Blue Beetle review: DC’s Latino superhero gets an energetic origin story
Xolo Maridueña, Susan Sarandon, and George Lopez star in an adaptation that combines taut action with cultural specificity
Film Reviews Blue Beetle
Blue Beetle, the live-action onscreen debut of the DC Comics character and Warner Bros.’ first feature to center on a Latino superhero, arrives with much anticipation. After some major (and very public) wobbles earlier this year with the box office returns for Shazam: Fury Of The Gods and then the messy release of The Flash, DC Studios is clearly looking for a win this time out. Those inclined to read the tea leaves left behind by the previous regime may see the selection of Blue Beetle as a commitment to a more inclusive production slate, although others may view it as a calculated move to cash in on the entertainment preferences of one of the nation’s fastest growing demographics.
While recently installed DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran may be eyeing a franchise role for the character, Blue Beetle ultimately feels more like a teaser than a fully satisfying experience replete with memorable characters and impressive world-building. Ironically perhaps, the initial impression is almost similar to Gunn’s 2014 Guardians Of The Galaxy. A not-so-superhero feature that seemed to almost come out of nowhere, it briefly blazed like a comet, leaving audiences to wonder if there was any chance of repeating the feat in subsequent installments. Like Guardians, it’s likely that box office results will determine whether Blue Beetle turns out to be just an appetizer or the prelude to a fully loaded franchise feast.
Whatever the outcome, it’s clear that Blue Beetle’s superpower is its cultural specificity as it foregrounds Latino traditions and values in telling the story of recently graduated Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña), who returns to his hometown of Palmera City to find his extended Mexican-American family in crisis. His parents, Alberto (Damían Alcázar) and Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), are facing foreclosure on the family home they share with his younger sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), the kids’ grandmother Nana (Adriana Barraza), and their Uncle Rudy (George Lopez). Jaime attempts to help out the family by taking a low-level job at a hotel that’s part of the multinational Kord Industries conglomerate, but quickly runs into trouble.
This early sequence showcases screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer and director Ángel Manuel Soto’s (Sundance award winner Charm City Kings) facility with adapting the DC Comics material. A quick series of scenes introduces Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) as the movie’s villain, flags her niece Jenny (Bruna Marquezine) as Jaime’s love interest, and demonstrates the Reyes kids’ contempt for the exploitative service economy in just a few minutes of screen time.
It’s not until later that Jaime discovers that Jenny is in possession of a vibrant blue, fist-sized, beetle-shaped remnant of ancient alien biotechnology that was discovered by Jenny’s inventor father, Ted Kord. When Ted disappeared years earlier Victoria began developing the object as a super-weapon. Now secured in a Kord Industries lab, cracking the scarab’s operating system is proceeding apace when Jenny steals the relic and inadvertently turns it over to Jaime. After he unexpectedly activates the scarab and it attaches itself to his face Alien-style, right in front of his horrified family, the device commandeers Jaime’s nervous system, rapidly developing a symbiotic relationship that transforms him into the alien-human hybrid Blue Beetle.
Although Jaime’s metamorphosis would typically be treated as an intense action sequence, the filmmakers instead strive for an often comedic tone here and throughout the film. It’s a frequently effective technique but it cuts both ways; when characters are engaged in dialogue dense with culturally specific references, wordplay, and jokes—even with subtitles—some viewers may be left focusing on parsing the underlying meaning rather than following the flow of the narrative.
However, it’s the cohesiveness among the cast members playing Jaime’s family that lends their performances both authenticity and relatability. Alcázar and Carrillo are the parents providing unconditional love, while Barraza’s sly Nana conceals more strength than she initially reveals, and Lopez overplays Uncle Rudy’s conspiracy theorist old-school tech geek for all the laughs that he can eke out of it.
It’s all to show their support for Jaime, with Cobra Kai’s Maridueña demonstrating that he has a solid grasp of the character’s internal conflicts as he attempts to gain control of his superhero persona while bringing the fight to Sarandon’s effortlessly vile Victoria, who’s backed by her bionically enhanced henchman Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo).
Although Jaime’s struggle with the alien entity implanted in the scarab (voiced, J.A.R.V.I.S.-style, by Becky G) to gain control of Blue Beetle’s abilities is often played for laughs, in reality the filmmakers and the SFX team have created a memorable visual style for the film, supported by a wide array of Latino talent that underpins the authenticity of the narrative and the visuals.
While not immediately apparent, there’s also a deeper, more profound thematic thread running throughout the film, which indicates that Nana has a secret past as an anti-imperialist insurgent. Meanwhile, Carapax’s personal history suggests that he was recruited as a child soldier decades earlier in Central America, likely as part of a program associated with the U.S. Defense Department’s notorious School of the Americas. This is rich, relevant material that may have to await exploration in a box office-contingent future installment of the franchise, not so subtly tipped in the closing credits.
Blue Beetle opens in theaters Friday August 18
73 Comments
This looks soooooo stupid.
Iron Beetle
Blue Venom
*mumbles Tom Hardily*
The Latino angle is the only thing going for it. I can predict every single other beat of this movie and have undoubtedly seen it in other movies.
