Superhero fatigue is real, and it’ll only be exacerbated by Blue Beetle, a cut-rate programmer (in theaters August 18) that was originally slated for Max and, on the basis of its finished enervating form, should have probably remained there. It’s also the first Latino comic-book endeavor, although that doesn’t prevent it from being arguably the most derivative offering the tired genre has yet to offer, borrowing elements from so many forebearers that it plays like a conventional pastiche. If this is the end to Warner Bros’ initial DC era (before James Gunn and Peter Safran reboot the entire franchise), it's a fittingly banal and cacophonous one.
Fresh off becoming the maiden member of his family to graduate from college, Jaime Reyes (Cobra Kai’s Xolo Maridueña) returns to his hometown of Palmera City, a generic metropolis in which the haves reside in the glittering skyscraper-peppered downtown and the have-nots dwell in working class barrio Edge Keys. Jaime is warmly greeted by his dad Alberto (Damián Alcázar), mom Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), and Nana (Adriana Barraza), and within minutes, he’s subjected to two consecutive jokes about the secondary education debt he’s now accumulated.
This is what passes for “topical” in Blue Beetle, and it epitomizes the humor strewn throughout, most of which involves Jaime's uncle Rudy (George Lopez) cracking wise and everyone screaming at every available opportunity in a vain effort to cast the clan as hilariously boisterous.
No sooner has Jaime reunited with his loved ones than he’s informed of multiple pieces of bad news: His dad Alberto has recently suffered a heart attack, their auto shop has gone under, and they’re all about to lose their home because the landlord has tripled their rent. It’s a hat trick of clichéd misfortune, and it motivates Jaime to get a menial job scraping gum off the bottom of a luxury resort’s outdoor tables.
If that’s a thankless gig, it nonetheless proves fortuitous, since it grants him the opportunity to defend the honor of a beauty named Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), when he spies her being bullied by an older woman that we know is her aunt Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), the sneering CEO in charge of military industrial complex titan Kord Industries. To pay back this act of chivalry, Jenny tells Jaime to meet her the following day. When he arrives, she’s in danger and gives him a fast-food package whose secret contents he must protect with his life.
Thanks to his relatives’ urging at home, Jaime peeks inside the box and discovers a blue-and-gold scarab that promptly invades his body, affixes itself to his spine, and transforms him into Blue Beetle, a multi-limbed superhero with the Green Lantern-esque power to do and create whatever he imagines. Considering that the alien scarab speaks to him like an AI assistant as he gazes through a digital-read-out visor, Blue Beetle is sort of like Iron Man. Except that since he’s insectoid in nature, he also recalls Spider-Man (or, more accurately, Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Iron Spider).
Jaime’s new abilities include magical Wolverine-style healing, and in Terminator 2 fashion, he teaches his symbiotic scarab suit not to kill. As Jaime later learns, he’s not the first Blue Beetle; à la Ant-Man, his predecessor Ted Kord (Jenny’s missing dad) was a scientific-genius pioneer, and Jaime is pitted against a rival who covets his own scarab-y armor. He also discovers a gadget-heavy secret lair (with a Watchman-reminiscent airship) that’s akin to his own Batcave, which is exciting to Rudy even though he bluntly states, “Batman’s a fascist.”
Throw in references to Superman and the Flash (and a spoiler-y scene that channels Black Panther), and Blue Beetle is a fourth-generation amalgam of everything audiences have already seen and heard during the past 15 years, and that’s without mentioning the constant talk about family (which is forever! And gives Jaime strength!) that aligns it with the Fast and Furious series.
Written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, the film is the laziest sort of mash-up, made distinguishable only by its shout-outs to Mexican telenovelas and kids programs and its concurrent desire to cast its saga as a battle between loyal, hard-working (undocumented) immigrants and white corporate racists. Those villains deliberately mispronounce Spanish names, use storm troopers to rouse families out of their homes in the dead of night, and corrupt and exploit their Hispanic workers—here embodied by Conrad Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), Victoria’s ex-military bodyguard, who’s been rebuilt with cyborg parts and is slated to be the leader of her line of scarab-fueled mecha-soldiers.
As competently directed by Ángel Manuel Soto, Blue Beetle careens between the rote and the corny, the latter epitomized by everyone in the Reyes household getting in on the slam-bang action, from Rocio driving an aircraft to ex-revolutionary Nana wielding a high-tech chain gun while shouting, “Down with the Imperialists!” That exclamation is only funny because it’s situated in a wildly expensive multiplex tentpole (estimated budget: $120 million) that’s been financed by massive entertainment conglomerates. Such cluelessness, however, is typical of a film that can’t devise a single unique moment or character; Victoria is a stock big-business baddie, Rudy is a hackneyed paranoid-but-for-good-reason comedic relief sidekick, and Jenny is a bland love interest who also doubles as a fount of exposition and as a deus ex machina-style helping hand.
Maridueña is reasonably charismatic but like his compatriots, he’s habitually reduced to yelling very loudly whenever he’s scared, excited or furious. Blue Beetle feels like it’s deliberately catering to a middle-school crowd that isn’t quite exhausted by the sight of costumed CGI combatants zooming through the air, zapping each other with energy beams, and clashing with outsized blades, hammers and other gee-whiz weapons. Had it arrived ten years ago, the film might have seemed, if not novel, then at least a bit less stale than it does in this current cinematic context.
Then again, given that Blue Beetle is an underwhelming also-ran to begin with (culled from the coolest parts of more iconic and interesting DC and Marvel do-gooders), his big-screen outing wouldn’t exist in the first place if not for the success of his precursors. In every way, he’s a creaky chip off the old block—as well as a further sign that the superhero-blockbuster heyday forged by his ancestors is fast coming to a close.
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