ShareThisTalk about being ahead of the curve.
Six years ago, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez made a movie called "Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl," tapping into a trio of future trends. It was a family film, in 3-D and starred then-unknown Taylor Lautner, today a "Twilight" heartthrob.
Now, the director has graduated to the next level with "Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D."
The 4D Aroma-Scope is a PG-rated variation of Odorama, a scratch-and-sniff card system director John Waters used in 1981 for "Polyester." That was a successor to Aroma-Rama and Smell-O-Vision, which piped odors into theaters in a bid to regain customers lost to TV.
The 4D is available to all patrons whether they see the movie in pricier 3-D with the special glasses or plain old 2-D.
"You're handed a card as you walk in with your ticket. ... Ricky Gervais' voice comes up and explains how it works, but kids pick up on stuff so quick. When you watch the kids do it in the theater, it's as if they've been doing it their whole lives," he said in a recent phone call. After all, it's nothing compared to complex video games.
When a number comes up on the screen, moviegoers scratch one of eight numbers on their cards.
"It's funny, it's really funny. Some of the biggest laughs come from that. Kids are so interactive today. My kids play a lot of interactive games, so when you say, 'Hey, let's go watch a movie,' they look at you funny, it seems so passive. So this really helps bridge the gap."
So, just what smells will be competing with the intoxicating popcorn butter from the concession stand?
Hit me with your best smells, he told a company specializing in such scents, and then he wrote those odors into the story.
"There's really great smells, really rich, like candy. And then there are some surprising smells. We do have a dog and a baby. What's funny is the idea of how you get tricked into smelling something I would say you don't want to smell, but actually kids really want to smell something bad sometimes."
When the Austin-based filmmaker finished the third "Spy Kids" movie, he did not have plans for a fourth right away.
"Back then, the kids were getting so much older by the time we finished 'Spy Kids 3D' and then we thought, 3-D, where can we go from there? 3-D hadn't been in a theater in 20 years, so by bringing 3-D back, it felt like the best way to step off."
Not only that, but it was the biggest of the "Spy Kids" movies and helped propel 3-D back to the film forefront.
"But over the years -- the eight years, seven years since then -- families still come up to me and would say how much their kids loved 'Spy Kids.' Now, their kids would be very young, so I knew they didn't see them in the theater, it was just watching them over and over again on video."
Given the continuing affection for the first film, a visual knockout, he decided to do another for the 10th anniversary of the series. Part of the inspiration came during the making of "Machete."
"When I saw Jessica Alba with her baby on the set of 'Machete,' I thought, 'Wow, look she's dressed in black. What if she were a spy and she couldn't find a baby sitter and she had to carry her baby around' " during missions.
Rodriguez, the father of five children ranging from ages 15 to 5, also realized his younger children hadn't been born when he created the franchise.
"It's very empowering for a child to see another child be empowered on screen. It's just a huge difference; they just get so into it and it is very exciting for them," he said, especially when so many family films feature animated characters rather than real children.
In fact, he still remembers how he and his sister were inspired by the outer-space orphans in "Escape to Witch Mountain" who could talk telepathically, communicate with animals, move objects with their minds and levitate.
In the fourth "Spy Kids," a little boy gets "hammer hands and stompers, which are these little gadgets you put on your hands and your feet which let you destroy just about anything you touch," he said, adding that his son would love to have "Hulk hands," too.
It was a childhood friend of the filmmaker's who inspired a detail about one of the story's twins, Cecil (played by Mason Cook).
"My best friend growing up had hearing aids, so I wanted to put that in the movie. It's worked in a very neat way. He's hearing-impaired, but by having one sense go down, you have more enhanced senses in your other areas. His sense of smell is very strong," which is where the 4D comes in.
(Contact movie editor Barbara Vancheri at bvancheri(at)post-gazette.com. Read her Mad About the Movies blog at www.post-gazette.com/movies.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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