Spy Kids Better Online

The casting was genius. Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino played Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez, suave secret agents who had retired to a life of suburban boredom. For the kids, Rodriguez cast Alexa PenaVega (then Alexa Vega) as the overachieving Carmen and Daryl Sabara as the anxious, imaginative Juni. But the secret sauce was the villain: Alan Cumming as Fegan Floop, a children’s TV show host with a terrifying army of surrealist henchmen—the "Thumb Thumbs."

So, here’s to the Cortez family. Here’s to Floop. Here’s to the Fooglies. And here’s to all the kids who grew up wanting a weird, gross, magical spy watch instead of an iPad. Long live Spy Kids . Spy Kids

In the pantheon of early 2000s cinema, there are blockbusters, there are cult classics, and then there is Spy Kids . Released in March 2001 by Dimension Films, director Robert Rodriguez’s family-centric espionage adventure arrived during a transitional period in Hollywood. It was the tail end of the teen horror boom and the dawn of the superhero era. But nestled between Scary Movie and Spider-Man was a bizarre, colorful, and surprisingly heartfelt film about two siblings saving their parents from a villain with a soft-rock obsession. The casting was genius

Furthermore, the films are unapologetically Latinx. The Cortez family is a proud, bilingual household. Rodriguez slipped in cultural details—abuelas, the value of family loyalty, the pronunciation of "Guillermo"—without making a political statement. He simply normalized it. For many Latinx kids growing up in the early 2000s, seeing Banderas and Gugino (who is Italian-American but fully embraces the role) speak Spanish to their kids was revolutionary. After years of rumors, Netflix announced a fifth Spy Kids film, Spy Kids: Armageddon , released in September 2023. Robert Rodriguez returned to direct, with his son Racer Max co-writing. The new film stars Gina Rodriguez, Zachary Levi, and introduces a new generation of spy kids. But the secret sauce was the villain: Alan