Right? It almost looks like a parody of superhero cliches.
We should draw up a bingo card:* Gawky, slightly awkward, not-a-total-loser-but-not-a-cool-kid high schooler as protagonist.* Fat, less cool best friend, who’s the only other person who knows about his superpowers.* Cute girl he’s crushing on but doesn’t acknowledge his existence until the end of the movie (he saves her as Blue Beetle at one point). * Superhero stuff clashes with his home/school life, causing his parents/teachers to be concerned about him.* Awkward moment where he’s transformed into BB someone knocks on the door and ask’s him if he’s OK. * Montage where he learns his powers, plus another where he fucks around with said powers for shits & giggles (because he’s still a teen).
Also the scene where it’s night, he is out alone, and he somehow stumbles onto some major magical or alien or scientific project site and makes it out with very little issue and leaves maybe an indirect clue as to who he is for the villain to find.
Five’ll get you ten it’ll be his name badge from the Kord hotel he works at. There’ll be a scene where Kord and Reyes (in civilian guise) chat, one-on-one, because if there’s on thing that always happens and is believable is that squillionaire CEOs of large multinational companies always meet up and take a personal interest in their peons from low socio-economic backgrounds. They’ll have a coded, pseudo-philosophical conversation about the nature of their hero/villain relationship (“Doing a good thing isn’t always the right thing.” “Mi abuelita always said doing the good thing is the right thing.”)This is when she’ll give him his name tag back, and he’ll stammer some excuse about how he must’ve left it in the conference room or penthouse suite when he was moving some bags – which everyone knows is a lie.Also, Kord Industries will be sponsoring a STEM program (because this is a comic book film and fuck the arts or sport – the film producers know their target market) at the local school or Jaime’s university , and him taking her down will no doubt mean the end of that, thus raising the stakes and putting Jaime in a moral quandary. Either that, or they’re the major sponsor for the local Cinco de Mayo/Dias de los Muertos parade, because if there’s one thing Hollywood knows about Latin Americans, apart from the drugs and gangs and trying to illegally get north of the Rio Grande, it’s that they love a cinematographically-interesting parade.
You mean, the billionaires who have lots of free time and are always wandering around their offices alone at night without any security?
Of course. Because if there’s one thing we know about the CEOs of large tech/hotel multinationals it’s that they’re the one solely responsible for the core business functions of their companies and the only people who can do the work that made the companies worth squillions, so of course, they’re perpetually at work at all hours. Those lazy, dumb security guards no doubt can’t handle the hustle. Probably have wives and kids and such they all love and go home to, the pussies.
In BBs defence it actually avoids most of these
…yet it still manages to feel like a retread of a dozen different superhero film cliches. Kind of impressive.SPOILERSSPOILERSStill ends w/ protag kissing his love interest despite doing nothing to develop their relationship.
You’ve probably seen the latino aspects also in other movies. They went for cheap tropes all the way. Pity.
Xolo Maridueña has more charisma than range, but he can be entertaining to watch.Just not in this movie, at least based on the trailer.
Xolo has been really fun to watch in Cobra Kai.
If they somehow have William Zabka playing Ted Kord, that would be perfect irony.
If not for the rating I’d have zero idea what the reviewer thought of this movie.
That’s by design – they can’t hype it too much because it’s probably not that good, and they can’t dump on it too much because they don’t want to pan a Latino-representing movie, so we get a tepid non-opinion.
“In conclusion, Blue Beetle is a land of contrasts.”It took me about three reads to find the opinions in it. They are there, but there’s nothing anyone could use as a pull quote.
That’s because A.I. isn’t designed to “like” or “dislike” things. This was 100% not written by a human.
Also, the describe-the-plot first half of the review is word for word the same as Gizmodo’s, presumably originating from the “suggested text” of a press pack.
The last paragraph starts by stating that the movie’s deeper themes are less immediately apparent. It’s like saying that the sound effects aren’t always visible. It also invites the question of why the review dedicated so much space to superficial things.
The reviewer just lists a bunch of things they like and none they don’t. It’s not hard to see their opinion. Also this is in the second paragraph:Ironically perhaps, the initial impression is almost similar to Gunn’s 2014 Guardians Of The Galaxy. A not-so-superhero feature that seemed to almost come out of nowhere, it briefly blazed like a comet, leaving audiences to wonder if there was any chance of repeating the feat in subsequent installments. Like Guardians, it’s likely that box office results will determine whether Blue Beetle turns out to be just an appetizer or the prelude to a fully loaded franchise feast.Edit: Wow, Kinja is seriously breaking this quote.
I think you’re conflating “lists things they like” and “lists things.”
“Like Guardians, it’s likely that box office results will determine whether Blue Beetle turns out to be just an appetizer or the prelude to a fully loaded franchise feast.”Um, what is a prelude to a feast or meal called again?
The Special Effects look worse than they would 20 years ago when Spider-Man came out.
Looking forward to it, B-? Man that means I may give it a B+ knowing how AV club rates stuff.
It must have an AI generated title sequence
And they took points off of the review for every single showing that day where the sequence wasn’t suddenly removed.
