Glen Powell & Selena Gomez Both Made Their Acting Debuts In This Bonkers Sci-Fi Flick

Dimension Films

Selena Gomez has been acting since she was a young child, having appeared on "Barney & Friends," but rocketed to teen stardom with her recurring role in the Disney Channel series "The Wizards of Waverly Place." She also enjoys a notable pop career, which she began in 2009 with her album "Kiss & Tell" when she was only 17. Not only has her music received several awards, but she has continued to work as an actress, having racked up multiple Emmy nominations for her work on the hit show "Only Murders in the Building." 

Meanwhile, Glen Powell has quickly emerged as one of Hollywood's most charming leading men, having recently appeared in the decent "Twisters," the giant hit "Anyone But You," the even more giant hit "Top Gun: Maverick," and the impressive comedy/thriller "Hit Man." Powell came to the public's attention in Richard Linklater's 2016 sports movie "Everybody Wants Some!!," but had been working professionally since he was a youth, appearing on multiple high-profile TV shows. 

It turns out that Powell and Gomez have a common title in their respective early filmographies. When Gomez was only 11, and Powell was only 15, they both appeared — in very small roles — in Robert Rodriguez's 2003 cyber-thriller "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over," maybe the strangest movie in a very strange, and weirdly persistent, film franchise. Gomez played a girl at a water park who has a brief conversation with Juni (Daryl Sabara), the film's protagonist. Later in the film, Powell plays a video game player trapped inside a VR world. Gomez is credited as "water park girl." Powell is credited at "long-fingered boy." 

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The premise of Robert Rodriguez's "Spy Kids" movies is simple, but appealing. The series starts with a pair of young siblings (Sabara and Alexa Vega) who learn their parents (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino) are top-secret super-spies. When their parents are kidnapped, the kids have to don their parents' ultra-sweet high-tech spy gear and fly to the rescue. "Spy Kids" is cartoony, brisk, and fun, and it was a big hit in 2001. It spawned a sequel in 2002, with the third film, "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over," coming out in 2003.

"Game Over" was the weirdest of the films to have been made up to that point. It took place mostly inside the virtual world of a high-tech video game where the Alexa Vega character was being held captive by three evil scientists, all subconscious iterations of the Toymaker, a villain played by Sylvester Stallone. Juni had to enter the simulation and win a series of increasingly difficult video game challenges to save his sister from harm. Inside the simulation, Juni is constantly mistaken for a mythic gamer nicknamed The Guy, said to be skilled enough to beat the mythic Level 5. 

The film sees the return of Banderas and Cugino, but also has small roles for Steve Buscemi, George Clooney, Elijah Wood, Mike Judge, Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, Tony Shalhoub, and Alan Cumming. It was also the final on-screen role for Ricardo Montalbán, who played Juni's grandfather. In the real world, Montalbán sits in a wheelchair, but in the video game world, he has a powerful robot body. The VR simulations are also all in 3-D. Sadly, the 3-D effects were awful, and it wasn't used with the grey-shaded polarized lenses of most 3-D movies, but the old-fashioned, red-and-blue anaglyph 3-D. 

Also, the CGI was clunky and bad. "Spy Kids 3-D" cost $37 million to make, and it presumably all went to talent; its visuals are distinctly cheap.

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Glen Powell's role is very small. He appears merely to announce some exposition. He says to Juni that he has arrived at the Arena of Misfortune, and that he has to battle a Mech in order to get to Level 2. Powell, even as a teen, has a game show host's charisma, telling Juni to "get out there and fight" with a smile on his face. At the end of the Mech battle scene, Powell briefly returns to eject Juni to level 2. 

Gomez's role is a little more surreal. In the early parts of the movie, Juni has already retired from being a spy and now works as a kid-detective. He introduces himself in a film-noir-style narration, complete with a breathy saxophone on the soundtrack. He has arrived at a waterpark to investigate a crime, specifically, to locate all the missing water. He approaches a mysterious girl in a winter coat and announces that he has solved her case. The girl is Selena Gomez, looking like an 11-year-old version of a Russian a femme fatale. It seems, Juni says, that "they" merely turned off all the waterslides in the winter. "Who is 'they?'" she asks. "The people who really own this place," Juni says mysteriously. "Oh," Gomez says. Then she's out of the movie. 

Not very auspicious roles, but enough to keep both youngsters in work. Also, the "Spy Kids" movies were a big deal in the 2000s, so it's likely they were both selected for their roles over many, many other hopeful kid actors. 

"Spy Kids 3-D" wasn't terribly well-reviewed, but it did earn $197 million at the box office, so everyone got to walk away with money in their pockets. The most recent "Spy Kids" movie was released in 2023.