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Robert Rodriguez has brought back Sharkboy and Lavagirl for new Netflix movie We Can Be Heroes, but it wasn't always the case.

The characters made their debut in 2005's The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D starring a pre-Twilight Taylor Lautner and Taylor Dooley as the superhero duo, but the movie underperformed at the box office and didn't get a sequel.

We Can Be Heroes sees a group of superhero children have to learn to work together to save their parents and the planet from alien invaders. One of the children is Guppy (Vivien Lyra Blair), the daughter of Sharkboy and Lavagirl.

Talking to Digital Spy, Rodriguez revealed that since Netflix had originally asked him for an original movie, he didn't bring back the characters initially.

taylor dooley as lavagirl, jj dashnaw as sharkboy, we can be heroes

Netflix

"We sat around and came up with all these superpowers and I turned in an original script, Sharkboy and Lavagirl weren't in it because I needed to deliver an original story," he explained.

"But then once we started going, I said, 'It would be really cool if we had one character who had shark powers and lava powers like I had before, so what if we brought them in as parents?' It would serve double duty in that people would recognise Sharkboy and Lavagirl, even if they never saw that movie.

"It would make it feel like a legitimate adult superhero team like the Avengers because that's what you're trying to tell the audience, and if you put characters in that they recognise, that helps them believe it a little bit more. That was the only reason they were in there, it wasn't born out of wanting to do a sequel."

Taylor Dooley did reprise her role as Lavagirl in We Can Be Heroes, but Taylor Lautner wasn't able to come back. As a result, Sharkboy is played by JJ Dashnaw in a wordless role, meaning that Lautner could come back in the future.

taylor dooley as lavagirl in pink supersuit, we can be heroes

Netflix

As it turns out, Sharkboy and Lavagirl aren't really the main draw of the new Netflix movie in any case, which mainly focuses on the young superhero team and gave Rodriguez a chance to take an affectionate dig at the wider genre.

"In superhero movies, you have to have conflict and it can't just be the conflict of the heroes against the aliens, they sometimes have conflict within, so Cap is always fighting with Iron Man and not getting along. That's the world, right? Adults don't cooperate together as well as they should," Rodriguez noted.

"Let's use the format of a superhero mythology to tell a story where more cooperation is needed, more working together is needed, and if you're going to create drama within, create it in a different way. It's very clever how the kids still have drama within, but not where they beat each other down, but build each other up.

"The next generation is just smarter and more evolved, so why not have the kids say, 'Why don't the adults lure the aliens out of the big cities, instead of destroying the big cities?' There were so many fun things you could send up while still respecting that genre."

We Can Be Heroes is released on Netflix on Christmas Day.

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