Meet the ‘Beetle’
DC embraces a little cultural specificity and could find itself with a stealth charmer and one of its stronger entries.
Blue Beetle
Director: Ángel Manuel Soto • Writer: Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, based on the DC comic
Starring: Xolo Maridueña, Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar, Raoul Max Trujillo, Susan Sarandon, Belissa Escobedo, Bruna Marquezine, George Lopez, Harvey Guillén
USA • 2hrs 7mins
Opens Hong Kong August 17 • IIA
Grade: B
Before it spirals downwards into a nonsense visual mess of anti-physics and blurry, quippy action excess (no laser beam to the sky this time though) that pivots on the antagonists punching each other in the face, Blue Beetle is actually kind of charming. Hard as it is to believe, the DC entry that Warner seems to have forgotten about because 1) it’s too busy counting that Barbie cash, and 2) it’s about Latinos so who cares?, stands heads and shoulders above the vanity project that was Black Adam, the hot mess of Shazam: Fury of the Gods, the the not-as-bad-as-expected-but-still-not-great The Flash, but it’s unfortunately likely to get buried by Barbenheimer and a wave of racist horseshit. I’m not saying Blue Beetle is a masterpiece, but it’s a well-paced, funny entertainment with richly observed cultural specifics that add texture to the story. Introduced in 2006, the Reyes family at the heart of the alien doohickey superhero adventure is one of the best put to comic adaptations – Marvel, DC or other – and the dynamic at play goes a long way to anchoring the drama and lifting the film above its predictable station.
Puerto Rican director Ángel Manuel Soto, whose most prominent film so far was the Baltimore-set coming-of-age drama Charm City Kings, and second-feature Mexican writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer (Miss Bala), give Beetle an authentic and welcome shot of Latino personality – and social commentary – that once again proves representation matters and makes better damn movies (see: the forthcoming Joy Ride). Blue Beetle appears to be the bridge between the old Warner/DC clusterfuck and the new James Gunn and Peter Safran DC Studios regime, so whether or not the character makes another appearance is anyone’s guess at this point. But Gunn could do worse.
I want to hang out with this family
The (again, origin) story begins with fresh college grad Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña, Cobra Kai) going home to Palmera City, the first Reyes ever to do so – and evidently he went to Gotham U. Eventually, over dinner, his sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo, fantastic) tells him the family’s lost their auto body business and is about to lose its house because of the Tony Stark-ish Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), an industrialist and developer who’s “gentrifying” the Reyes’ oceanfront Edge Keys neighbourhood. His dad Alberto (Damián Alcázar, Narcos) and Nana (Adriana Barraza) refuse to be cowed and are fully on the “we’ll find our way” side, while Milagro, Jaime’s mother Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), and paranoid uncle Rudy (George Lopez) are less optimistic and have nothing but contempt for Kord Industries, which, admittedly, is hilariously sinister.
As Jaime struggles to find a job, Kord is close to perfecting a military technology that will make the Kords even richer, naturally at the expense and health of her prototype RoboCop-ish human weapon Carapax (always awesome “That Guy!” Raoul Max Trujillo, Mayans M.C., Cold Pursuit). Sarandon plays Victoria as a run-of-the-mill evil CEO, one fond of micro-aggressions like calling her head scientist Dr Sanchez (Harvey Guillén, What We Do in the Shadows, and why aren’t you watching this show?), even though that’s not his name. If Blue Beetle has an unforgivable failing it’s in its bland, garden variety villain, a role Sarandon could have easily gone gloriously bonkers with. Anyway, she’s using an ancient alien tech, a scarab, in the weapon, and when Kord’s not-evil niece Jenny (Brazilian actor Bruna Marquezine) decides she’s going to mess up her shit, the scarab ends up inside Jaime (long story), fusing with his DNA (huh?) and transforming him into Blue Beetle. The rest is standard comic book tomfoolery.
Jaime’s a little Spider-Man, a little Iron Man and, though Blue Beetle doesn’t feel too long, a whole lot of the concrete-busting, atmosphere-grazing, body-tossing we’ve seen before. It’s not unexpected, but it’s distracting given the above average strength of the film’s non-action segments, and how much you want to get back to them when they’re not the focus. Jaime and Milagro working at a Kord hotel is a highlight, with Milagro schooling Jaime on engagement with privilege. The running joke of the “Maria del Barrio” telenovela, Jaime’s awkward boner during a lull in Jenny’s mission to help the Reyeses, granny’s “revolutionary past” and Sanchez finally setting Kord straight on his name are a handful of the genuine laughs Blue Beetle throws out. And it should be said the dramatic elements hit harder than most, thanks mostly to the utter believability of the family – which is down to the cast performances. Lopez does the crazy conspiracist uncle thing just fine, but the core trio of Jaime, Milagro and Alberto makes you like the Reyeses, feel comfortable and welcome in their home and in Edge Keys, and so care what happens to them. The inevitable moment that sees Kord come for Jaime, where her security goons literally rip the family from each other and drag them from their home in the middle of the night, is gutting because it rings all too true while working for the story. Comic books like to go on at length about how they’re allegories for the real world, but that’s becomes an afterthought in too many superhero movies. In the rush to get to the big splashy finale a lot of filmmakers have forgotten we need to give a shit about the people for those finales to mean anything. Either they’ve forgotten or their corporate overlords have surgically removed any reference in order to maximise gross global profits. Oh, wait… — DEK
*Blue Beetle was reviewed during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, it wouldn't exist.