Blue Beetle Review: Xolo Marideuña Wins You Over In DC’s Fresh, Heartwarming, Family-Powered Superhero Outing
Blue Beetle's Nana is his real superpower TBH!
3.5 / 5
Jaime Reyes is not the first superhero to have his family find out about his powers. But to have his entire family around when he gets his powers for the first time, right in his living room? As an Indian kid rarely accorded privacy, DC’s latest superhero outing, Blue Beetle, piqued my interest with that scene in its trailer. It promised the first Latino superhero, lots of humour, and a heartwarming coming-of-age origin story, like the superhero movies we loved growing up. And well, the film, directed by Ángel Manuel Soto and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer does deliver on those fronts. It stars an instantly endearing Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle alongside Bruna Marquezine, Belissa Escobedo, Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar, Elpidia Carrillo Raoul Max Trujillo, George Lopez, Harvey Guillén, and Susan Sarandon. Khaji-Da, the Scarab, is voiced by Becky G.
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For those not clued into the comic book history of the Blue Beetle, you’ll be mostly fine. Jaime Reyes is the third person to take on the mantle of the Blue Beetle. But the film doesn’t delve too deep into the origins of the Scarab, except that it is an alien entity that forms a symbiotic relationship with its host, and grants them an array of powers. Whatever their host can imagine, the Scarab can create. Victoria Kord, an ambitious woman and the CEO of Kord Industries, moves heaven and earth to find the Scarab, so she can use it to power her ambitious OMAC (One Man Army Corps) project. Her niece, Jenny, the daughter of her deceased brother and former CEO Ted Kord, is not a fan of the company producing weapons and attempts to thwart these plans.
Meanwhile, in (fictional) Palmera City, Texas, teenager Jaime Reyes returns home after graduation to the news that his family will be losing their home due to poor finances. A gig gone wrong brings the Scarab to him, which chooses to fuse with his spine, giving him an exoskeleton-like suit and powers such as flight, strength, and an arsenal of weapons. With Victoria and her ruthless general Carapax seeking the Scarab for their project, and his family’s lives at stake, Jaime must quickly master his newfound powers and save his world.
Maybe it’s the fatigue from superhero movies with multiverses and cosmic stakes, but I quite liked that Jaime Reyes’ first order of business as a superhero was to find his place in and save not the world, but quite literally, his world. His family does mean the world to him, after all. And from the very first scene where you meet the Reyes, as they come to receive a returning Jaime, they charm you with their warmth and banter.
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You can see how having Soto, who is Puerto Rican, as the director, and Alcocer, who is Mexican, as the writer, benefits the film. (The end credits are delightfully inclusive too.) They manage to imbue a cultural and historical authenticity into Jaime’s world, while also highlighting the oppression of ethnic minorities through war, industrialisation, and economic inequality. The film employs a mix of English and Spanish dialogues which beautifully bring out the family dynamics such as Jaime’s bond with his firecracker Nana (grandmother), sibling banter with his sister Milagro, or even his identity as a Latino who can’t get people to even pronounce his name right (a receptionist calls him Jay-mie instead of Jaime, with a ‘Kh’ sound).
In an extension of the importance of family in the protagonist’s community, the makers manage to effectively spin the age-old superhero conflict of ‘love as weakness and strength’ at the heart of the film into a ‘family as the source of strength’, and the idea that not every hero must fight his battles alone and in secret. It’s refreshing because most superheroes we’ve known take a while to feel thus empowered, but for Jaime, that’s the starting point, and it’s interesting to see how this, in turn, influences his symbiotic relationship with the Scarab, Khaji-Da, and the parallels that can be drawn to the Kord family.
Blue Beetle is consistently funny, what with George Lopez as tech genius Uncle Rudy leading the pack with his outrageous antics and quips, Belissa Escobedo as the straight-talking sister Milagro, and Adriana Barraza as the surprise dynamite package, Jaime’s Nana! Damián Alcázar as Alberto, the father, becomes the Uncle Ben-like emotional core for our superbug; his favourite thing to say to Jaime, “Animo!” takes on a heartwarming turn in the second half. Xolo Marideuña makes for a dynamic lead who captures your attention and makes you feel for him right away. I quite liked his chemistry with Bruna Marquezine, and I cannot wait to see more of that pair.
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Susan Sarandon has proven her ‘villainous’ mettle as the manipulative evil stepmother in Enchanted. And while here she doesn’t get to be as animatedly flamboyant, she makes the ‘evil for the greater good’ shine with her Victoria Kord, with a sufficiently menacing Raoul Max Trujillo by her side.
Blue Beetle doesn’t just go old-school in its plot and character motives, but also in its setting, combat sequences, effects, and the gadgets that the good guys use in the film. The exoskeleton suit looks quite cool and futuristic, but the Blue Beetle weaponry and the locations that you see might just remind you of your favourite video games and 80s and 90s spy movies, with their modified trucks, and villains who carted off to exotic secluded islands to carry out their plans in underground lairs. It might have all been déjà vu if not for the characters who breathe life into these scenes and make you want to root for them. Bobby Krlic’s score helps fuse these moments with the right energy.
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Verdict
Blue Beetle is a sweet, funny, wholesome old-school superhero origin story that you’ll enjoy revisiting. It localises Jaime Reyes’ superhero journey to his Latino identity, his family, and to his city and community, and lets it shape the hero he is going to become before he joins the bigger league of heroes he looks up to. While we don’t quite know at what point in the new DCEU timeline Blue Beetle fits, that’s just another good thing about the film; you can enjoy it as a standalone, without worrying about its space in the grand scheme of things. We’ll get there, just like Jaime will, eventually.
You’ve gotta stay put in your seat for its mid-credit scene which is quite the twist, and another post-credits scene that is, well… see it for yourself!
Produced by DC Studios and The Safran Company, and distributed by Warner Bros., Blue Beetle is currently in theatres.
