Movie Review: Blue Beetle

Blue Beetle (2023)

Poor, poor Blue Beetle. I honestly do think that it's a superhero movie that's... okay? But it's just really circumstance that led to its abysmal box office performance. There was so little marketing done for this movie, Warner Bros. and DC are in the process of closing up shop and shooting out what's left of their original 'Snyderverse' or DCEU continuity movies -- Flash, sequels to Aquaman and Flash, and Blue Beetle. And it really is a shame that this happened at the height of superhero movie fatigue because Blue Beetle is just... 'another' origin movie. 

I like Jaime Reyes and consider him one of the best 'reinvented' legacy successors, revitalizing the original Ted Kord (who I also like!) and generally just being an interesting spin on the original name without disrespecting it. The story told in the movie adapts most of Jaime's backstory in the comics, right up to the fact that he's a successor to two different Blue Beetles (Dan Garrett and Ted Kord), and we get some really good visual effects -- the horror show of the Scarab merging into Jaime's body, as well as the Kamen-Rider-on-a-movie-budget transformation sequences between the Blue Beetle and OMAC armours. The fact that most of the suits are practical effects add to the delightful action sequences of the movie. Oh, and Ted Kord's big beetle ship also shows up. That's cool!

But... that's really it, and for a movie that runs for slightly above 2 hours, there really is scant little that sets this movie apart from the others. And I get that not all movies need a 'twist' to the formula, but Blue Beetle just takes all of the cliches and plays them straight. Which would be fine if the movie is somewhere between the 45-90 minute range, but this movie feels like it's a pilot to a superhero show that is stretched out over two or three times that the runtime deserves. 

More egregiously is that as someone familiar with Jaime Reyes from the comics and from cartoons, they could've actually added something interesting -- exlpain more about Ted Kord's legacy as a superhero (or what he is as a person, instead of just someone who leaves behind giant bug-ships), or even adapt and confirm the fact that, yes, the Scarabs are actually part of an intergalactic horde of invading aliens. Even if they didn't fully adapt the Reach, some hints to the Scarab as being something malicious would've been appreciated. 

While I appreciate Jaime's family and the themes of family as a supporting cast, it really feels like this is something we've seen, and done better elsewhere, yeah? The dad is very supportive and dies; the younger sibling is smart and mouthy; there's a wacky older relative that the movie thinks is way funnier than he actually is; the grandma is secretly hiding some badass skills... none of these are bad in isolation, and I enjoyed Alberto, Rudy, Milagro and Nana Reyes in isolation, but they also bog down so much of the movie and at some point they get irritating. Particularly Rudy, who the movie basically saddles as Jaime's babysitter-turned-sidekick. This really feels like it has a bit of the problem with the Shazam movies, except that movie at least knows to keep the focus on Billy and Freddy. 

On the other side of the story are the Kords. The movie reinvents the Kord legacy and uses a gender-flipped version of Ted's evil uncle Jarvis Kord into his evil sister Victoria. Again, the plot that she's doing isn't terrible. It's pretty serviceable superhero material. But all she's doing is to try and get the super-awesome plot device, the Scarab, to make her super-awesome robot suit army, the OMACs... and she doesn't care how many people she has to trample to get to it. Again, between Aldrich Killian, Norman Osborn, Carlton Drake, Dr. Sivana and many more I'm probably not thinking of on top of my head, the 'evil CEO is evil and doesn't caer about the little people' trope is kind of an easy enemy trope to use... except that Victoria really doesn't do anything with it. Her villainy borders on one-dimensional as she cackles while she invades the Reyes household and shoots up civilians. There's some attempt to inject some complexity to her with her vague mentions of being driven by sexism/favouritism because her father picked Ted over her, but it's glossed over so quickly that it might not have even been there.

Far cooler and far more interesting is her badass minion, the 'main' OMAC who is also able to 'suit up' into a robotic suit, Ignacio Carapax. In addition to having one hell of a cool name and a very cool robot form, it turns out that Carapax is basically a child soldier abducted and groomed by Victoria and manipulated for her own needs with some clearly-bogus promises of being 'fixed' by the end of the day. Carapax is probably the more interesting villain, which is a shame because he spends most of the movie kind of in a daze.

