Blue Beetle – Review
127 Minutes, Rated PG-13
Written by Gareth Dennet-Alcocer
Directed by Angel Manuel Soto
**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below, then listen as he and Ryan discuss the film in more depth. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
An alien scarab chooses college graduate Jaime Reyes to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the teenager with a suit of armor that’s capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero known as Blue Beetle.
It’s getting harder and harder to look at superhero/comicbook movies objectively any more. Between the endless promotion of films as “the bestest EVER!” to those who fixate on some minor aspect of a character or trailer who pronounce a film to be “a sure-fire bomb,” being able to watch a film and evaluate it for itself is becoming a lost (or at least a rarely utilized) art.
I, having no dog in this fight, so to speak, am trying to look at Blue Beetle, the latest offering from Warner Brothers and DC, with open eyes.
That said…
…it’s fine. It’s a perfectly solid superhero origin film.
Based around the Reyes family, Blue Beetle reminds me, generally, of Shazam!, with it’s emphasis on family (blended vs immigrant) while adding in an unexpected and unpredictable super power.
The Reyes family dynamic is very much dictated by its culture and background, with the family hierarchy and history firmly rooted with “Nana” and with its future bound inextricably to Jaime.
That dynamic includes Uncle Rudy, a brilliant man — if not a bit paranoid/fringe — responsible for the trailer line that launched a thousand negative YouTube videos before the film even released: “Batman is a fascist.”
*sigh*
I can say that the line is in keeping with Rudy’s general personality in claiming someone (but why choose Batman of all people?) to be a fascist, though it boggles the mind that the line would be included in the trailer, seeming to exist in that forum only to invite negative response.
Not ALL press is good press, and an unsteady box-office situation doesn’t need any help to keep a relatively unknown character from widespread success.
In other words: don’t shoot yourself in the foot when it’s 100% avoidable. Duh.
When Jaime is chosen by the Scarab to be its host, the real fun begins. The fact that Jaime didn’t choose to have powers or have any say in what they are, or even understand where they truly come from, coupled with his own general sense of low self-esteem, makes for some entertaining interaction between him and Khaji-Da: the voice of the Scarab.
Blue Beetle is a family movie with a superhero element. The central concern is not Jaime’s powers but the way the family deals with what those powers bring and mean in terms of their effects on the family.
Watching the Reyes family circle the wagons and protect Jaime and one another from the evil Victoria Kord (who “owns” the Scarab) provides endless family sit-com moments that again echo the family vibe of Shazam! and reinforce the importance, culturally, of those familial relationships.
The Kord family carries its own family relationships. Victoria’s brother, Ted, vanished a decade earlier and left his daughter, Jenny, behind, allowing Victoria to move the company farther in a direction he disagreed with, and the villainous Victoria has no compunctions about sacrificing whatever and whoever necessary (for the greater good) to get the results she desires.
From pushing forward on a Scarab-inspired battle suit (but not a suit: implanted technology driven by AI) to forcibly gentrifying the outlying areas of Palmera City (yes, even the Reyes’ neighborhood/home) for more modern housing/development, Victoria is a great villain, never showing the slightest bit of remorse either for her vanished brother or anything else.
She’s a complete sociopath and I really enjoyed watching Sarandon chew the scenery.
Sure, we never really get a background on what the Scarab is (it’s “alien” is all we are really told), and at this point, superhero powers and design are starting to cinematically overlap (just as they have in the comicbooks for decades). Khaji-Da, in conjunction with Jaime, is evokative of the Tom Holland Spider-Man’s relationship with Karen (as are Blue Beetle’s “legs” visual echoes of the Iron Spider suit’s, along with the not named but effectively “instant-kill” mode). The Beetle ship is perhaps a nod to the Owl ship from Watchmen or even the insect-inspired designs of Zach Snyder’s Kryptonian ships.
I love the production design of Blue Beetle, BTW. The stark contrast between what are supposed to be the “poor” sections of Palmera City (but are really just the more lived-in and homey areas… the places you would WANT to live, if you will) against the shining towers and holographic displays of the ever-expanding “downtown” area is stark, but both are lusciously developed and presented.
The time frame for Blue Beetle feels a bit uncertain, as what we see in Palmera City isn’t reflected in any other WB/DC city so far: not Metropolis, Gotham (where Jaime graduated with his pre-Law degree to open the movie), or Central City.
It’s like if someone turned the lights on on Blade Runner‘s LA and gave it a bath. It’s stunning, but completely out of step with the remainder of the DC universe (that we’ve seen thus far), so if this is actually the “first film of the DCU” and not a leftover from the DCEU, we may be in for a real change in the visual feel of the DC films moving forward.
But there’s the rub; without knowing what Blue Beetle actually is, it’s tough to determine whether it, well… matters…in a cinematic sense.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s the box office that will determine if, or how much of, this iteration of Blue Beetle and his world will move forward in James Gunn’s brave new DCU.
From a quality standpoint, it should be considered. Now it’s up to the audiences to decide if they want it or not.
Blue Beetle is is theaters now and stars Xolo Mariduena, Bruna Marquesine, Becky G, Damian Alcazar, Geroge Lopez, Adriana Barraza, Belissa Escobedo, Elpidia Carrillo, Harvey Guillen, Raoul Max Trujillo, and Susan Sarandon.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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