor Esterson) - who discover that their parents are secret agents. While Armageddon’s adult cast isn’t as captivating as Carla Gugino and Antonio Banderas were in the first movie, Rodriguez and his son Racer, who co-wrote the script, deftly expand their focus this time out, giving the latest Spy Kids movie a timely message. The elements of the original that were so evocative - the gadgets, the training, the campy special effects - are all back in his revamped movie. Rodriguez is still acutely tapped into what makes movies exciting for kids. It’s meant first and foremost for viewers discovering this series for the first time.

But that’s OK, because Spy Kids: Armageddon recaptures the magic for a new generation. The answer is simple: If you were a kid when you first watched Spy Kids, of course the new one won’t feel the same.

Still, fans of the first Spy Kids might wonder if Netflix’s new reboot film could ever match the highs of the original movie. With two direct sequels focused on the same characters, a soft reboot/kinda sequel in 2011, and a short-lived 2018 animated Netflix show, the Spy Kids franchise is already familiar with new additions. In Spy Kids, children aren’t tagalongs or mascots - they get to save their parents, play around with fancy spy gadgets, and do all sorts of cool, exciting things. He built a children’s movie around exactly what he knew kids wanted to see: themselves as the heroes of the kinds of exciting genre movies the adults were watching. Robert Rodriguez’s 2001 original was iconic. Netflix’s new Spy Kids movie bears the burden of a million expectations.

Kids secret agents