You can thank (or blame) a 16-year-old Robert Rodriguez for the Thumb-Thumbs in Spy Kids, aka the bizarre but brilliant “all-thumbs” henchmen who both delighted and haunted many a millennial during their childhoods.

“I was so bad at drawing hands, that I was just drawing my thumb. When I drew it, it looked like a head,” Rodriguez, now 55, told Decider in a recent Zoom interview. The 16-year-old Rodriguez added a few thumb-limbs, a suit, and an eyeball for a soccer ball.”[The caption] said, ‘Thumb-Thumbs playing eyeball.’ I won an art contest with it!”

Years later, he brought the Thumbs-Thumbs in 2001’s Spy Kids, the hit action spy film for kids, about two children who discover their parents are secretly professional espionage agents. The success of the movie launched a franchise, culminating in the fifth movie releasing on Netflix today, Spy Kids: Armageddon.

Featuring an entirely new cast, Spy Kids: Armageddon lives in the now-familiar space between reboot and remake. Zachary Levi and Gina Rodriguez take over for Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino as the parents who are secretly world-class spies. Everly Carganilla and Connor Esterson star as Patty and Tony, who must use their video game skills to help save their parents—and the world—when the bad guy (Billy Magnussen) holds all technology hostage.

There are plenty of references for fans of the original, from the OSS, to Devlin (now played by D. J. Cotrona, not George Clooney), to the family’s gadget-filled safe house. But it’s clear that this movie—which Rodriguez directed and co-wrote with his son, Racer Max—is geared more toward a newer, much younger generation of spy kids than it is toward nostalgic millennials. Rodriguez spoke to Decider about how Spy Kids: Armageddon connects to the original, the future of the franchise, and, of course, Thumb-Thumbs.

Decider: There are a lot of fun, new gadgets in this film. I particularly liked the uniform maker—it reminded me of the iconic instant Mcdonald’s microwave. Is there a new gadget that you’re particularly proud of?

[Rodriguez holds up a prop of the “thought bubble” to his camera, which looks like a large twelve-sided dice with emojis on each side.]

Robert Rodriguez: I love the uniform maker. I also love this thought bubble, which is such a cool idea. My daughter designed all the little emojis—you can choose an emotion and throw it at the bad guy instead of just blowing them up. The Spy Kids never defeat the bad guys. They always change the bad guy in some way. So this encapsulates the whole idea of the series, that they could change just the emotion. If someone’s aggressive, just make them laugh. It’s such a simple, kid-like solution. But it’s like, how come someone hasn’t come up with that? Instead of throwing a war bomb, throw a peace bomb.

And I love the whole safe house. My kids grew up with it as well. Now they write with me and they said, “We have to bring a safe house back.” So many parents I know grew up watching these movies and now have kids of their own, so they can sit and watch it with their kids and say, “That’s the kind of movie I grew up with. “

In terms of the lore of the Spy Kids cinematic universe, does the Tango-Torrez family exist in the same world as the Cortez family?

There are a couple of clues that they might! But we’ll have to see if we do another movie. If we bring back any legacy characters to tie the worlds together, that would be my dream. 

Are there Easter eggs or references that you’re particularly proud of, or you’re hoping people will notice?

[Rodriguez holds up a copy of the “How to be a Spy” book, used by Carmen in the first film and Tony in the new film.]

Yeah, there are a lot of Easter eggs. If you look, especially in the safe house, you’ll see some things that you really liked in the first film that are sneakily in there, too, and a couple of others. But I’ll let people discover those.

There’s this knee-jerk negative reaction from people my age when we hear that our childhood favorites are getting a remake or a reboot. What’s your response to people who feel that way about this film?

I think they’d have to watch the movie. One, it’s really for kids. It’s funny how the kids are the ones who will watch this, and then the parents will go back and say, “Watch the original!” and the kids will say, “That seems like an imitation,” compared to what they just saw. The new one always becomes the one for the kids—that becomes their original one. That’s their marker. I think people would enjoy it when they see it. I think it’s very true to it, and it’s made by the same people, so it comes from the same place. And I think the things that were important to me when I made the first films are still important to me, if not more so. I think it’s very authentic. Can’t get more authentic than that. It’s the only series made by a family for other families. It’s based on our real-life experiences, like the first films.

There’s this subtle but powerful anti-prison message at the end of this movie when Patty says, “Throwing him into prison won’t make him a better person.” What do you feel is the message there?

I’ll let the audience decide. There’s a funny trick that happens afterward, that I thought was pretty cool, that you can only do in the movies, which shows that her method actually works. But you have to check it out.

Do you see this reboot as a franchise? Are you planning to make more Spy Kids movies with this cast?

I would love to make more. They’re just the most fun movies to make. When you’ve come up with a story that you can make another movie—much less five—you would love to just keep going, because means you tapped into something that families want to watch. But also, it’s so rare to get something done today that isn’t based on pre-existing material. So if you’ve come up with your own franchise and you can make more of them, you absolutely do. Especially because the DNA of it is involving my own family. The harder we work, the more family time we spend together. It’s the ultimate. And it feeds the film. It feeds material to the film. It’s the best way to live. So I definitely would love to make more.

You hinted earlier that you might tie in this universe more with the original universe. Is there any character that you would love to see come back in upcoming potential movies?

Oh, I loved all those characters. The original character I came up with when I was 16— I drew and won my first art contest with—was the Thumb-Thumbs. So I would love to bring the Thumb-Thumbs back.

Please say more about designing the Thumb-Thumbs—the “all thumbs” henchmen—when you were 16.

I was so bad at drawing hands, that I was just drawing my thumb. When I drew it, it looked like a head. So I turned it that way, and I drew it as an arm and another arm and then legs, and I kept angling it for the limbs. And then I drew a little suit on it. Then they were kicking an eyeball around and [the caption] said, “Thumb-Thumbs playing eyeball.” I won an art contest with it!

I remembered that later, when I was trying to think of a henchman that [Floop] could make, that was a robot. He can make it look like anything, and he’s a whimsical creator, like I was as a kid. And so he just thought, “Oh, I’ll just make them all out of my thumb. Why don’t I just make that the head and make that the arm…” But then he finds that they’re all thumbs and they can’t really do much. [Laughs.] So that’s where that came from. It was so wild to see a McDonald’s toy—later on, there were toys that we sold. There were Thumb-Thumbs. I was like, wow, this is my childhood. So I really try to bring a lot of childhood ideas into these [movies,] because then they’re authentically, made by kids, for kids.

There’s almost this uncanny to them that I loved as a kid. That first movie was pretty scary! Did you make an effort to kind of scale back on some of the scariness of the original Spy Kids in the new movie?

No. The original Spy Kids, what’s creepy is seeing the Fooglies, which were the agents trans-mogrified into these drawings—or anything somebody makes with clay. If the drawing is crude, they’ll turn into the crude drawing. Any kid who’s a certain age, depending on how young they are, will find anything where there’s conflict, scary. But then part of it is getting older to where it’s like, “Oh, that doesn’t bother me anymore.” That’s part of the growing up process—getting to where you can watch something that used to scare you, and then it doesn’t anymore. I would always see my kids come out and just be totally freaked out just because they heard a sound effect in a video game that really tripped them out. And I’d listen to it and go, “OK, by next year, that won’t bother them.” I can see why that bothers them right now. Their imagination gets set off.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.