DC Comics has not had much luck with live action movies in the past few years. A hidden gem here or there aside, their movies either underperform at the box office or just aren’t very good. I’ve seen only a few that have been outright bad, but they usually aren’t that special either. And here’s Blue Beetle, the latest, a movie that was originally supposed to go directly to streaming but instead went to theaters for some reason. It’s also a mid-August release at a time when the WB is doing a reboot of some kind with the DC characters under the creative direction of James Gunn. Where does a Blue Beetle movie fit into all that?
You know what? It doesn’t much matter. I saw the movie anyway at the IMAX screening room (AMC Stubbs A-List doesn’t care where I go for my monthly subscription price), and I think there might have been more people present for the second Shazam movie in that room.
Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) returns to his hometown of Palmera City, a city hopping with tech innovations thanks in large part to mega-corp Kord Industries. Of course, Jaime lives in the poor neighborhood of Edge Keys with his loving parents (Damián Alcázar and Elpidia Carrillo), wiseass sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), sweet Nana (Adriana Barraza), and paranoid conspiracy theorist Uncle Rudy (George Lopez). Due to a wide variety of financial issues, Jaime can’t quite go to law school just yet and must instead find a job just to keep his family housed. A chance encounter with Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), daughter of missing eccentric tech business man Ted Kord, leads Jamie to a possible job at Kord Industries, but instead, Jenny hands Jaime a package with instructions to guard it with his life and get it out of there.
The package contains the scarab, a sentient alien technology that grafts itself to Jaime’s spine because, of course, his family insists on opening the package. This action transforms Jaime into the Blue Beetle, an armored superhero whose symbiotic tech allows him to do a wide range of things if he can just learn how all that stuff works. He’d better learn fast: Kord CEO Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) had big plans for that scarab, hoping to use its tech to create her O.M.A.C. cybernetic suits. Her top operative Lt. Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo) is pretty formidable with a version that only partially works. He’d be more or less unstoppable with the scarab’s tech finishing the job. Can Jaime keep himself and his family alive long enough to figure out what his new suit can do?
So, I gotta say, in many ways this felt like a fairly standard superhero movie. Jaime is a likable character, but I suspect had it gone to HBO Max as originally planned, it would have been an above average streaming movie. Instead, it felt like a decent theatrical release. Director Angel Manuel Soto put some interesting bits here and there, with a few really creative shots that showed off the special effects or were just really effective moments in the movie. A shot of the newly-transformed Jaime stumbling around his family’s kitchen while his new look is reflected in the water all over the floor comes to mind. Maridueña makes for a charming lead, but Sarandon’s villain feels like the actress is phoning it in. Granted, there isn’t much to this character, but the more she said she was doing things for the “greater good,” the less impressive she was as a character.
However, it was something unexpected that happened about halfway through the movie that has me elevating the grade a bit: Jaime’s family is actually a fun bunch and a good addition to the story. Yes, George Lopez is basically every George Lopez character, but the way the family interacted with each other, especially in scenes without Jaime, really worked for me starting around the halfway point. Most superhero movies would use characters like that at at best hostages that need rescuing, but people who can actually help Jaime out in unexpected ways. I just found myself really digging those scenes, giving side characters more of an impact than I would have expected from a movie like this. It doesn’t make the movie great or anything, but it did give the movie a more unique approach to a familiar genre.
Grade: B- (C+ without the family scenes)
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