Spy Kids/Headscratchers

• The MacGuffin of Spy Kids 2 is highly sought for being able to shut down electrical technology. Apparently, Donnagon has never heard of EMP bombs.
  • The only way to create EMP on a global scale at our current technology is with lots and lots of nukes. Maybe he wanted to take over the world without, y'know, killing all his future subjects with fallout. Also, most military computer systems are EMP hardened, but presumably not MacGuffin hardened.
    • Actually, fallout wouldn't matter. EMP's are generated when nukes are detonated very high up in the atmosphere. Because the blast would never touch the ground, there would be no fallout.
      • The radiioactive material of the bomb does not simply disappear, and the radiation is enough to irradiate sorounding elements.
        • Fission products and activation products would remain in the upper atmosphere so long that the overwhelming majority of them will decay into stable nuclides before reaching the surface.
  • Didn't you watch the movies? Pretty much all the complicated machinery in the series can be replaced by cheaper, conventional methods. For example, five hundred fully sapient robots in the first movie. That sounds really expensive. It's probably be cheaper just to buy a bunch of regular weapons, such as missiles and bombs, and then take the world by brute force. And of course, most conflicts could be resolved very easily if either the good or bad guys ever managed to bring some guns. But hey, it's a kids show, so MST3K Mantra.
• Did anyone else notice Mr. Minion's voice changing from extremely high-pitched to normal beetween SK1 and SK2?
  • It probably just wore off.
• How in the world did the parents end up on the same side, working for the same organization? Did one of them defect to the other side? Did they move to a new country, which then welcomed two foreign spies into their own program, blindly trusting that neither were moles for their country of origin? It just doesn't make sense.
  • Maybe one of their countries collapsed and the other became an ally to help them out, à la the collapse of the Soviet Union (or the Klingon Empire in Star Trek VI if you prefer). The collapse could've meant the end of their spy program, so why not join the spy program of your new ally?
    • Because your former workmates would kill you for still knowing the information.
  • Did they ever mention what side they were on? They could have left their former organizations to join the OSS.
• Why was the teleprompter from the second movie legally binding? It's either that, or promotions are handled through verbal contracts, which doesn't make a lick of sense. I realize that ending that scene with "No, wait, this paperwork all says Cortez. Donnagon, explain yourself, or you're fired. Out of a cannon." would have made it impossible to carry out the rest of the movie, but really... All we see is the teleprompter getting hacked, at which point Donnagon takes over.
  • Well, the President character was pretty clearly established as a moron.
  • On a similar note, if level two children agents can order around the president, then how come the president choses their boss? What keeps the president from choosing someone who will lower the power of the OSS?
  • Also, how come children can order around the president?
    • If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, it's one of those For Your Own Good things. They don't actually have the authority to make the president do anything, but they can very, very strongly "suggest" it in a way that (due to time constraints and emphasis) doesn't need to be politely phrased as a question. There are things in Real Life at that level where high-ranking government agents that go against the President's wishes in the express completion of their duties might get an automatic pardon if it's required that the President "agree" to do something but the classification of the material required to genuinely convince him is higher than what he is allowed to know and/or higher than what he is allowed to make decisions about.
• Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the third film, when Romero shows up to help in the final battle, he's handed a pair of broken glasses because they're the last ones. Later on though, more characters are handed glasses that are perfectly fine. Why didn't anyone (on the production or otherwise) notice the continuity error?
  • Really, he just got broken ones because his normal glasses are broken too and it's funny.
    • Does Rule of Funny work if the joke sucked?
      • Your Mileage May Vary, right? This Troper thought the joke was hilarious.