We Can Be Heroes (2020)
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
No — We Can Be Heroes is not especially woke, scoring 21 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Robert Rodriguez returns to the hyper-saturated sandbox he built for The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and this time he brings a dozen children with powers and no discernible curfew.
Consciousness Markers
The ensemble of super-powered children is notably multiethnic, with Latina, Black, and Asian performers in prominent roles, though the film never comments on this diversity.
Missy serves as the de facto leader of the kids and Grandma Anita is their formidable trainer, giving girls prominent agency, but the film frames this as generic teamwork rather than a feminist statement.
Wheels is a hero whose super-strength is undermined by a body that cannot support it, requiring mobility assistance, which offers a mild disability-inclusive note without any explicit body-positivity messaging.
Themes of teamwork and seizing your own destiny are delivered lightly through a zany kids' adventure rather than preachy monologues.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes appear anywhere in the film.
The cast is diverse, but the film contains no engagement with race, racism, or racial identity as themes.
No environmental or climate themes are present; the alien threat is a takeover plot, not an ecological one.
No critique of capitalism, wealth, or corporate power appears in the story.
Ojo is mute and communicates through drawings, but this is presented as a power/speech difference rather than a neurodivergence theme.
The film invents its own superhero mythology and makes no claims about or revisions to real history.
Why it received this score
Robert Rodriguez returns to the hyper-saturated sandbox he built for The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and this time he brings a dozen children with powers and no discernible curfew. We Can Be Heroes arrived on Netflix on Christmas Day in 2020 and spent the following weeks atop the streaming charts, which tells us something about holiday appetites and very little about cinema. The plot is a straightforward rescue: alien invaders abduct Earth's superheroes, and their offspring must organize themselves into something resembling a team. Rodriguez writes, directs, shoots, and cuts it himself, which explains the texture of the thing. Part Saturday morning cartoon, part fever dream staged by a very confident uncle.
The ensemble is notably multiethnic, with Latina, Black, and Asian performers filling the front row, though the script never pauses to remark on the fact. Missy, played by YaYa Gosselin, emerges as the group's de facto leader, and Grandma Anita runs the training with a whistle and an iron will, so girls carry much of the agency. The film frames this as ordinary teamwork instead of a statement, which is either admirable restraint or simple disinterest. Wheels, whose super-strength is sabotaged by a skeleton that cannot support it, moves through the story with mobility assistance, a quiet inclusion the movie never converts into a lesson. Ojo does not speak and communicates through drawings, which the film treats as a power rather than a condition.
The messaging, such as it is, concerns cooperation and seizing your own destiny, delivered through zany set pieces instead of monologues. The sermon is mild enough to swallow. There is no engagement with race as a theme, no identity subplot of any kind, no ecological anxiety, and no rich villain to eat. The result is a children's adventure that is loud, occasionally cheap-looking, and genuinely inventive in bursts, sustained by the conviction that kids deserve spectacle. It is not a film with an agenda. It is a film with a budget and a great many children, and it knows exactly what it is.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
When alien invaders capture Earth's superheroes, their kids must learn to work together to save their parents - and the planet.
Questions about We Can Be Heroes
Is We Can Be Heroes woke?
No — We Can Be Heroes is not especially woke, scoring 21 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does We Can Be Heroes have any woke elements?
2 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Representation Casting (45) and Feminist Agenda (30). On Representation Casting: The ensemble of super-powered children is notably multiethnic, with Latina, Black, and Asian performers in prominent roles, though the film never comments on this diversity.
How does We Can Be Heroes compare to other 2020 movies?
It ranks #81 of the 227 films from 2020 we've scored; their average is 21. The wokest is One Night in Miami... (83).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.