Summary

• Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over premiered in 2003, taking advantage of the 3-D craze with young actor Glen Powell in a small role.
• Powell's career exploded post-Spy Kids, reaching A-list status after Top Gun: Maverick. His first film role was a confident performance.
• Despite initial setbacks on TV's Endurance, Powell's career ascended, showcasing his ion for acting in diverse roles.

the Spy Kids movie franchise premiered in 2003, taking full advantage of the 3-D craze at the time. The film sees Juni (Daryl Sabara) traveling into the Tron-like virtual reality world of "Game Over" where he competes against and with other agents and players to beat the game and save his sister, Carmen (Alexa Vega), who has disappeared into the game.

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over is filled with notable actors, some who had not yet reached the heights of fame they eventually would. Glen Powell is one of these actors, and his part in Spy Kids 3-D now feels quaint compared to his adult career. Powell's career has exploded since the mid-2010s when he appeared in Scream Queens. But it wasn't until Top Gun: Maverick that he became an A-list celebrity. He's since gone on to become one of Hollywood's biggest young movie stars and his first film director, Robert Rodriguez, says he saw it from the first.

Robert Rodriguez Cast Glen Powell As "Long-Fingered Boy" In Spy Kids 3-D

Powell Was Cast As A Local Hire While Living In Austin

In Spy Kids 3-D, Glen Powell plays a character known as "Long-Fingered Boy" who appears when Juni arrives at Rebel Rockets. Juni is greeted by Powell's character, who welcomes him to the arena and instructs Juni on how to play the Level 2 game. The 14-year-old Powell was living in Austin, Texas when Rodriguez announced he was looking for local hires to round out the cast of Spy Kids 3-D, as filming was about to begin in Austin (via IndieWire).

It was Powell's first film role, and when the actor was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame on May 15, 2024, his first director awarded him the honor. During the red carpet, Rodriguez spoke with IndieWire about what it was like meeting Powell for the first time,

"I distinctly how surprised I was [by Powell] because we’d cast a bunch of people from L.A. And then to fill out the other roles [on Spy Kids 3-D], we cast local actors who don’t get as much experience as the ones who are working in L.A. So you’re just trying to find someone locally that won’t get nervous, that’ll give a performance that kind of measures up to the other actors. He walks in with a stature and his confidence and just nails it. And I was just so surprised he was so good that I said aside to him and his mom afterwards, 'What are you planning on doing?' He goes, 'I’m going all the way. I want to be an actor,' which was cool to hear from someone from Austin."

It is a confident performance. For such a small character, he has a significant number of lines, and Powell plays Long-Fingered Boy just like a young boy wound up on too many video games. He's appropriately energized and unconcerned with Juni's discomfort. Powell's having a lot of fun in the role, likely because he had "one of the best days of my whole life" on set, as he told People,

"I will never forget that moment. I was 13. I shot my part, and then I hung out behind the camera. The entire crew had the most interesting jobs on the planet. You had endless friends on set. And Spy Kids 3-D was arguably our Dune."

Powell appears to have always been fascinated with films, going to movie camps as a kid, and thinking about films as,

"[They were] just this thing where it's like, the joy of movies. I want to make things that fill people up, that put the idea and themes out that I believe in. I have that shot and I don't take it lightly."

The young Glen Powell would certainly be proud of how the adult Glen Powell's career in making films that have brought large audiences a lot of joy.

There is no explanation in the film why Glen Powell's character is named, "Long-Fingered Boy".

Glen Powell Didn't Have As Great An Experience On His First TV Show

Powell Appeared On The Survivor-like Series, Endurance

Without Spy Kids 3-D, 2003 might have been a bummer of a year for Powell, considering his appearance on the reality competition show Endurance. Airing on the Discovery Kids channel, Endurance was essentially Survivor for teens. Unfortunately, Powell was eliminated from the season 2 premiere competition, "Desert", which didn't exactly start the young actor's high school years off on the right foot:

"It's the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a freshman in high school. Not only are you the runt of the grade, but you just failed on a strength performance thing in front of the world, and the amount of s--- that I got was extraordinary."

However, Powell did not let that keep him down,

“It made me just ferocious."

He kept acting, and he kept getting better parts. Despite his recent success on the big screen, it was the small screen, the same one that embarrassed him on Endurance, that gave him his breakout with Scream Queens. It's been a long road for Powell, and it's fitting that it started in his hometown with Spy Kids 3-D.