"Blue Beetle" review — Family reigns supreme in lacklustre superhero adventure
“The universe has sent you a gift, and you have to figure out what to do with it.”
It ain’t easy being blue. That’s a lesson that Jaime “It’s not Jamie” Reyes is learning far too quickly. After coming in contact with an alien technology called “the scarab,” Jaime finds himself in a symbiotic relationship with the device, which gives him incredible powers, but puts him and his family in the crosshairs of some very dangerous people. Sometimes the powers are a blessing, sometimes they are a curse. And sometimes, you wind up naked after a super suit test flight in front of your family.
Blue Beetle certainly doesn’t reinvent the superhero wheel. It’s a very by-the-numbers sort of superhero tale with characters beats and structure deeply familiar to anyone with experience within the genre. I am happy to report, however, that the latest (and 15th overall) installment in the soon-to-be-defunct DC Extended Universe is far from the franchise’s worst hour. There are a lot of fun character moments and the film has a great sense of humour about it. On the other side, the action sequences are totally serviceable and the visual effects range from fine to weak. But it’s hard to find a strong opinion on the film one way or another: Blue Beetle seems like just another superhero movie. After a summer box office dominated by creative, inventive blockbusters — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Barbie, and Oppenheimer all spring to mind — this sort of painfully average quality makes Blue Beetle seem all the less impressive. The summer movie season is closing out on an OK, but completely forgettable note.
After four years of college, Jaime Reyes (played by Xolo Maridueña) is finally coming home to the neon-coloured Palmera City, Texas with six figures of debt and a brand-new pre-law degree. It’s a big day for Jaime and his family — he’s the first to graduate from college. However, his celebrations are quickly interrupted by a string of bad news: his father’s health is rapidly declining, the family business has been forced to close, and the Reyes clan will soon be evicted from their home. So Jaime has to put down his dreams of grad school to help the family financially as much as he can so they stand a chance at surviving. Xolo Maridueña leads the cast as Jaime. After a string of TV roles, Blue Beetle also marks Maridueña’s first time as a lead in a major motion picture, a task which he handles with ease.
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| The Reyes family in Blue Beetle. Photo: Warner Bros./DC |
The Reyes family is populated by a score of colourful, delightful characters. There’s Jaime’s father and mother: Alberto (played by Damián Alcázar) and Rocio (played by Elpidia Carrillo). There’s Alberto’s brother, Rudy (played by George Lopez), the family’s fun but broke uncle. There’s Jaime’s younger sister, Milagro (played by Belissa Escobedo), who is always willing to humble her brother. Lastly, there’s Nana (played by Adriana Barraza), Jaime’s paternal grandmother and the matriarch of the Reyes clan. The film’s best moments are in its character writing of the Reyes family. The chemistry throughout the entire family unit is stellar, with the writing and the performances crafting very well-rounded relationships within.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the freezing plains of Antarctica, a crew of scientists working for Victoria Kord (played by Susan Sarandon), the CEO of Kord Industries, have excavated an alien technology and have brought it back to Palmera City for further study to nefarious ends. Sarandon takes on the role of the villainous Victoria to rather disappointing ends. Victoria is neither menacing nor memorable, containing neither depth nor any amount of actual villainy. A thinly written villain can be made up for with a self-assured performance, but neither the writing nor Sarandon actually attempts to do anything remarkable with the character. For comic fans curious about the family name, Victoria is the sister of Ted Kord — the original Blue Beetle — who went missing some years ago.
Victoria’s muscle is Lieutenant Ignacio Carapax (played by Raoul Max Trujillo), a war vet turned science experiment. Carapax is the primary test subject of Victoria’s OMAC (One Man Army Corps) program, which seeks to create advanced armour and weaponry for American soldiers using the scarab’s source code. As a character, Carapax’s role in the narrative is to give Jaime someone to punch. Although the character is given an impression of an arc, it’s so awkwardly added to the third act that it feels more like an afterthought than anything interesting. Within the Kord family, Victoria finds opposition from her niece, Jenny (played by Bruna Marquezine), Ted’s daughter, who is aware of her plots to use the scarab as a weapon.
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| Jenny Kord and the Reyes family. Photo: Warner Bros./DC |
After Jenny makes a risky escape from the Kord Industries headquarters with the scarab, a chance encounter between her and Jaime puts the scarab in his hands. Soon, the scarab decides to bond with Jaime in a symbiotic relationship that turns him into a superhero. Now, with the help of Jenny and his family, Jaime needs to stop Victoria and her OMAC program before destruction befalls Palmera City.
Blue Beetle marks the first Latino-lead superhero film from either Marvel or DC, making it a significant milestone for the genre. These unique cultural flourishes are some of the film’s strongest elements, especially regarding the characters and the worldbuilding. Palmera City’s environment is designed to reflect the diversity of the United States, especially towards the Mexico-America border. But these flourishes feel no more than decorative hiding a very substance-less affair. The movie moves through a lot of predictable plot beats, making the whole affair appear far too familiar: the structuring of the narrative is painfully obvious, the film moves through very obvious highs and lows, there are the usual origin story scenes of the superhero learning to use their powers, and there’s a third-act fight where the hero must battle essentially an evil clone of themselves. These sorts of tropes already felt tired during the second phase of the MCU. Now they just become exhausting. On a craft level, the film isn’t all that impressive either. The visual effects are inconsistent in quality, the cinematography is very hit-and-miss (which is especially disappointing coming from Pawel Pogorzelski), and the action set pieces are generic, lacking little original choreography or visual ideas. There are some fun moments with the Reyes clan learning to use the retro-styled technology of Ted Kord to fight their enemies, but these highlights take too little time.
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| Jaime in his Blue Beetle armour. Photo: Warner Bros./DC |
One of Blue Beetle’s most glaring shortcomings is its unwillingness to actually flesh out any of the thematic ideas it flirts with. The film toys with ideas of gentrification, American imperialism, the military-industrial complex, class divide, anxieties over immigration, and revolutionary politics, but the script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer pays no more than lip service to anything interesting or political. This unwillingness to deal with anything remotely controversial also means that its emotional experience is more hollow. And it’s not like mainstream audiences can’t handle some complexity in their storytelling. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 highlighted how receptive audiences can be to emotionally heavy sci-fi action; Across the Spider-Verse was a testament to how energetic and thoughtful superhero films can be; and Barbie demonstrated that comedy and social commentary are able to blend with ease. When matched against its competition this summer, it’s impossible to be genuinely excited about Blue Beetle.
Things haven’t been easy for the DCEU in recent years, which certainly doesn’t bode well for something like Blue Beetle. DC is coming off of a string of critical and commercial disappointments and a major shake-up in its leadership and creative direction. This film marks the penultimate chapter in the entire universe (the last being the upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) before the franchise hits the reboot button with 2025’s Superman: Legacy. It’s hard to care about a brand-new superhero when the whole franchise is headed towards oblivion. Blue Beetle isn’t even all that bad, it’s just pitifully mediocre. I am tired of years upon years of mediocre superhero movies. If this were ten years ago, I believe Blue Beetle would stand out a lot more than it does now. But now, there just isn’t enough within the film to make it exceptional.
Blue Beetle is now playing in theatres everywhere.
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