''The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D'' (also known simply as ''The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl'', or often shortened to ''Sharkboy and Lavagirl''), is a 2005 American
3D superhero
A superhero or superheroine is a stock character that typically possesses ''superpowers'', abilities beyond those of ordinary people, and fits the role of the hero, typically using his or her powers to help the world become a better place, ...
adventure film
An adventure film is a form of adventure fiction, and is a genre of film. Subgenres of adventure films include swashbuckler films, pirate films, and survival films. Adventure films may also be combined with other film genres such as action, an ...
co-written and directed by
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodriguez (; born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker, composer, and visual effects supervisor. He shoots, edits, produces, and scores many of his films in Mexico and in his home state of Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 ac ...
and originally released in the United States on June 10, 2005. The production companies were
Dimension Films
Dimension Films is an American film production company owned by Lantern Entertainment. It was formerly used as Harvey and Bob Weinstein's label within Miramax, which was acquired by The Walt Disney Company on June 30, 1993, to produce and relea ...
,
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
and
Troublemaker Studios
Troublemaker Studios is a film production company founded and owned by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and producer Elizabeth Avellán. The company is based in Austin, Texas and is at the former site of the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport. It shares ...
.
The film uses the
anaglyph 3D
Anaglyph 3D is the stereoscopic 3D effect achieved by means of encoding each eye's image using filters of different (usually chromatically opposite) colors, typically red and cyan. Anaglyph 3D images contain two differently filtered colored ...
technology, similar to the one used in ''
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over'' (2003). The film stars
Taylor Lautner
Taylor Daniel Lautner (; born February 11, 1992) is an American actor. He is best known for playing Therianthropy, shapeshifter Jacob Black in ''The Twilight Saga (film series), The Twilight Saga'' film series.
Lautner began his acting caree ...
, Taylor Dooley,
Cayden Boyd
Cayden Boyd (born May 24, 1994) is an American actor. He is best known for his child roles as Max in Robert Rodriguez's 2005 film '' The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl'' and Ben Reynolds in the 2007 film ''Have Dreams, Will Travel''.
Life
...
,
David Arquette
David Arquette (born September 8, 1971) is an American actor and former professional wrestler. He is best known for his role as Dewey Riley in the slasher film franchise ''Scream'', for which he won a Teen Choice Award and two Blockbuster Enter ...
,
Kristin Davis
Kristin Landen Davis (also listed as Kristin Lee Davis; born February 23, 1965) is an American actress and producer. She is known for playing Charlotte York Goldenblatt in the HBO romantic comedy series ''Sex and the City'' (1998–2004). She ...
and
George Lopez
George Edward Lopez (born April 23, 1961) is an American comedian and actor. He is known for starring in his self-produced ABC sitcom. His stand-up comedy examines race and ethnic relations, including Mexican American culture. Lopez has rec ...
. Many of the concepts and much of the story were conceived by Rodriguez's children. The film received negative reviews from critics, with much of the criticism directed at the film's story and poor 3-D, while the visual aspects and performances received some praise. The film also underperformed at the box office earning just $39.2 million in the United States and $32.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $72 million worldwide on a $50 million budget.
The special effects were done by
Hybride Technologies
Ubisoft is a French video game publisher headquartered in Montreuil, founded in March 1986 by the Guillemot brothers. Since its establishment, Ubisoft has become one of the largest video game publishers, and it has the largest in-house developme ...
, CafeFX,
The Orphanage, Post Logic,
Hy*drau*lx,
Industrial Light & Magic
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began pro ...
, R!ot Pictures,
Tippett Studio
Tippett Studio is an American visual effects company specializing in computer-generated imagery (CGI) for films and television commercials. The studio has created visual effects and animations on over fifty feature films and commercials, garnerin ...
, Amalgamated Pixels,
Intelligent Creatures
Intelligent Creatures (IC) is a motion picture visual effects company located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
History
IC was founded on March 30, 2001 by current CEO Lon Molnar, a graduate of the Vancouver Film School, Michael Hatton, Raymond Gierin ...
and Troublemaker Digital.
