The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D is a 2005 American adventure fantasy comedy
film directed by Robert Rodriguez and released in the United States June 10, 2005 The film
uses the same anaglyph 3-D technology used in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.
The film stars Taylor Lautner, Taylor Dooley, Cayden Boyd, David Arquette, Kristin Davis
and George Lopez.
Many of the concepts and much of the story were conceived by Rodriguez's children.
Plot Max is a lonely child who creates an imaginary
world named Planet Drool, where all of his imagination and dreams come to life.
He creates two characters; Sharkboy, a young boy who was raised by sharks after losing
his father at sea and Lavagirl who can produce fire and lava, but has trouble touching objects
without setting them alight.
The two left Max to guard Planet Drool.
In real life, Max's parents have little time for him, and he is bullied by fellow schoolmate
Linus.
However, he does receive friendship from Marissa, the daughter of his teacher Mr. Electricidad.
Linus steals Max's Dream Journal and vandalizes it.
The next day, a tornado rages outside the school, and moments later Sharkboy and Lavagirl
appear and ask Max to come with them to Planet Drool.
They reach Planet Drool via a shark-like spacecraft where Max learns that the dreamworld is turning
bad, courtesy of Mr. Electric, originally the dreamworld's electrician but now corrupted.
Sharkboy and Lavagirl save some children from an out-of-control roller coaster.
Then with Max, they confront Mr. Electric who quickly drops them in a part of Planet
Drool called the Dream Graveyard where some of Max's dreams have been dumped.
They find Tobor, a robot toy that was never finished being built by Max, but offers them
a lift to other parts of the planet.
Whilst on the journey, the three form a friendship but they face hardships, such as Sharkboy's
anger for the oceans being frozen over, and Lavagirl's desperation to find her true purpose
on Planet Drool.
They are pursued by Mr. Electric and his "plughounds" across the planet.
They plan to visit the Ice Princess and obtain the Crystal Heart, which can freeze time,
giving them enough time to get to the center of Planet Drool and fix the dreamworld using
Max's daydreaming.
However, they are captured by Mr. Electric and delivered to Linus's Planet Drool incarnation
Minus, who has altered the dreamworld with Max's own Dream Journal and traps the three
in a cage.
Sharkboy gets annoyed and has a shark frenzy, destroying the cage.
Max retrieves the Dream Journal from Minus while he is sleeping, after the three escape.
Max informs Sharkboy that his father is alive in his book, but when Lavagirl wishes to find
out what it says about her, she burns the book to ash.
In her rage, Lavagirl confronts Max and asks him why she was made out of lava, but is calmed
by Sharkboy.
With little time left, Max, Sharkboy and Lavagirl reach the Ice Princess after an encounter
with the Ice Guardian.
She hands over the Crystal Heart, but they find they are too late to stop the corruption
since the ice princess is the only one who can use the Crystal Heart's power and she
cannot leave her home.
Mr. Electric fools Sharkboy into jumping into water filled with electric eels, seemingly
killing him.
Lavagirl jumps into the water to retrieve Sharkboy but dies moments later.
Tobor's face appears and convinces Max to dream a better and unselfish dream, which
in turn revives Sharkboy, who then races Lavagirl to a volcano where she is revived.
Max witnesses her revival and concludes that her purpose is as a light against the dark
clouds which have slowly engulfed Planet Drool's skies.
Max gains reality warping as the Daydreamer and battles Minus, defeating him, and offering
to make a better dreamworld between the two of them, which Minus agrees to.
Mr. Electric refuses to accept the new dreamworld, and flies off to Earth to kill Max while he
is dreaming.
Max awakens back in his classroom in the middle of the storm.
Mr. Electric materializes before Max and an astonished Mr. Electricidad.
Max's parents are caught in the storm, but are saved by Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
Max gives the Crystal Heart to Marissa, allowing her to gain the Ice Princess' powers, which
she uses to freeze and destroy Mr. Electric.