Rounding out the cast is the main love-interest and the good Kord, Ted's daughter Jenny, who is trying to stop her lunatic aunt from doing her crazy supervillain plan. I really can't tell you much about her other than she's heroic and that she ends up getting it together with Jaime. 

Which brings to us Jaime Reyes, the Blue Beetle himself. He's very fun! Again, some of the hero motivations are cliched and kind of generic, which is no fault of the actor. Xolo Maridueña plays the character well, pulls off the charming-bumbling vibe well, and the movie sets up the 'poor Peter Parker' opening act well, with Jaime's family being at threat of losing their house thanks to redevelopments (a plot point that is interesting but ultimately kind of gets brushed aside), Jaime being a good son who's trying to do good, and eventually gets embroiled into the Kord drama when he decides to, despite common sense, try and rescue Jenny. Jaime's increasing desperation as his family gets thrown into the line of fire of people with big sci-fi guns and robot suits is palpable, and I think that's one of the better-executed parts of the movie. Perhaps not the death scene itself, which is kind of overwrought compared to some of the other 'mentor deaths' and Uncle Bens that we've seen in other DC and Marvel works, but Jaime's reaction to it and his growing horror as, at various points in the movie afterwards, his 'muggle' family members are put in danger. This leads to a very telegraphed but well-acted moment as Jaime finally manages to beat the shit out of Carapax, and unlike before, it's now Khaji-Da the alien Scarab who has to talk Jaime out from killing Carapax -- especially with the context that Carapax isn't doing everything out of shits and giggles. 

Eventually Carapax blows up Victoria in a suicide that also takes out the OMAC factory, Jaime and Jenny become a thing, and the community and Jenny's Kord Industries band together to rebuild the Reyes house. 

Again, the movie isn't bad! Other than maybe a couple of Rudy scenes, the movie itself is perfectly fun superhero fare. It's just that it's so... it's so basic, there aren't really any huge twists or revelations, and some of the scenes that they play straight -- like Papa Alberto's death, or the 'loser Jaime' establishing scenes -- are drawn out for a fair bit longer than it needs to be. Of course, that's not getting into the fact that Warner Bros is in their "let's wash our hands of this and hope for a better reboot" mode and barely cared about promoting or editing this movie. It really is kind of a shame, since they did have some pretty nice talent (particularly the visuals!) in this movie.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The opening shot of the movie shows multiple different-coloured Scarabs being shot out throughout the galaxy, foreshadowing the true nature of the Scarabs and their connection to the Reach.
  
• OMAC (One-Man Army Corps) specifically takes its portrayal in this movie from the reinvention popularized in Infinite Crisis, as an army of humans mutated by nanotechnology and controlled by the satellite Brother Eye. Anyone can be injected and transformed into an OMAC, becoming a superhuman cyborg. The original OMAC is a standalone hero that didn't really interact with the rest of the DC universe.
• The name of the OMAC bearer, Ignacio Carapax, is based on the Blue Beetle villain, Conrad Carapax, who originally fought the original Blue Beetle (Dan Garrett) and had his consciousness uploaded into a robot body. 
• Victoria Kord is a gender-flipped version of the comics' Jarvis Kord, though Jarvis was Ted's uncle instead of his sister. 
• Dan Garrett (Blue Beetle I) and Ted Kord (Blue Beetle II)'s costumes can be seen in the Beetle Cave.
• The Scarab is passed to Jaime in a Big Belly Burger box, a fictional fast food chain that's a recurring staple in the DC comics and its adaptations. 
• While Jaime no longer lives in El Paso, Texas like he did in the comics, he lives on El Paso Street instead. 
• Batman is mentioned several times by the Reyes family. Superman and Flash are also name-dropped several times. 
• A LexCorp logo could briefly be seen in the buildings next to the Kord Industries tower.