Another film featuring Sharkboy and Lavagirl titled ''
We Can Be Heroes'' was released on
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
on December 25, 2020 with Dooley reprising her role.
Plot
Max is a ten-year-old boy living in the suburbs of
Austin
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
. In his imagination, he has created Planet Drool, where his dreams come to life. It contains two main characters: Sharkboy, who sharks raised after losing his father (a marine biologist) at sea and became a shark-hybrid himself, and Lavagirl, who can produce fire and lava but has trouble controlling her power so that objects often catch fire when she touches them. Max's parents have little time for him in the real world due to their troubled marriage. At school, he is bullied by his classmate Linus. He does receive friendship from Marissa, the teacher's daughter, Mr. Electricidad. Linus steals Max's dream journal and threatens to "make changes". The next day, twin tornadoes form outside the school. Sharkboy and Lavagirl emerge from the storm and ask Max to accompany them to Planet Drool, which he learns is turning bad thanks to Mr. Electric, a robot resembling Mr. Electricidad and the dreamworld's now-corrupt electrician, under the orders of an unknown mastermind. They travel to Planet Drool with the Shark Rocket and crash land.
They confront Mr. Electric in his lair, but he drops them into the Dream Graveyard, where many of Max's dreams have been dumped. They find Tobor, a robot toy Max never finished building after being discouraged by his father. Tobor carries them to other parts of the planet. The three of them bond during their journey but face hardships, such as Sharkboy's anger that the oceans are frozen over and Lavagirl's desperation to find her true purpose. While being pursued by Mr. Electric and his evil plug-hounds, they plan to reach the Ice Princess and obtain the Crystal Heart, with which they could freeze time, granting them enough time to reach the center of Planet Drool and for Max to repair the dreamworld by re-dreaming it. Instead, they are captured by Mr. Electric and delivered to the mastermind, who is revealed to be Minus, a villain resembling Linus who has altered Max's journal and hence the dreamworld. After being trapped in a cage, Sharkboy becomes enraged by singing bubbles and destroys the cell in a "shark frenzy". Max retrieves his dream journal while Minus is sleeping. Reading the book, Max informs Sharkboy that his father is still alive, but when Lavagirl wishes to learn what it says about her true identity, she grabs the book, and it burns to ash. In a desperate rage, Lavagirl asks Max why he made her out of lava and runs off. Max wants to follow, but Sharkboy tells him to let her cool down.
The three eventually reach the Ice Princess, who resembles Marissa. She hands over the Crystal Heart, but they cannot stop the corruption since the Ice Princess is the only one who can use the Crystal Heart's power and cannot leave her home. Afterward, Mr. Electric knocks Sharkboy unconscious by tricking him into jumping into a lake filled with
electric eel
The electric eels are a genus, ''Electrophorus'', of neotropical freshwater fish from South America in the family Gymnotidae. They are known for their ability to stun their prey by generating electricity, delivering shocks at up to 860 volts ...
s, which are his weakness. Lavagirl sacrifices herself by jumping into the water to retrieve him. Max realizes he has been selfish in wanting to return to Earth. Tobor appears and convinces Max to dream a better, unselfish dream. Just then, Sharkboy regains consciousness and races Lavagirl to a volcano to revive her. Max realizes that Lavagirl's purpose is as a light against the darkness, engulfing Planet Drool. Max becomes the Daydreamer and gains reality-warping powers to defeat Minus. He then offers that the two join to make a better dreamworld, and Minus agrees. Lavagirl thanks Max and Sharkboy for saving her.
Minus offers to let Mr. Electric return to running Planet Drool, but Mr. Electric reveals that he never enjoyed doing so in the first place. He tells Max that he made a terrible mistake of dreaming him up and flies to Earth to kill Max while he is dreaming. Max awakens back in his classroom during the tornado storm. Mr. Electric arrives in the tornado in front of the class and an astonished Mr. Electricidad. Max's parents are caught in the tornado but are saved by Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Max gives the Crystal Heart to Marissa so she can use the Ice Princess's powers to freeze and destroy Mr. Electric. Mr. Electricidad, Linus, and Max make peace with one another, and Max reunites with his now-reconciled parents.