Mr. Electricidad, Linus and Max all make peace with one another, and Max is reunited with
his parents.
In the end, Max informs his class that Planet Drool became a proper dreamworld again, Sharkboy
became the King of the Ocean, and Lavagirl became Queen of the Volcanoes and Max is shown
building Tobor with his parents and Tobor is finally working.
Cast Taylor Lautner as Sharkboy.
Dreamt up by Max, Sharkboy is a young warrior who was raised by sharks after he was separated
from his father, a marine biologist, when a waterspout sunk their floating laboratory.
He has many shark-like adaptations to his body, including gills, fins, sharpened teeth,
claws, peak strength, highly trained sense of hearing, strong sense of smell, agility,
reflexes and swimming ability.
Sharkboy can also communicate with marine life and is not affected by deep sea pressure
or The Bends.
He is also known for imitating the sharks in his personality.
"He's very self-confident and sometimes his confidence gets him into trouble', says Lautner
about the character.
"He's also kinda jealous of the character, Max, because he has an inside crush on Lava
Girl and she's overly motherly to Max."
Sharkboy also has an explosive temper which is shown several times in the movie, including
a scene in which the Lalas are singing and Sharkboy complains about how his highly trained
ears finding their high pitched singing uncomfortable and then becoming very angry and going into
a shark frenzy.
His weakness is electric eels.
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 [background], and while we 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.
She is the other young warrior who protects Planet Drool, and was also created by Max.
She can change herself into lava, and control lava in her direct vicinity.
Her origins are unknown; she is uncertain of her own identity and purpose throughout
much of the film.
She has an explosive temper like Sharkboy, but is better at controlling it than he is
and rarely gets very angry.
Her weakness is water.
The role of Lavagirl was cast after the two other main characters 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".
Cayden Boyd as Max.
An imaginative 9-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", says Boyd about the role.
"I like that he's selfish in the beginning and he's not selfish in the end".
George Lopez as Mr. Electricidad / Mr. Electric, Tobor, and Ice Guardian.
Mr. Electricidad is Max's teacher and is sometimes intolerant of active imagination.
When his Mr. Electric counterpart shows up he is horrified as he's not a bad guy and
learns the power of imagination.
His alter ego is Mr. Electric, an electrician who maintains the equilibrium of Planet Drool
until he becomes corrupted by Minus.
Mr. Electric is heard to have a sense of humor, manifest in puns related mostly to electricity.
His challenge to Sharkboy is followed by a companionable "Watts up?".
Later, Mr. Electric shouts "Charge!"
as he emerges from the tornado, indicating both an electric surge of power and an advance
into battle.
Immediately before his destruction, he threatens the class with "Megahertz", suggesting "mega
hurts".
Rodriguez wrote the part with Lopez in mind.
This is a reference to his television series in which he also has a son named Max.Tobor
and the Ice Guardian are voiced by George Lopez in the film.
Tobor is a robot who appears in the Dream Graveyard on Planet Drool.
Max had formerly tried to build Tobor in the real world, but had been discouraged by a
careless remark of his father's.
The name "Tobor" evidently is "robot" spelled backwards.
The Ice Guardian has a very small role; he is a tall figure made apparently of animate
ice and a protective father to the Ice Princess, much as Mr. Electricidad is to his own daughter
Marissa.
Rodriguez states that he kept asking Lopez to play additional characters.
Lopez spent a total of two weeks working on the film.
David Arquette and Kristin Davis 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 settle his troubles.
On Planet Drool, Max's parents appear as a couple of Cookie Giants who live happily in
the Land of Milk and Cookies.
Like Sharkboy and Max, they are used as sources for a running gag wherein one character eats
a mouthful of some substance and then violently spits it out, spraying the audience's viewpoint.
This joke, when the male Giant is its central character, serves as a device to reflect his
alter-ego's dislike of his wife's burnt chocolate-chip cookies, which are implied to be the inspiration,
in Max's mind, for the Giant's location.
