It’s pretty hard to place director, Robert Rodriguez into one genre. Over the years he has always directed hybrid genres, leaving audience never quite sure where to place his films. Take ‘From Dusk till Dawn’, this vampire black comedy starring George Clooney and written by long time friend, Quentin Tarantino, kept audiences buzzing… where they meant to be laughing at the violence on screen?
What about ‘Sin City’? This ultra violent adaption of the Frank Miller graphic novel was a commercial success which many put down to the use of unique colouring throughout the black and white landscapes on screen. Then just look at the children’s films that he has directed, the ‘Spy Kids’ trilogy was generally well received and even utilised the beginning of the 3D phenomenon but contrast it to ‘The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D’ (starring a fresh faced Taylor Lautner, before the whole Jacob workout!) and you can understand why many are confused by this directors output…
According to eRc Box Office, the director wants to do it all over again by announcing ‘Spy Kids 4: All The Time in the World’. The latest film in the franchise is set to star a new set of kids different from the original trilogy (goodbye Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara, oh how you will be missed!) and has very few details around yet but shows that the director is not giving up with making children’s film.
Rodriguez has recently said of ‘Spy Kids 4’, “It’s different kids, not the old kids. That one’s really cool and I’ll probably do that in the early part of next year, March or April… The Weinsteins really wanted to do another one and I had an idea for one, I even went back and pilfered my old original first script and found some ideas that I couldn’t bring to life back then.”
What does seem somewhat suspect about this announcement; the original film came out in 2001 and the scheduled fourth film will return to cinemas in 2011, a whole ten years later. Therefore it may appear that virtually none of the original audiences of the films would return as they are too busy watching 15’s and 18’s now, to spend their time watching a children’s film. Is this a problem or would a fourth film in a franchise be able to stir up enough hype to collect together an entirely new generation of ‘Spy Kids’ fans?
So another ‘Spy Kids’ in 3D, set for a Summer 2011 opening… could this be the film Rodriguez needs to get back on track with the kids? In the mean time, watch out for his next project, ‘Predators’, which he is producing set for a July 2010 release.