Later, Max informs his class that Planet Drool is a proper dreamworld again, that Sharkboy is now King of the Ocean and that Lavagirl is Queen of Earth's Volcanoes. As Max finally repairs Tobor, he reminds the class (and the audience) to "dream a better dream and work to make it real".
Cast
*
Cayden Boyd
Cayden Boyd (born May 24, 1994) is an American actor. He is best known for his child roles as Max in Robert Rodriguez's 2005 film '' The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl'' and Ben Reynolds in the 2007 film ''Have Dreams, Will Travel''.
Life
...
as Max. An imaginative 10-year-old
boy, known as the "day-dreamer" on Planet Drool. "At first he's dreaming all for himself; he wants Shark Boy and Lava Girl to take him away", Boyd said about the role. "I like that he's selfish in the beginning and he's not selfish in the end".
*
Taylor Lautner
Taylor Daniel Lautner (; born February 11, 1992) is an American actor. He is best known for playing Therianthropy, shapeshifter Jacob Black in ''The Twilight Saga (film series), The Twilight Saga'' film series.
Lautner began his acting caree ...
as Sharkboy. Lautner said about the character, "He's very self-confident and sometimes his confidence gets him into trouble. He's also kinda jealous of the character, Max, because he has an inside crush on Lavagirl and she's overly motherly to Max." Lautner's martial arts skills helped him to obtain the role of Sharkboy. "When I auditioned for the film, Robert Rodriguez, the director, didn't know that I had my martial arts
ackground and while we were there in Austin, TX he saw a DVD of me and asked me to choreograph my own fight scenes", said Lautner. Lautner was the first to audition for the film, says Rodriguez, and was chosen immediately.
* Taylor Dooley as Lavagirl. The role was cast after the two other main characters, Sharkboy and Max had already been cast.
Her lava bike was computer-generated, like many of the elements in the film; Dooley and Lautner described the on-set versions of the lava bike and Sharkboy's shark-themed jetski as "a green box with handles".
*
David Arquette
David Arquette (born September 8, 1971) is an American actor and former professional wrestler. He is best known for his role as Dewey Riley in the slasher film franchise ''Scream'', for which he won a Teen Choice Award and two Blockbuster Enter ...
and
Kristin Davis
Kristin Landen Davis (also listed as Kristin Lee Davis; born February 23, 1965) is an American actress and producer. She is known for playing Charlotte York Goldenblatt in the HBO romantic comedy series ''Sex and the City'' (1998–2004). She ...
play Max's parents. Max's father is an unemployed writer. They are on the brink of a divorce. They mean well for Max, but are unable to solve his problems. On Planet Drool, Max's parents appear as a pair of "Cookie
Giant
In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: '' gigas'', cognate giga-) are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''giant'' is first attested in 1297 fr ...
s" who live happily in the Land of Milk and Cookies.
*
George Lopez
George Edward Lopez (born April 23, 1961) is an American comedian and actor. He is known for starring in his self-produced ABC sitcom. His stand-up comedy examines race and ethnic relations, including Mexican American culture. Lopez has rec ...
as Mr. Electricidad, Mr. Electric, the voice of Tobor, and the voice of the Ice Guardian. Mr. Electricidad is Max's teacher. Mr. Electric is Planet Drool's corrupt electrician. Tobor is an unfinished robot of Max that resided in the Dream Graveyard. The Ice Guardian is an inhabitant of the Ice Kingdom. Rodriguez states that he kept asking Lopez to play additional characters. Lopez spent a total of two weeks working on the film.
* Jacob Davich as Linus / Minus. He is a bully at Max's school and steals his Dream Journal. With it, he enters Max's dreamworld and, using the name "Minus" (a nickname bestowed by Mr. Electricidad for Linus' habit of disliked conduct), alters it to his version before ultimately befriending Max.
*
Sasha Pieterse
Sasha Pieterse-Sheaffer (; born February 17, 1996) is a South African-born American actress, singer and songwriter. She is known for her role as Alison DiLaurentis in the Freeform series ''Pretty Little Liars'' and its spin-off '' Pretty Little ...
as Marissa Electricidad / Ice Princess. Marissa is the daughter of Mr. Electricidad, and at first, the only student who befriends Max. On Planet Drool, she appears as the Ice Princess, the ruler of the Ice Kingdom and keeper of the Crystal Heart, a necklace she wears that can freeze anything including time.
