We Can Be Heroes (2020) Review

Nostalgia Can Be a Superpower, But Apparently Not Here

Let’s Start By Showing Y’all The Trailers Shall We?

Four forty four, the two people who saw this movie. Please stand up and raise your hands.

When I first saw the trailer for We Can Be Heroes, I already knew exactly what Netflix was doing. They were not trying to sell me on the new superheroes. They were not trying to sell me on the alien invasion plot. They were not trying to sell me on the new kid characters. No, they knew exactly what button to press, and that button was Sharkboy and Lavagirl are back. That was the hook. That was the bait. That was the reason a lot of people clicked on this movie in the first place, because whether or not The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D is actually good, a lot of people around my age remember it. We remember the bad CGI, the weird dream world, the songs, the lava powers, the shark powers, George Lopez turning into a giant floating head, and the general feeling that the entire movie was made during someone’s fever nap. It is not a good movie, but it is a memorable movie, and sometimes childhood nostalgia is powerful enough to make you curious.

So when this movie came out, I thought maybe there was a chance it could be fun. I was not expecting greatness. I was not expecting some emotional legacy sequel masterpiece. I was just expecting something weird, colorful, maybe a little stupid, and hopefully entertaining. I thought maybe the movie would actually use Sharkboy and Lavagirl in an interesting way. Maybe we would see what happened to them years later. Maybe we would revisit that bizarre dream-world energy. Maybe Taylor Lautner would return as Sharkboy. Maybe Sharkboy would actually talk. Silly me. I sat down expecting a weird nostalgia sequel and instead got a movie that feels like Netflix remembered the names Sharkboy and Lavagirl existed, slapped them onto the marketing, and then shoved them into the background so we could spend most of the runtime with a bunch of new kid characters I could not bring myself to care about.

Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

The movie follows Missy Moreno, the daughter of Marcus Moreno, a retired superhero played by Pedro Pascal, because apparently Pedro Pascal has made it his life mission to appear in every franchise known to mankind. I like Pedro Pascal, I really do, but at this point the man is everywhere. Star Wars, The Last of Us, Wonder Woman, Fantastic Four, Gladiator, and now somehow he has wandered into the Sharkboy and Lavagirl universe. I swear one day I am going to open my refrigerator and Pedro Pascal is going to be inside handing me orange juice. The man is collecting franchises like Pokémon cards.

Anyway, aliens attack Earth, the adult superheroes are captured, and their kids are taken to a government facility for protection. Eventually the kids realize they need to escape, work together, use their powers, and save the world themselves. On paper, that is not the worst setup. A movie about superhero kids having to step up after their parents fail could work. The problem is the movie introduces all these new kids and expects the audience to instantly care about them, but most of them feel more like power concepts than actual characters. One kid can rewind time. One kid stretches. One kid sings. One kid is strong. One kid has shark and lava parents. The movie keeps throwing powers at me like that automatically equals personality, and it does not. A character having a power is not the same thing as a character being interesting.

Character Rundown

Missy Moreno is the main character, and I do not hate her. She is fine. She is brave, she wants to help, she becomes the leader, and the movie clearly wants her to be the emotional center of the story. The problem is that “fine” is not enough to carry an entire movie. I understood what the movie wanted me to feel for her, but I never felt invested enough. She is one of those protagonists where you can see the outline of a character, but the movie does not give her enough flavor to truly stick. By the time the movie ended, I remembered the basic idea of her more than I remembered her actual scenes.

Pedro Pascal as Marcus Moreno is trying. I will give him that. He always feels like he is actually attempting to bring some heart into the movie, but he is barely given enough material to make a real impact. Most of the adult superheroes in this movie feel like celebrity cameos more than characters, which is frustrating because the movie has a cast that could have been more entertaining if it actually used them properly. Instead, they mostly exist so the kids can take over the story.

