Summary

  • The new Spy Kids reboot chose to exclude the original actors to create a fresh start and establish a new family of spies.
  • The decision to leave out Carmen and Juni Cortez is a shocking one, considering their extensive legacy.
  • Despite their absence in the reboot, Spy Kids creator Robert Rodriguez expressed his desire to bring back the original characters in future movies and potentially connect the different worlds.

The Spy Kids: Armageddon creator had a good reason to keep the original Spy Kids actors out of the reboot. Featuring two new children of powerful spies, the newest movie is a direct reboot of the original 2001 family adventure. The first movie earned $150 million against a $35 million budget, proving to be a massive success. The reboot premiered on Netflix on Friday and is already receiving mixed reviews. One overwhelming critique has been its inability to include the first movie's stars, Alexa PenaVega and Daryl Sabara, who don't reprise their roles as the first child spies, Carmen and Juni Cortez.

Spy Kids creator Robert Rodriguez spoke to the end of Armageddon, he chose to avoid reintroducing characters from the original movies, though acknowledged in the future, he would still love to bring back Carmen and Juni. Check out his quote below:

I wanted to re-establish a new family. Because it’d been so long [since 2011’s All the Time in the World], it was important to just start the franchise fresh and then go from there. I would love to bring back [characters], I would love to connect the worlds. That would be so fun. It could still be in the same world, so if we get to make more films, there easily could be legacy characters that come back.

The Future Of Spy Kids

Everly Carganilla and Connor Esterson in Spy Kids: Armageddon

For a time, it seemed that Spy Kids was going to be permanently concluded. The latest iteration before Armageddon was Spy Kids: All the Time in the World, which premiered in 2011 and proved to be a massive disappointment. It earned $85 million on a $27 million budget, which was a franchise-worst at the box office, as well as its lowest reviews of just a 23% approval from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite its predecessor's relative failure, the reboot could still save the franchise.

Even with mixed reviews leaving the reboot with a 57% Tomatometer score, audiences remain fairly high on Armageddon. The movie has already achieved a 74% audience score at the time of writing, the highest for any installment in the franchise. That could lead to the future that Rodriguez is imagining — a return of the original Spy Kids. It will, however, take time to see Carmen and Juni in action again.

Any potential Spy Kids: Armageddon 2 will have to wait months to film, as lead actors Connor Esterson and Everly Carganilla will be in school and unable to shoot any feature movies. Daryl Sabara and Alexa PenaVega, the original kid spies, will not have quite the same negotiating and filming restrictions. As soon as the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike comes to an end, they will be able to Rodriguez about returning to the franchise. Carmen and Juni could very well be coming to Spy Kids: Armageddon, if Netflix approves.

Source: Yahoo