Note to Hollywood execs who treat DEI as just another quota to meet:George Lopez, an unfunny hack who made a career out of promoting Mexican-American stereotypes, is not the guy you cast to promote Latino role models.
Least surprising line in the review: “Lopez overplays Uncle Rudy’s conspiracy theorist old-school tech geek for all the laughs that he can eke out of it.”
He’s the fucking worst.
Hey now, never say that George wasn’t one of the first to treat birds with respect!
It was pretty funny when he punched Carlos Mencia.
Wait are we hating George Lopez now?
Nah, he’s too boring to hate.
We’ve always been at war with East George Lopezia.
Me? Nah.Dom Irrera, though? *HE* knows what he did!
hey, so long as the movie doesn’t perpetuate the stereotype that George Lopez is funny
Note to basically everyone: Latinos are NOT a monolithic group where everyone shares the same traditions. Mexico is NOT the “default Latino” example. No one country in Central or South America is. Saying that is as stupid and ignorant as saying “feliz cinco de mayo” to every person you see that speaks Spanish.
Outside of Mexico, I’d be surprised if most folks knew that Cinco de Mayo was very, very different than Mexican Independence Day.
Note to basically everyone: Americans are NOT a monolithic group where everyone shares the same traditions. Southern California is NOT the “default America” example. No one state in America is. Saying that is as stupid and ignorant as saying “Merry Christmas” to every person you see on the street in December.
At least language does unite most of those groups. Hollywood thinks everyone from Northern Africa to Malaysia are brown people with funny accents who are either terrorist, tech support or the guy at 7-11
Eh, they’re all played by this guy, anyway.
I’m glad Cliff Curtis broke out of being typecast like that. He was great on Fear the Walking Dead.
Thank you! People say “Latino” like people say “Italians” and it is annoying. I think it has to do with the debunked belief that they will all vote a certain way (and certain people wishing they would), which the last several years have proved, they absolutely do not, at all.
Also American gusano Latinos =/= Latin America Latinos, thanks.
Hombre de Hierro 4.
The Blue Beetle comics that established Jaime Reyes were so great. (I especially loved the art by Rafael Albuquerque.) If this film captures even a little of that feel, it’ll be awesome!
I loved the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, and still hate that they did him dirty like that, but the Jaime origin story was great. Basically Iron Man meets The Greatest American Hero. He was also a great character on Young Justice.
Maybe not a coincidence then that the helmet in that comic cover (and header image) look very Iron Man-y?
Plus, it gave us this immortal dialogue exchange:“You learned how to say ‘filthy spawn campers’ in Swedish!”“That’s because the Swedes are FILTHY SPAWN CAMPERS!”
“I — am — a DENTIST!”
funniest possible outcome is this being a massive beloved hit.
This is one of those movies where it’s clear that it’s going to be a gigantic box office bomb no matter how good the reviews are. Hopefully it and The Flash losing hundreds of millions doesn’t mean DC’s going to back off on the James Gunniverse movies (I am sure that will happen if/when the first movies he’s responsible for bomb, regardless, I just hope we get at least a couple of them first!).
I think they have written this one off at this point.
My brain is refusing to parse the header image. Where is his left arm?
Took me a sec to see that it’s extended out. His hand is open and framing the bottom of his head.
Ohhh, I see it!
I’m so happy we finally gave up on that dumbass “Latinx” trend.
It couldn’t get traction because actual people of that ethnicity hated it (which makes sense, as it’s unpronounceable). I think “Latine” is starting to catch on, though; that one works a lot better.
Never underestimate basic white people’s ability to be offended on other groups’ behalves as a thinly veiled attempt to garner internet clout for their terribly frail egos while allowing themselves to feel morally superior to others.
Given how Romance languages force gender into literally EVERYTHING (even objects and concepts have grammatical gender), I wonder how they will fit gender neutrality/non binarism into it. The ones used for my native language (Portuguese) sound awkward as hell and I am as progressive as they come. Given how language heavily influences thought, one wonders if these countries will always be behind on those issues.
The verbs aren’t gendered, at least.
Yep. It became readily apparent that a diaspora-centric descriptor was going to be rejected by the vast majority of south/central American countries, because they’d long since had enough of our colonizing bullshit.
Another one that pissed me off was “folx.” And…no. No, stop it. “Folks” is right there, climb out of yer fucking navel.
“Hi, let us show you how inclusive and open-minded we are by dictating how you should refer to yourselves.”
Latinx is an American English word.You seem to think its existence is equivalent to dictating that Germans refer to themselves as “Germans”. In other words, you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
You’re welcome.Also Latine also sucks and looks like ‘latrine.’
They didn’t even pronounce it “Latin-equis”. They didn’t think their cunning plan all the way through.
Talk about damning with faint praise
Sounds brave and important.
The Flash is actually excellent, Ezra Miller kills it.
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2023/08/19/blue-beetle-becomes-a-bug-blockbusterThis may not be the most original superhero movie, but it’s crafted with love. Everyone brought their A-game for this beloved
B-lister. Just getting one Blue Beetle movie this well made is a
victory in itself!