Director
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodriguez (; born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker, composer, and visual effects supervisor. He shoots, edits, produces, and scores many of his films in Mexico and in his home state of Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 ac ...
has an uncredited role voicing a shark, and his children, Rebel and Racer, portray Sharkboy at age five and age seven respectively. Rico Torres portrays Sharkboy's father. Marc Musso and Shane Graham play children at Max's school.
Production
Parts of the film were shot on location in Texas from September to December 2004, where Max resides and goes to school in the film. Much of the film was shot in a studio against green screen. Most of the ships, landscapes and other effects including some creatures and characters, were accomplished digitally. According to Lautner and Dooley, when filming the scene with the dream train, the front part of the train was an actual physical set piece. "The whole inside was there and when they have all the gadgets you can pull on, that was all there but everything else was a green screen," said Dooley.
Eleven visual effects companies (
Hybride Technologies
Ubisoft is a French video game publisher headquartered in Montreuil, founded in March 1986 by the Guillemot brothers. Since its establishment, Ubisoft has become one of the largest video game publishers, and it has the largest in-house developme ...
, CafeFX,
The Orphanage, Post Logic,
Hy*drau*lx,
Industrial Light & Magic
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began pro ...
, R!ot Pictures,
Tippett Studio
Tippett Studio is an American visual effects company specializing in computer-generated imagery (CGI) for films and television commercials. The studio has created visual effects and animations on over fifty feature films and commercials, garnerin ...
, Amalgamated Pixels and
Intelligent Creatures
Intelligent Creatures (IC) is a motion picture visual effects company located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
History
IC was founded on March 30, 2001 by current CEO Lon Molnar, a graduate of the Vancouver Film School, Michael Hatton, Raymond Gierin ...
and Rodriguez's Texas-based Troublemaker Digital) worked on the film in order to accomplish over 1,000 visual effect shots.
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodriguez (; born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker, composer, and visual effects supervisor. He shoots, edits, produces, and scores many of his films in Mexico and in his home state of Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 ac ...
appears in the credits fourteen times, most notably as director, a producer, a screenwriter (along with Marcel Rodriguez), visual effects supervisor, director of photography, editor, a camera operator, and a composer and performer. The story is credited to Racer Max Rodriguez, with additional story elements by Rebecca Rodriguez, who also wrote the lyrics for the main song, "Sharkboy and Lavagirl". Other members of the Rodriguez family can be seen in the film or were involved in the production.
Miley Cyrus
Miley Ray Cyrus ( ; born Destiny Hope Cyrus on November 23, 1992) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her distinctive raspy voice, her music spans across varied styles and genres, including pop, country, rock, hip hop ...
had auditioned for the film with Lautner, and said it came down to her and another girl who was also auditioning; however, Cyrus then began production on ''
Hannah Montana
''Hannah Montana'' is an American teen sitcom created by Michael Poryes, Rich Correll and Barry O'Brien that aired on Disney Channel for four seasons between March2006 and January2011. The series centers on Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus), a ...
'', and thus the other girl, presumably Dooley, got the role.
Reception
Box office
For its opening weekend, ''The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D'' earned $12.6 million in 2,655 theaters. It was placed at number 5 at the box office, being overshadowed by ''
Mr. & Mrs. Smith'', ''
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
'', ''
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith'', and ''
The Longest Yard''. Grossing $39.2 million in the United States and $32.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $72 million,
the film was a box office flop.
Critical response
On review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds a rating of 20% based on 123 reviews, with an average rating of . The critical consensus reads, "The decision to turn this kiddie fantasy into a 3-D film was a miscalculation."
On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, it has a weighted average score of 38 out of 100 based on reviews from 31 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.
Background
Ed Mintz founded Ci ...
gave the film a grade "B+" on scale of A to F.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
gave the film two out of four stars and agreed with the other criticisms in which the 3-D process used was distracting and muted the colors, thus, he believes, "spoiling" much of the film and that the film would look more visually appealing when released in the home media market.
