If you’re thinking of Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over in 2018, you’re probably using it as a punchline to a joke. I can’t say that isn’t justified, but during a recent bad movie night I rewatched the third Spy Kids and was surprised at the film’s inventiveness that went into coping with some pretty bad technology.
First off, the Spy Kids franchise is bizarre. Spy Kids (the first one) was the first major Hollywood hit of director Robert Rodriguez, and the series has a unique aesthetic that clashes with the real world while staying consistent and immersive throughout the films themselves. This can be attributed to the many roles that Rodriguez assigned himself across all of the Spy Kids (and many other) films. In addition to director, Rodriguez wore the hats of screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. While the Spy Kids franchise and Sharkboy and Lavagirl are some of Rodriguez’s most well-known films and maintain a cult status today, his experience prior to the first Spy Kids was mostly in action films (many of which are in Spanish). To say that the family action/adventure films that began Rodriguez’s career as a mainstream director are incongruous with his existing body of work would be an understatement, but Rodriguez knew what he was doing. Both the first two Spy Kids films did pretty well critically (with 93% and 75% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for Spy Kids 1 and 2, respectively), but when the third film of the fantastic adventures of Carmen and Juni Cortez came around Rodriguez wanted to try out something completely new: 3-D.
It’s easy to forget in 2018 what 3-D movies used to be. During the time of Spy Kids 3, a 3-D film would have to use glasses with red and blue lenses in order to make the effect visible. The 3-D effect, made by overlapping different colored images to be viewed using glasses with different colored lenses, is called “anaglyph 3-D” and was used even in movie theaters with very few exceptions up until 2003. One of these exceptions would be Disney’s Captain E-O, which used a special kind of 3-D technology developed by Kodak that made 3-D viewable using glasses with no distinct coloration. However, this film, its special glasses, and the technology needed to project it were all housed in a custom-built theme park theater that existed only to play Captain E-O over and over again. Kodak’s technology was expensive and that price tag prevented movie theaters and filmmakers alike from using it in a widespread way. This changed in 2003, the same year that Spy Kids 3 was released, with the invention of RealD’s polarized 3-D technology. 3-D films that use RealD 3-D look similar to those made with Kodak’s technology, but RealD is affordable for many more filmmakers and movie theaters. Without RealD’s breakthroughs, there wouldn’t be nearly as many 3-D films released every year as there are today. The technology’s essence hasn’t changed much since its invention, give or take a few significant company expansions, and RealD 3-D is still used in theaters around the world. Unfortunately, Rodriguez did not have the chance to use this technology and, as a result, Spy Kids 3 is one of the last films using anaglyph 3-D to receive a wide theatrical release.
The problems with anaglyph 3-D are obvious to anybody who has watched a movie using it. When a film is watched through red and blue lenses, the film’s coloration is completely screwed up both by the coloration of the lenses necessary to watch it and the visual manipulation that has to be done to the images in order to make them readable as 3-D. This is the primary reason why most filmmakers avoided anaglyph 3-D like the plague, even though the effect had already been put into practice with projected images in the 1800s before the moving image had even been invented. Making Spy Kids 3 in 3-D was a bold move on the part of Rodriguez, and it was one of only two American 3-D feature films in 2003.
With this information in mind, some of the artistic choices in the film make more sense. The visual landscape of the game world is practically screaming to be seen through the red and blue overtones necessary for the 3-D effect. Anytime a 3-D gag is possible, Rodriguez makes full use of it with the knowledge that it is a novelty unique to his film. With every single action film made today receiving at least a partial release in 3-D, there is much more nuance in the recognition that drawing so much attention to the effect is a breach of the fourth wall, alienating to 2D viewers, and just plain obnoxious. Since Spy Kids 3 was released exclusively in 3-D, the problem of alienation was nonexistent and it still had the novelty of the technology’s rarity. A unique aspect of Rodriguez’s use of 3-D is the way in which he made it a bridging point between the film and its viewers. The 3-D glasses distributed in theaters were designed after the glasses that the characters in Spy Kids must wear in order to enter the game world. It’s worth noting that the entire film is not in 3-D. As an audience member, you only wear the glasses when the characters onscreen wear the glasses. Where the audience’s glasses allow them to experience the film with an extra dimension, the characters’ glasses allow them to see the Toymaker’s reality-altering video game. It’s not the most visually appealing effect when text flashes at the bottom of the screen instructing you to put on your glasses, but it makes the film into an active experience. Years later, with the release of Spy Kids 4, Rodriguez would try to innovate with audience interaction again with the introduction of Smell-O-Scope scratch-and- sniff cards to the franchise, but with most movies being sold and distributed digitally now the benefits of adding a feature to a film that can only be experienced at home by buying a DVD are more questionable.
