BLUE BEETLE: 3 STARS. “breaks ground in its depiction of Latino culture.”
It seems to be an unwritten rule that the best superheroes are birthed from troubled family backstories. Bruce Wayne witnessed the brutal killing of his parents, Spider-Man was orphaned at an early age and Superman was exiled from his home planet of Krypton and never met his parents. The big screen adaptation of “Blue Beetle,” a DC superhero movie now playing in theatres, breaks with tradition. “My family? That’s what makes me strong,” says Jaime Reyes a.k.a. Blue Beetle.
When we first meet Reyes, played by “Cobra Kai” star Xolo Maridueña, he is an ambitious recent college grad on the hunt for a job. Back home in Palmera City his family is in financial trouble and Jaime wants to help out.
His job search puts him in contact with a sentient ancient alien relic known as the Scarab, which kind of looks like a fancy broach my mother may have worn in 1978. The powerful, parasitical piece of biotechnology chooses Jaime as its symbiotic host, transforming the young man into the superhero Blue Beetle. Grafted together, Jaime and the Scarab now possess a glowing armor-clad blue suit and powerhouse abilities like flying through space, the manifestation of weapons and more.
“The universe has sent you a gift,” says Uncle Rudy Reyes (George Lopez), “and you have to figure out what to do with it. Maybe this time we get our own superhero.”
Trouble is, Jaime doesn’t want to be a superhero, despite being chosen by the Scarab. “How do we get it to un-choose me?” he asks.
Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), the super villainous CEO of Kord Industries, understands the power of the Scarab and Jaime’s Blue Beetle, and knows how to take control of it. “Target the [Reyes] family!” she says.
“Blue Beetle” makes history as the first Latino DC superhero to lead a film, but the freshness that comes along with that is overwhelmed by the usual superhero dross. The emphasis on family gives the movie a nice vibe that sets it apart from other DC movies, but the strength Jaime garners from his family and culture does not strengthen the plot as a whole. It still a superhero origin story. That means it comes weighted down with details, exposition and the usual getting’ to know you, getting’ to know all about you, tropes.
It does attempt to go deep with subplots about marginalization, resistance and even a little body horror woven into the story, but again, those elements are overshadowed by the accompanying bombast.
Maridueña cuts a swathe through the CGI noise and fight scenes with considerable charm and kind of an “aw-shucks” sensibility that grounds his high-flying character. As the comic relief, Lopez gets a few laughs and Sarandon is deliciously amoral as the billionaire villain, but this is Maridueña’s show.
Culturally “Blue Beetle” breaks ground in its depiction of Latino culture but as a superhero movie, it is the same old.
