Spy Kids: Armageddon (2023) - Movie Review

Even before I recognised Robert Rodriguez’s name as a filmmaker, the Spy Kids series was the shit when I was a kid. The first one in particularly was largely responsible for me going through a major spy phase, getting a bunch of toy gadgets and playing mock action spy in the playground… alone… because goddamn, if you think reading my words as an adult makes me look awkward, kid-me was even worse. And the films themselves have held pretty damn well… okay, two of them have held up really well, with 3-D: Game Over having aged especially poorly thanks to the visuals and ugly-ass red-blue 3D, and All The Time In The World being just a categorical disaster that Rodriguez himself was basically strong-armed into doing thanks to Harvey Weinstein (a statement which itself has aged even worse than Game Over).

But even those films still held onto the unshakeable earnestness that RR approaches every production with. The way he wrapped up so many wrong-headed ideas in All The Time In The World with a genuine message about putting family first and doing right by your kids (made stronger by how he often makes films with his kids)… I mean, the film overall still sucks, but there’s no denying that he meant that shit.

Thankfully, that same sense of him genuinely wanting to make films isn’t being forced on him this time around, even as he returns to the franchise. It’s something of a soft reboot, involving a new team of spy parents (Zachary Levi and Gina Rodriguez) and titular Spy Kids (Connor Esterson and Everly Carganilla). There’s quite a few references to the first couple films, and overall, the plot is essentially a do-over of Game Over, with the main villain being a game developer (Billy Magnussen’s The King) trying to take over the world.

Only I’d argue that this does that whole idea better, and I say that as someone who still kinda likes Game Over. The visual aesthetic manages to iron out the frequently-iffy CGI and green-screening to make it fit a story where the virtual world and the real world are bleeding into each other. There’s something about The King’s henchmen being robots who wear actual physical costumes to resemble in-game characters, but their robotic design underneath is all iffy CGI, that I kind of dig on a meta level.

There’s also how the script is properly clever about the topic of technology in relation to kids, completely sidestepping the more tired ‘damn kids and their screens’ observations that every other kids’ film tend to go with. Having an actual father and son work together on the writing shows through in how balanced it is in embracing the benefits of technology while also highlighting how it can turn grizzly, like with the main villain’s plan basically being an attempt to gamify everything (a tactic that real-world people involved in management and finance and, well, basically anything work-related could learn not to imitate). It even pokes a bit at itself, highlighting how this series exists as a means to make spy fiction look cool for kids, which it thankfully manages again after the misfires in All The Time In The World, while admitting that parents wouldn’t actually want their kids to be involved in government espionage. Definite 'fun but responsible dad' energy there.

From that point, it also delves into how the world that adults have made for everyone is increasingly dependent on technology, yet parents keep insisting that constant exposure to technology like screens is an inherently bad thing… and then hits a motherload by extrapolating that into a much larger point about the fear within parents of being replaced and outdone by their own kids. Like with We Can Be Heroes (or even Spies In Disguise), the main message here is about how the next generation has to do better than their parents, because there’s not exactly a shortage of things that could be run better. It even makes a full-chested advocation for prison reform. Seriously.

So… yeah. This was really damn fun. The spy antics hold up to the pedigree of the older films, the characters are fun (I like the dynamic of Esterson’s Tony as the hardened gamer and Patty as just the purest of pure souls), the visuals are definitely cheesy but utilised well, the soundtrack is classic Rodriguez with those guitars, and while I can definitely see this doing well with younger audiences, there’s enough genuine thought and care put into the messaging here that I honestly think parents could have fun with this as well. It operates a lot like the OG Spy Kids films in that respect: Great fun for kids, and way smarter than most adults would give it credit for.