Blue Beetle

DC’s latest hero deserves better than these rehashed tropes

Xolo Maridueña gets more than he bargained for when he touches the Blue Beetle.

Jaime Reyes’ (Xolo Maridueña) triumphant return from college didn’t go quite like he pictured it. He got about 30 minutes to bask in the fact that he was the first Reyes to graduate from university before discovering that his family had lost their business and was soon to lose their house. His dreams of being the family savior go crashing to the ground when he sees the job market.

But he might still have a chance at becoming a savior.

When he crosses paths with billionaire philanthropist Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), she entrusts him to guard…a hamburger box. On the surface, not the most exciting item, but inside is a sentient extraterrestrial scarab that Jenny stole from her evil aunt Victoria (Susan Sarandon). Victoria was hoping to use the scarab to create Kord Industries’ patented army of super soldiers, but unfortunately, the scarab only operates when it chooses a host.

It chooses Jaime.

Suddenly the kid who just wanted to make good for his family is saddled with a sassy sentient parasite named Khaji-Da (Becky G). Can he become the hero his family needs? Or will Kord Industries squash him like a bug?

Sadly, we’ve all seen this movie before — most recently with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — and if you’re suffering from superhero fatigue, this won’t wake you up. But Blue Beetle is one of those frustrating movies that gets so much right, that it makes what goes wrong utterly infuriating. It’s almost a shame that this interesting family film keeps getting interrupted by CGI nonsense.

Director Ángel Manuel Soto has some truly brilliant, powerful ideas that get lost in the muck of typical superhero tropes (and yes, a lot of those tropes seem to come from Spidey lore, keeping the bug theme going). There’s an especially arresting sequence when Victoria orchestrates a raid on the Reyes home that evokes almost breathless dread as it references ICE raids and the INS seizure of Elián González. But the drama of the moment, and the meaty political commentary, comes to a crashing halt when Jaime shows up to shoot blue energy at the baddies in a low-stakes, rote superhero battle.

Soto also has some biting, and true, things to say about US military and defense contractor meddling in Central and South America, but it feels like Blue Beetle is stopped from ever having the bite it needs to land these points. I look forward to a sequel in which Soto is allowed a little more rein by DC and is able to develop some of these ideas more fully.

The movie also suffers from the typical DC issues of having a pretty love interest that seems to exist only so she can be a Girl Friday for our lead. It’s the sort of “written by a guy” spunky but still desperately needs a man to do things for her character that Amy Addams settled for when she took the role of Lois Lane. Any development poor Jenny has just made her whole character seem more ridiculous. She has access to superhero tech but never thought to use it herself, even to steal the scarab initially. Her only comfort in life is her mother’s paintings that she keeps in an abandoned rotting mansion she doesn’t live in. Billionaires are all weird.

Susan Sarandon is also doing her best to make Victoria the most outlandishly evil villain in DC history. Not only is she brashly racist, she personally picks out child soldiers for her private army. It’s fine, but in the end, her evil scheme is she’s trying to pull a RoboCop. We all know it’s wrong to pull a RoboCop by now, don’t we?

She’s more interesting as a figure of colonization. The Reyes family talks about how Victoria is pricing all of the residents out of their neighborhood, and Soto makes sure to show us some “Under New Management” signs as we explore Jaime’s childhood stomping grounds. This sort of insidious takeover, the one that even Wayne Enterprises is probably guilty of in Gotham, is a fascinating way to explore what evil looks like in a capitalist society. It’s a shame that Soto has to sideline this idea for a rehash of why it’s bad to build an army of half-man-half-machine people.

Finally, there’s the scarab herself. We’re told that Jaime has a symbiotic relationship with Khaji-Da, but we’re deprived of the amusing lunacy found in the Venom films. Instead, Jaime and Khaji-Da rarely ever talk, to the point that she explains the powers Jaime has (and how to use them) in the final fight. At some point, you’d think you’d make time to chat with the extraterrestrial being lodged in your spine that gives you the power of flight.

Still, there are some really excellent things about Blue Beetle, namely Jaime and the Reyes family. Maridueña is excellent as Jaime. He’s naïve without seeming stupid and has moral fortitude that would make Captain America proud. He’s also got enough of a range to really sell Jaime’s agony when his newfound superpowers begin to affect his family.

Each member of the Reyes family is given character development that makes them infinitely more interesting than a washed-up mecha-army storyline. Uncle Rudy (George Lopez) is a mechanical genius who is rightfully paranoid about the Kord family. Jaime’s sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo) is a wise-cracking realist who helps Jaime navigate the real world when his dreams crash to the ground. And Nana? Nana (Adriana Barraza) has one of the best reveals in the film.

I found myself wanting to spend time with the Reyes and hope they’re given more to do in any sequels we may get. Jaime truly is strongest when he’s got his family at his back.

Verdict: An interesting family dramedy keeps getting sidelined by superhero tropes.

Blue Beetle is rated PG-13 and is available in theaters