Soundtrack
Director
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodriguez (; born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker, composer, and visual effects supervisor. He shoots, edits, produces, and scores many of his films in Mexico and in his home state of Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 ac ...
composed parts of the score himself, with contributions by composers
John Debney
John Cardon Debney (born August 18, 1956) is an American composer and conductor of film, television, and video game scores. His work encompasses a variety of mediums and genres including comedy, horror, thriller, and action-adventure. He is a ...
and
Graeme Revell
Graeme Revell (born 23 October 1955) is a New Zealand musician and composer. He came to prominence in the 1980s as the leader of the industrial/electronic group SPK. Since the 1990s he has worked primarily as a film score composer.
Some of Re ...
.
Books
Around the time of the film's debut Rodriguez co-wrote a series of children's novels entitled ''Sharkboy and Lavagirl Adventures'' with acclaimed science fiction writer
Chris Roberson. They include Book 1, ''The Day Dreamer'', and Book 2, ''Return to Planet Drool'', which announces that it will be continued in a third volume, ''Deep Sleep'', which was never released. There was also a release of "Max's Journal" which shows more of the character's dream journal from the movie, as well as "The Illustrated Screenplay", which shows the script with concept designs, preproduction art, character sketches, and behind the scenes photos. They are illustrated throughout by Alex Toader, who designed characters and environments for the film and the previous
Spy kids
''Spy Kids'' is an American spy family action-adventure comedy franchise created by Robert Rodriguez. The plot follows adventures of Carmen and Juni Cortez, two children who become involved in their parents' espionage organization. The films inc ...
franchise.
Jeff Jensen of ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' praised another book appearing around the time of the film, ''The Adventures of SharkBoy and LavaGirl: The Movie Storybook'' (by Racer Max Rodriguez and Robert Rodriguez), as a far cry from the usual movie storybook tie-in, and also praised Alex Toader's "cartoony yet detailed" illustrations.
Lawsuit
The
Total Nonstop Action
Impact Wrestling (stylized as ''IMPACT! Wrestling''), is an American professional wrestling promotion based in Nashville, Tennessee. It is a subsidiary of Anthem Sports & Entertainment.
Founded by Jeff and Jerry Jarrett in 2002, the promoti ...
professional wrestler
Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring or ...
Dean Roll, who
trademarked
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others. ...
the name "Shark Boy" in 1999, sued
Miramax
Miramax, LLC, also known as Miramax Films, is an American film and television production and distribution company founded on December 19, 1979, by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and based in Los Angeles, California.
It was initially a leadi ...
on June 8, 2005, claiming that his trademark had been infringed and demanding "
nymoney, profits and advantages wrongfully gained". In April 2007, the suit was settled for a disclosed amount of $200,000.
Followup
In an interview during the 2020
Comic-Con@Home event, Rodriguez confirmed that a character in his then-upcoming film ''
We Can Be Heroes'' was the youngest daughter of Sharkboy and Lavagirl who has shark powers. Taylor Dooley was confirmed to reprise her role in the film as Lavagirl, although Lautner did not reprise his role.
''We Can Be Heroes'' was released through
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
in December 2020. In January 2021, a sequel was announced.
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adventures Of Sharkboy And Lavagirl In 3-D, The
2005 films
2005 romantic comedy films
2005 3D films
2000s adventure comedy films
2000s fantasy comedy films
2000s teen comedy films
2000s superhero films
American 3D films
American children's adventure films
American romantic fantasy films
American comedy horror films
American children's comedy films
American romantic comedy films
American children's fantasy films
American superhero films
Child superheroes
Columbia Pictures films
Dimension Films films
2000s English-language films
American films with live action and animation
Films scored by John Debney
Films scored by Graeme Revell
Films scored by Robert Rodriguez
Film superheroes
Films about dreams
Films about nightmares
Films about orphans
Films directed by Robert Rodriguez
Films produced by Elizabeth Avellán
Films set in Austin, Texas
Films shot in Austin, Texas
Films with screenplays by Robert Rodriguez
Teen superhero comedy films
Troublemaker Studios films
2005 comedy films
Films about educators
2000s American films