IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Released: 14th September
Seen: 19th September
The DCEU is dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourners who continually scream for the Snyderverse to be revived. It is dead and will have its final death rattle later in the year when Aquaman 2 comes out before all the toys are thrown out and we restart this experiment again with a brand new man in charge of everything. Perhaps that well-known death of the franchise explains why Blue Beetle will soon be limping past the finish line just barely making its production budget back… which is a massive shame because Blue Beetle is absolutely awesome from start to finish.
Blue Beetle takes place in the town known as Palmera City, which according to DC lore is a city in Texas, where recent university graduate Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) has returned home. He is greeted by his family, sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), Mother Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), Father Alberto (Damián Alcázar), Uncle Rudy (George Lopez) and Nana (Adriana Barraza) who all welcome him home with love, hugs and the news that the rent is being raised substantially which means they’re about to be homeless. In order to try and help, Jaime gets a job (along with his sister, so there can be shenanigans) cleaning houses but they run into an issue when working at the house of Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) which results in them being fired, though Victoria’s niece Jenny (Bruna Marquezine) takes pity on them and tells Jamie to come to the office the next day and she’ll try to get them a new job.
At that office, things turn weird when Jenny hands Jaime a mysterious box and tells him to protect it with his life. Inside this box is a scarab beetle, eventually revealed to be named Khaji-Da, and when that scarab ends up finding a way to combine itself with Jaime, it gives him the powers of the Blue Beetle, a hero who can seemingly create anything he needs with only his mind (this will lead to some pretty fun action scenes later). Jaime needs to learn how to use the power he’s been given along with figuring out how to keep his family together, all while fighting against an uber-powerful weapon that Victoria just happened to be working on.
Blue Beetle already earns a lot of love by doing something that an upsetting amount of DC seems to forget is an option… It’s fun. Gone are the darkened hues and overbearing shadows that litter so many frames of so many DC films, replaced with a kind of bright joyful energy that fills every frame right from the start. You immediately feel invited to enjoy the film, welcomed with a warm hug and told to put your feet up and enjoy the ride that’s about to unfold in front of you. It rapidly sets itself up as a little more rambunctious than other films like it, throwing out jokes that range from smart observational humour to a little more poop based, all of which work surprisingly well and put you at ease pretty quickly.
There’s minimal time wasted in Blue Beetle, it knows you came here for some big over-the-top fun and it gets to that pretty quickly. It quickly sets up all the characters, maybe needing a minute each to make their characters as clear as possible and before you know it the Blue Beetle is being thrown about like a ragdoll by an AI that’s out of control and making for some insanely enjoyable sequences. It’s almost like the film gets that the audience just wants to have a good time and so sets about ensuring it does that in a way that’s easy for all ages to enjoy, but not in a way that feels patronizing.
What’s kind of fascinating about Blue Beetle is how much of it feels, if not directly influenced, certainly comparable to major elements of the best MCU stuff. The colour and energy of a Ragnarok, the comedic energy of an Ant-Man, the family bonding of Guardians, the distrust of government structures that Captain America 2 had, even the emotional climax from Black Panther all get thrown in here and blended with the youthful exuberance of the Spider-Man movies to create something new. These elements are naturally in a ton of media, Marvel didn’t create them but they are fairly major parts of some of the best stuff the MCU did and by throwing all of it together here, Blue Beetle manages to blend them just right to create a compelling structure that allows the film to work its real magic.
The real magic that makes Blue Beetle work is the core family cast in the middle of it, each one bringing something special that makes you root for this little clan. Obviously, anyone who knows George Lopez knew he was going to be damn funny in this and he absolutely lives up to that reputation, probably getting the most consistent laughs throughout the film. The only person who gives him a run for his money in the comedy department would be Belissa Escobedo who was already on the radar thanks to her Hocus Pocus 2 work but here proves she’s a gifted comedic actress with the kind of instincts that demand she get her own film at some point.
Then there’s Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar and Elpidia Carrillo who have the almost thankless tasks of being the reasonable adults in the situation, they have to be the ones to keep everyone grounded but they manage to do it with so much warmth and love that you can’t help but adore them. They anchor everything to whatever reality might be in this universe that we’re being presented with and manage to keep things from just being a farce… not that they can’t indulge in some glorious comedic silliness from time to time (indeed, the Nana character might get the biggest laugh of the entire film in the third act, only to top herself with an even bigger laugh about 5 minutes later. On top of all that, it’s just glorious to see a film like this that focuses on a Latino family and lets them shine in a way that feels like they wanted to be the best representation possible, which is always great because representation matters.
This isn’t to say Blue Beetle is perfect, since the other thing it seems to have learned from the MCU is that underdeveloped villains are OK. This isn’t to say that the villains are bad, Susan Sarandon is clearly having fun and delivering a cutthroat Karen from hell who only has use for people if they make her money and Raoul Max Trujillo is physically imposing enough but he also has a fascinating backstory that we’re only let in on in the last few seconds. There’s clearly something interesting about these characters, a darkness that’s just barely visible that the audience has to interpret but never gets shown. We barely get enough time with them to really know them as characters, they’re physically imposing but that’s about it which is a shame because there is something interesting here that could’ve been explored a little more and made for a more compelling antagonist.
In the start of this I said that I implied that the failure of Blue Beetle at the box office might be in part due to the death of the DCEU and that was a little naughty of me because this is confirmed to be part of the new regime, we will see these characters and actors again and thank goodness for that because Blue Beetle is just a damn fun time with some great characters and set pieces that embraces the elements that made this genre one of the biggest parts of modern pop culture. It’s proof that DC is still viable and can work but they need to actually give it a chance to be fun. It’s my genuine hope that Blue Beetle will be rediscovered on home video and celebrated for what it is, kind of like how Elemental needed some word of mouth to really explode. If we’re lucky, Blue Beetle will have that kind of surge in popularity very very soon, it absolutely deserves it.
Movie Meister Reviews 