In rewatching Spy Kids 3, I couldn’t help but think of The Wizard of Oz’s use of a rarely used technology for a feature film: Technicolor. While The Wizard of Oz is a far superior film to Spy Kids 3 for many reasons, there are parallels to be drawn. If 3-D is Spy Kids’s Technicolor, its use as the divide between the real world and the video game’s fantasy mirrors the divide of Kansas’s sepia to Oz’s bright colors. These similarities continue on a thematic level. Juni ventures into the game seeking out the Toymaker, the game world’s master and creator (a role somehow agreed to by Sylvester Stallone). In Oz, Dorothy seeks the help of the Wizard, who can supposedly help her return home. As far as companions go, Juni meets three beta testers within the game who embody coolness, intelligence, and strength only to meet them in the real world afterwards and find that they possess none of the traits of their in-game personas. This reverses Dorothy’s companions, who sought the Wizard out to ask for brains, heart, and courage only to
discover that they really possessed the traits they were looking for all along. Both Juni and Dorothy go on their adventures for the sake of their families; Dorothy wishes to return to her Auntie Em and Juni only enters the game to save his sister from the Toymaker. And Grandpa “Mega Legs” Cortez is, of course, Glinda. This isn’t to say the films are without their differences. In The Wizard of Oz, Oz never interacts with the real world in the way that the Toymaker’s game does in the final battle sequence. The Toymaker plays the Wicked Witch of the West (complete with crystal ball) in addition to his role as the Wizard. There is no racing minigame in The Wizard of Oz (at least none that made it into the final cut). They’re obviously very different films, but I was surprised at the amount of similarities this gimmick-oriented 2003 family action/adventure film had with a gimmick-oriented 1939 outdated-political-allegory- made-movie-musical. It makes it hard to fault Spy Kids 3 on its tiresome use of 3-D sight gags any time the audience has their glasses on. Where The Wizard of Oz altered its source material and made creative choices to best showcase the capabilities of Technicolor, Spy Kids 3 showcases 3-D at every possible turn. Some of these showcases are more tastefully executed than others, but considering the film was made on the cusp of 3-D’s cinematic domination post- RealD’s invention, one has to wonder how influential Spy Kids 3’s box office success was on 3- D pictures to come.
After lauding Spy Kids 3 with (occasionally backhanded) praise, it’s necessary to make a concession. Spy Kids 3 is not a good movie. Even in 2003, Robert Rodriguez’s understanding of video games, modern technology, and how the youth interacted with it was spotty at best. His video game world looks like a 1980s arcade lineup crossed with an acid trip and the CGI sets used for almost every scene are cornball at best and hideous at worst. It was funny to watch this after having seen Ready Player One, a film that many have criticized for being out of touch with today’s kids and teens, and note all of the similarities that it shares with Spy Kids 3. I would’ve said that it could serve as a cautionary tale of how not to make a movie about video games, but Ready Player One has proven that it can’t even do that. The tragedy of Spy Kids 3 is that if it had been released just a few months later, with access to the new 3-D technology that was just about to change movies, the film could’ve been something completely different. The gaudy CGI sets could’ve been toned down to a palatable level without the concern for colors making it through. The dominating 3-D tricks, which came off as a sort of apology for how uncomfortable the whole system was, could’ve been used more sparingly for an audience who wasn’t constantly reminded by the colored lenses on their face and the ugliness of the picture that they were sitting there to see a 3-D movie. Even beyond the technology, the film is narratively a mess. Characters pop in and out of existence for no reason at all, the stakes are so terribly hazy that it’s difficult to fully understand why anything is happening, the motives that drive the film forward turn on a dime and the themes that this film tries to push are superficial and in no way align with any of the actual events of the story. I could write an equally long review on the bad parts of this film and why it doesn’t work, but I believed and still believe that Spy Kids 3’s use of 3-D is significant in the larger scope of cinema history in a way that couldn’t have been predicted at the time of its release but is clear now.
It’s possible that the use of 3-D in Spy Kids 3 was insignificant. The invention of RealD 3-D was probably much more impactful in terms of motivating filmmakers and distributors to invest in 3-D technology as more than just a gimmick. However, Spy Kids 3 was perfectly timed with this invention to ensure its success. The accomplishment of Spy Kids 3 was priming an entire generation for the changes to come. As a child, I adored this movie and watched it over and over. With the DVD came a few sets of paper 3-D glasses with which you could watch it just like in the theater over and over from the comfort of your own home. The amazement and wonder that this dumb, bad movie generated in children throughout the world prepared it for 3-D to step out of the wings and take center stage in years to follow. I doubt that Spy Kids 3 will ever receive the same recognition as a pioneer in 3-D as The Wizard of Oz did as a pioneer in color film. That honor will probably go to James Cameron’s Avatar, which isn’t a particularly great movie either. My only hope in writing this essay is that it makes someone, somewhere appreciates this meme of a movie for something more than its fixation on email addresses.