Now let’s talk about the actual reason people watched this movie: Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Lavagirl returns, and I was happy to see her for about five seconds before realizing the movie had basically no interest in doing anything meaningful with her. She is there, she looks recognizable, she has lava powers, and then the movie moves on. That is disappointing because Lavagirl was arguably the best part of the original movie. She had the most emotional material, she had the clearest identity crisis, and Taylor Dooley actually gave the role more sincerity than the movie deserved. So bringing her back and then barely using her feels like a complete waste.

Then we have Sharkboy, or as I will be referring to him in this review: Not Taylor Lautner. I am sorry, but that is the first thing most people noticed. Sharkboy shows up and your brain immediately goes, “Wait a minute, that is not Taylor Lautner.” And the movie clearly knows this because Sharkboy does not talk. Not barely talks. Not has a few lines. He literally does not speak at all. He growls, stands around, punches things, and leaves. That is insane to me. You bring back Sharkboy after fifteen years and then turn him into a silent background prop. This would be like bringing back Harry Potter and having him communicate only through eyebrow movements. Why even bring him back if you are going to do absolutely nothing with him?

Pacing / Episode Flow

The pacing of We Can Be Heroes is weird because the movie is constantly moving, but I never felt like it was building toward anything I cared about. Things happen quickly, but that does not mean the story has momentum. The kids are in the facility, then they escape, then they get chased, then they use their powers, then there are twists, then more reveals, then more teamwork lessons, and the whole thing starts to feel like a children’s superhero obstacle course instead of an actual story. It is not confusing in the fun dream-logic way that Sharkboy and Lavagirl was confusing. It is confusing in the “why should I care about any of this?” way.

What makes this even more frustrating is that the original Sharkboy and Lavagirl somehow makes more sense than this movie, and that is a wild sentence to say out loud. The original movie had a dream planet named Planet Drool, a boy raised by sharks, a girl made of lava, a train of dreams, and George Lopez becoming a giant electric head. Yet because it was built around Max’s imagination, you could at least understand why the movie was so bizarre. It was supposed to feel like a kid’s dream. We Can Be Heroes does not have that same excuse. It wants to be a superhero team movie, a legacy sequel, a kids adventure, an alien invasion story, and a family movie all at once, but none of those pieces come together in a way that feels memorable.

Pros

I will be fair and say the movie is not completely without positives. The visuals are better than Sharkboy and Lavagirl, although that is not exactly a difficult bar to clear. The movie is colorful, fast-moving, and I can see younger kids enjoying it. Pedro Pascal brings some warmth whenever he is onscreen, and I did smile when Sharkboy and Lavagirl first appeared because, again, nostalgia is powerful. There is something amusing about seeing those characters return after so many years, even if that excitement evaporates almost immediately once you realize the movie is not going to do anything interesting with them.

The concept of superhero kids learning to work together is also not inherently bad. A better version of this movie could have been a fun family adventure about the next generation stepping out of their parents’ shadows. There are little pieces here that could have worked if the writing was stronger and the characters had more personality. The movie clearly wants to be about teamwork, leadership, and kids proving they are capable of more than adults assume. That is a fine message for a family movie. The problem is that a message only works if the characters delivering it are interesting enough to carry it.

Cons

The biggest problem with We Can Be Heroes is that it relies on nostalgia and then completely wastes it. This movie knows people remember Sharkboy and Lavagirl. It knows those names mean something to a specific audience. It uses them to get your attention, then immediately sidelines them for a group of new characters who are nowhere near as memorable. That is not just disappointing, it feels lazy. If you are going to bring back Sharkboy and Lavagirl, then bring them back. Do something with them. Give them a real role. Let them be characters. Do not use them like decorations in the background of a movie that wants me to care about their daughter and a bunch of kids I just met.

