Last year, Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel made its way to the big screen, which boasted an impressive cast (led by the miraculous Rosa Salazar), a ridiculously talented behind-the-scenes team (shepherded by co-writer/producer James Cameron and including cinematographer Bill Pope and composer Junkie XL) and cutting-edge visual effects from the team at Weta Digital. It was a nice departure from Rodriguez’s typical let’s-put-on-a-show, one-man-band approach to filmmaking, in which the director does virtually everything himself with decidedly mixed results. Well, he’s back in his do-it-all mode with We Can Be Heroes, a new superhero adventure that takes place in the same universal as his cult family favorite The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D. And a new trailer reveals that it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect it to be.

From the looks of the trailer, the film concerns an alien invasion where the aliens abduct all of earth’s superheroes, leaving their children (including Sharkboy and Lavagirl’s daughter Guppy) to save their parents and defend the world. While the full cast is pretty starry (Pedro Pascal, Christian Slater, Priyanka Chopra, Sung Kang and Boyd Holbrook), given Rodriguez’s loose, “come to Austin for a weekend” approach to directing, it’s unclear how much of the actual film they’ll appear in. The rest of the teaser trailer is full of Z-grad visual effects and bad lighting (why are all of the action sequences shot in direct sunlight?), two hallmarks of Rodriguez’s do-it-yourself movies. This is clearly not meant for any audience member above a certain age range, but we hope it turns out better than the previous film (where that movie’s long-lasting appeal has come from is beyond me). Maybe after this one Rodriguez can do another real movie. Please …

We Can Be Heroes hits Netflix on January 1.