Blue Beetle Puts Latin Culture At the Forefront of Its Charming Superhero Antics: Review
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The post Blue Beetle Puts Latin Culture At the Forefront of Its Charming Superhero Antics: Review appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: 2023 has, to put it mildly, not been a banner year for DC superhero films. After the twin disasters of Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash, it’s easy to see why new DC stewards James Gunn and Peter Safran are trying to quietly bury the slate of films that remained from the previous regime’s tenure. Shame, then, that the same treatment is extended to Blue Beetle, a scrappy, low-stakes superhero flick brimming with charm and cultural specificity, even if the exoskeleton around it is a bit too brittle for its own good.
Far from the interconnected storylines and awkward Gal Gadot cameos of the mainline Justice League, Blue Beetle centers on the El Paso-like Palmera City, and twentysomething protagonist Jaime Reyes (Cobra Kai’s Xolo Maridueña, in his first film role). He’s just graduated from college, only to learn that his tight-knit working-class Mexican-American family — father Alberto (Damián Alcázar), mother Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), Nana (Adriana Barraza), and wacky uncle Rudy (George Lopez) — is about to lose their house.
But after a fateful meeting with the rebellious niece (Bruna Marquezine) of villainous CEO Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), Jaime finds himself bonded to a mysterious alien scarab that grants him exoskeletal armor and impossible powers. Now, Kord is after him, and will chew through his family to get him and the scarab… unless he can rise to the challenge, find his destiny, and oh, you know the rest.
That Progress Is Not For Us: It’s impossible to watch Blue Beetle outside its context, both in the broader superhero milieu and the strained, thin history of Latinos in mainstream blockbuster cinema. Fittingly, Blue Beetle was originally slated for streaming on HBO Max (alongside the aborted Batgirl), only for it to be shoved into theaters. And in many ways, it feels like a straight-to-streaming feature; it’s mid-budget (for a superhero flick at least), largely disconnected from the larger Snyder-fueled DCEU, with effects that don’t exactly hold up on a big screen. (To be fair, when has that stopped DC, especially recently?)
The screenplay, penned by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, hits all the bingo-card spots for your typical superhero flick. The script is a stew of well-worn superhero beats: Iron Man’s robotic flying suit and industrialist villain, Venom’s symbiotic back-and-forth between human and alien parasite, Shazam!’s family-focused superhero gags.
There are more explicit nods here and there to other DC superheroes, like the Batcave-like lair that belongs to Victoria’s long-lost brother, the original Blue Beetle (“Batman’s a fascist!” Lopez’s Uncle Ruby spits at one point). And of course, there’s the Act Two tragic setback and the big, silly CG punch-em-up in the climax. Suffice to say, the Blue Beetle costume looks best in its practical form; it feels not unlike the ’90s live-action adaptations of The Guyver, with its organic carapace and chest-laser powers. (It’s also uncomfortably burrowed into Jaime’s back, in a welcome bit of body horror I wish we got more of.)
Blue Beetle (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Look Out, Toretto: But director Ángel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) knows that the secret sauce to Blue Beetle lies in its culture and smartly doubles down on Jaime’s dynamic with his endearing family. It’s rare to see superhero movies of this stripe focus so much on a working-class Latin family like this, and Soto luxuriates in familiar pop culture references for Latin audiences (famous telenovela María la del Barrio; a blicnk-and-you’ll-miss-it shot from Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos, which was another film about a scarab fusing with a Mexican man and giving him unexpected powers).
Lopez’s role as Rudy is maybe the smartest any movie in recent memory has ever used him, modulating his comedic tics into something with a welcome dash of pathos. Alcázar’s father figure is beautifully sincere, his scenes with Maridueña lending the film a richer emotional core than you’d expect. And, of course, Mexican screen legend Barraza is a hoot as the Reyes matriarch, getting some deliciously giddy notes to play in the final act. Unlike most superhero films, which force the lone lead to hide their secret from their family, the Reyes clan sees Jaime transform from the get-go, and stay involved the whole time.
Meanwhile, Maridueña makes for a compelling lead, all wide-eyed enthusiasm and befuddlement as he struggles to control the suit and the responsibility it places on him. But the script, in its desire to rush through beats and expand its focus to the whole Reyes familia, loses Jaime a bit in all the noise.
The film gestures at a symbiotic relationship between Jaime and Khaji-Da (voiced by Becky G), the alien intelligence inside the suit. Unfortunately, we get little of that beyond a few unmotivated wisecracks; she’s more JARVIS than Venom. Maridueña’s not the only one underserved by the script: Sarandon gets little to do beyond unmotivated girlboss mustache-twirling, any nuance to Trujillo’s baddie is backloaded till the end, and poor Harvey Guillén is relegated to a do-nothing part as a reluctant scientist working for the baddies.
The Verdict: It’s really tempting to grade Blue Beetle on a curve; Maridueña is an incredibly charming performer, the cast is fantastic, and it’s really really not often that you get family-fun superhero flicks that also find moments to touch on issues of gentrification in Latin-American communities and the thorny nature of American intervention in Central America.
But on the other hand, you can see the influence of a million superhero movies that have come before it, and the action isn’t compelling enough to feel unique. Like the superhero stories of the ’90s and 2000s that clearly inspired it, Blue Beetle feels like the scrappy origin story we need to get through in order to explore better things in the more exciting sequel. Hopefully, Gunn and Safran see fit to keep Jaime Reyes around for their version of the DCEU, and toy with the true potential of its hero.
Where’s It Playing? Blue Beetle skitters into theaters August 18th.
Trailer:
Blue Beetle Puts Latin Culture At the Forefront of Its Charming Superhero Antics: Review
Clint Worthington
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