The new characters are not strong enough to justify how much focus they get. I could not care less about most of them, and that is a serious problem because the entire movie depends on me caring about this new team. Their powers are more memorable than their personalities, and even then, the powers feel like quick gimmicks. It reminded me of a movie introducing action figures before actually writing people. Here is the stretchy one. Here is the rewind-time one. Here is the strong one. Here is the shark-lava kid. Okay, but who are they beyond that? The movie does not give me enough to latch onto.

The story also somehow feels lazier than the original. That is the part that really bothers me. Sharkboy and Lavagirl is a mess, but it feels like a mess that came from imagination. It feels like a kid came up with everything, because one basically did. We Can Be Heroes feels like content. That is the best way I can put it. It feels like something designed to autoplay on Netflix while families need something colorful in the background. It does not have the same strange personality as the original. It does not have the same weird charm. It is cleaner, smoother, and more technically polished, but it is also emptier.

Final Thoughts

What makes We Can Be Heroes worse than Sharkboy and Lavagirl for me is not just that it is bad. It is that it is forgettable. Sharkboy and Lavagirl is also bad, but at least I remember it. I remember Planet Drool. I remember the terrible CGI. I remember the dream song. I remember George Lopez screaming as Mr. Electric. I remember how strange and ugly and bizarre the whole thing was. It may not be good, but it has an identity. It has a weird little place in childhood memory.

We Can Be Heroes does not have that same identity. It feels like a movie built out of nostalgia but without understanding why people were nostalgic in the first place. People did not remember Sharkboy and Lavagirl because it was a polished superhero movie. They remembered it because it was strange, sincere, and completely unhinged. This movie strips away a lot of that weirdness and replaces it with generic superhero kid teamwork. And somehow, that is worse. I would rather watch a messy fever dream with personality than a cleaner movie that barely leaves an impression.

So yeah, this movie is lazy. It brings back Sharkboy and Lavagirl and does nothing with them. It introduces new characters I never cared about. It gives Pedro Pascal another franchise to add to his collection. It somehow tells a story that makes even less sense than the movie about a lava girl and a shark boy from a dream planet. And worst of all, it is not even fun-bad. It is just disappointing.

Rating

3/10

Spoiler Warning

Everything past this point contains spoilers for We Can Be Heroes.

Spoilers

The big twist that the alien invasion is basically a test did absolutely nothing for me. By the time that reveal happened, I was already checked out because the movie never made me care enough about the conflict. The adults being captured, the kids escaping, the aliens having a different agenda, all of it plays out exactly like a family superhero movie would play out, but without enough charm to make it land. It wants to feel clever, but it mostly feels like the movie trying to add one last twist to a story that was already running on fumes.

The biggest spoiler-related disappointment is still Sharkboy and Lavagirl themselves. Their daughter, Guppy, gets more focus than they do, which would be fine if the movie had done a better job making her interesting. But because Sharkboy and Lavagirl are the main nostalgic hook, their lack of importance feels almost insulting. Lavagirl barely gets anything substantial, and Sharkboy not speaking at all makes his return feel even stranger. Every time he appeared, I was not thinking about the character. I was thinking, “That is not Taylor Lautner.” That became more memorable than anything Sharkboy actually did.

The ending tries to wrap everything up with the kids proving themselves and saving the day, but it did not give me that satisfying feeling it clearly wanted. Instead, I just kept thinking about how much more interesting this could have been if the movie had actually focused on the legacy characters or found a better balance between the old and new cast. A sequel about Sharkboy and Lavagirl as adults raising a kid could have been weird, funny, and maybe even surprisingly heartfelt. Instead, they are barely there.

That is what makes We Can Be Heroes so frustrating. It had a hook. It had nostalgia. It had a bizarre little corner of 2000s childhood it could have revisited. But instead of embracing that, it gives us a generic superhero kid movie wearing Sharkboy and Lavagirl’s name tag. And honestly, if the most memorable thing about your Sharkboy sequel is that Sharkboy is not Taylor Lautner and does not talk, something has gone very wrong.