It also gives a reason to show his wife's empathy, which is lacking in Max's real world.
Jacob Davich as Linus / Minus.
The secondary antagonist.
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", alters it to his version.
He is ultimately converted to Max's friendship when the true nature of his bullying is revealed.
The dream he later creates for himself, as shown in a resolving scene, is a superhero
named "Mr. Positive", possibly as a contrast with his creator's nickname of "Minus".
Sasha Pieterse 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, keeper of the Crystal Heart, which is a necklace
she wears which can freeze anything, including time.
Because Max and his friends desire an increased opportunity wherein to defeat Mr. Electric,
they request the Crystal Heart of her, to discover that only she and her alter-ego Marissa
can use it.
Marissa is often kept under very severe scrutiny by her father; possibly as a result, Max has
imagined the Ice Princess as capable of speaking boldly to her father, correcting him when
he suppresses her.
Because Max seems to have an emotional "soft spot" for Marissa.
Robert Rodriguez has an uncredited role voicing a shark.
As seen in the credits, two of Robert Rodriguez's children, Rebel and Racer, portray Sharkboy
at age five and age seven respectively.
Rico Torres plays Sharkboy's father.
Marc Musso and Shane Graham play kids at Max's school.
Production Parts of the film were shot on location in
Texas, 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 worked on the film in order to accomplish over 1,000
visual effect shots.
Robert Rodriguez appears in the credits fourteen times, most notably as director, a producer,
a screenwriter, 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 had auditioned for the film with Lautner, and said it came down to her and
another girl who was also auditioning; however Miley began production on Hannah Montana.
Reception Critical response
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl received negative reviews from critics, with a 20%
rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the consensus: "The decision to turn this kiddie fantasy
into a 3-D film was a miscalculation."
Roger Ebert found that the 3-D process used was distracting and muted the colors, thus,
he believes, "spoiling" much of the film.
Box office For its opening weekend, the film earned $12.6
million in 2,655 theaters.
It also was placed #5 at the box office, being overshadowed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Madagascar,
and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.
The film was not very successful in the US, taking in $39,177,541 and was a box office
bomb.
However, it did manage to gross $30,248,282 overseas, for a total of $69,425,966 worldwide.
Lawsuit The Total Nonstop Action professional wrestler
Dean Roll, who trademarked the name "Shark Boy" in year 1999, sued Miramax on June 8,
2005, claiming that his trademark had been infringed and demanding "[any] money, profits
and advantages wrongfully gained".
In April 2007, the suit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
Soundtrack Director Robert Rodriguez composed parts of
the score himself, with contributions by composers John Debney and Graeme Revell.
Green Day were reportedly set to contribute "Wake Me Up When September Ends" to the soundtrack,
but Robert Rodriguez declined it.
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 has yet to appear.
They are illustrated throughout by Alex Toader, who designed characters and environments for
the film and the previous Spy Kids franchise.
In the first book, the story of the film is told from Lavagirl's and Sharkboy's perspective,
with at least one new event.
In Return to Planet Drool, Sharkboy, remembering his encounter with the Imagineer in the first
book, continues the search for his father by seeking to return to the Dream World.
He meets a very bored Lavagirl in the underwater city of Vent, where she now reigns as queen,
and together they embark on a subterranean journey.
They encounter piranhas, a gargantuan red bear, and a city of inhabited by the dreams
of bygone eras, where they are held captive by superheroes, pirates, and cowboys.
By the end, after learning the city’s secrets, Sharkboy still hopes to find his father, and
Lavagirl the secrets of her origin.
Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly praised another book appearing around the time of
the film, The Adventures of SharkBoy and LavaGirl: The Movie Storybook, as a far cry from the
usual movie storybook tie-in, and also praised Alex Toader's "cartoony yet detailed" illustrations.
References
External links Official website
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl at the Internet Movie Database
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl at AllMovie
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl at Box Office Mojo
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl at Rotten Tomatoes