An alien scarab chooses Jaime Reyes to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the recent college graduate with a suit of armor that’s capable of extraordinary powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero known as Blue Beetle.
“Blue Beetle” is the first live-action superhero film starring a Latino lead. Much like Marvel’s “Black Panther,” which incorporated a black lead and primarily black cast, I felt both films failed to ignite because of sub-par narratives. Both movies, in my opinion, encompassed unremarkable and generic storylines and stereotypical characters, exactly what you don’t need, especially for superhero films that were supposed to be the dawn of a new generation.
While “Black Panther” was a huge box office smash, earning $1.382 billion worldwide, “Blue Beetle” made only $129.3 million globally against a budget of $104 million, making it the lowest-grossing film in the DCEU. While it failed to bring in the big bucks, the film still has moments of heart and some rousing action scenes.
Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) has just returned to his hometown of Palmera City in Texas after graduating from Gotham Law University. He learns that his family home has been put on the market, and his family is facing eviction because Kord Industries is buying up as much land as possible for their sprawling new rich developments. He and his sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo) manage to get a job at Kord Industries, and one day, Jaime overhears a conversation between the company’s CEO, Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), and her niece, Jenny (Bruna Marquezine), who is mad at her for developing weapons of war that can annihilate pretty much anything that gets in their way.
Jaime becomes friends with Jenny, and one afternoon, she hurriedly gives him a box and asks him to hide it, and whatever he does, he is not to open it. He takes it home to his family, and they egg him on, and he relents and opens the box, only to see what appears to be a blue beetle. He touches it, and it quickly fuses with his body, and the two become one, enveloping him in an armored exoskeleton. Gifted with extraordinary superpowers, including the ability to create and unleash powerful hand blasts, increased healing, armor configuration, and flight, when he meets Jenny, he tells her what happened, and she informs him that the scarab is a sentient weapon that has willingly chosen him to be its host.
When Victoria discovers what happened to Jaime, she sends her troops to destroy his house and takes him prisoner. Having created her own scarab exoskeleton, infusing it with her personal bodyguard Ignacio Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), she needs to transfer all of Blue Beetle’s information to make it unstoppable. Knowing the transfer will kill Jaime in the process, Jenny and Jaime’s family must devise a plan to stop Victoria from taking his life and developing a deadly new super weapon.
“Blue Beetle” has all the makings of a great superhero movie except a good script. When Jaime first becomes Blue Beetle, it takes him all over the city, through the air, under the water, and Jaime’s constant screaming and apologizing every time he hits something or inadvertently knocks someone over becomes repetitive, and the humor quickly wears off. Every time he screams, all I can hear is Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, and if you close your eyes and play both actors’ verbalizations side by side, you would swear they were the same person.
The cast does well, and all appear to be having fun, although George Lopez’s Uncle Rudy joins Jaime for Best Screamer as every time he finds himself in a precarious situation, his first response is to shriek and yell and ask questions later. Susan Sarandon’s Victoria Kord is a one-dimensional character who displays the same pained expression throughout the film and you wonder if her paycheck was worth all the trouble.
The only redeeming quality here is Adriana Barraza as Jaime’s Nana. When Victoria’s henchmen kidnap Jaime, Nana gets mad, and we learn that she has a clandestine past as a resistance fighter that not even her own family is aware of and knows a thing or two about taking down bad guys. Barraza infuses her character with a potent blend of resilience and mystery, and the less we know about her, the more we want to be around her. She channels her grief into action, and by the film’s end, it is a welcome addition to an otherwise unremarkable superhero film.
Based on the fact that the movie was a box office bomb, I think it’s safe to say there won’t be a “Blue Beetle 2,” but now that James Gunn and Peter Safran have taken over DC Studios, you never know who might pop up and in what capacity in the future.
Now available on Digital HD, and on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, and DVD October 31st
