Enjoying a cute little movie about kids your age being spies and saving their parents? Amazing. Reliving that experience in your twenties and realizing how bad something that you used to love has become? Agonizing pain.
2001 was a good year for children's movies: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Shrek, Atlantis... and then there was Spy Kids. At the time and as the first movie of the soon-to-be franchise, it was actually pretty fun. Cringe, but fun. Some light entertainment for kids that didn't lose its charm, not even 20 years later.
Sadly, the following movies didn't become cult classics like the original. Quite the contrary: they became progressively worse, tainting the legacy of the first movie. Get ready for the next one... Spy Kids: Armageddon.
"Armageddon" – yeah, you bet. Seems like a disaster for sure if the downhill development after the 2001 movie is an indicator of how the fifth installment will go. A redemption arc for the franchise would be highly appreciated, but it seems like hoping against hope.
- Enough of Netflix? Maybe try Amazon instead with your Prime free-trial.
New Cast, New Cringe?
Obviously, the old cast is a bit old now to play spying kids – time is just merciless for all of us. So movie number 5 is going to focus on a whole new family with good old Carmen and Juni nowhere in sight. The Cortez family seems to be completely out of focus now, making room for the new one. How many families consisting of spies are there, exactly?
The disaster seems perfect: a burnt-out franchise with basically no nostalgia left to use and a streaming service with kind of a bad reputation when it comes to its original movies.
If it works out good? Amazing, I'm the first one to channel her inner child again and play spy myself. I'll even get one of these just to make myself feel like a secret agent.
But, as melodramatic as it sounds, the franchise hurt me one too many times...
If you want to take a look yourself, make sure to check out Netflix on September 22, 2023.
Way less cringe is EarlyGame's YouTube.