Blue Beetle Review

Blue Beetle Review

Blue Beetle flies it’s way into theaters this weekend, the second to last DCEU film after they reboot and start with James Gunn’s New DC Universe. I’ve been fairly excited for this film, I’ve dug the trailers we got for the film. And Blue Beetle was a popular character on Batman: The Brave and the Bold which was a show I watched all of the time when I was younger (just ask my dad). So I was happy that Blue Beetle was getting his time to shine in a big cinematic format. So how is the movie? Let’s get started!

The Good:

I thought this was just a really fun and entertaining mid-budget comic book movie. And what’s kind of fun about this movie is that it reminds you of a different type of comic book movies. 2023 had two multiverse movies with Across the Spiderverse and The Flash. Fury of the Gods at it’s service might not seem large scale, it’s about gods destroying the city. The Marvels looks to be this intergalactic space adventure. And because of that, everybody is trying to go bigger and bigger with their movies. Some of these smaller, mid-budget comic book movies don’t get made as much. So the fact this is one of those movies it’s nice and refreshing, this feels like a comic book movie that would have come out 10-15 years ago. Also tied to that, the run tims is only 2 hours and 7 minutes long. So many covid area comic book movies, Eternals, No Way Home, The Batman, Wakanda Forever, Across the Spiderverse, and The Flash are all either close to 2 ½ hours long or some are close to THREE HOURS long. So the fact this isn’t that, the fact it’s not trying to be the biggest or the best comic book movie of all time. It’s just trying to get a double and be a solid film, and I think it accomplish that rather well. 

While it’s familiar it still manages to find some ways to cut through and be a bit different. The trailers I feel like sold the movie as being more of a generic comic book, one that’s just another one of these comic book movies. And sure, the movie does have a LOT in common with Iron Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Shazam! and some people could view that as a weakness with the film, for me personally I think the mix of it all really worked. The aspects that other people could view as generic I actually viewed as different and refreshing. Like I said earlier the film is much smaller with a mid-level budget, and because it’s coming out now the smaller scale makes it stand-out. But to some people, it being smaller scale could make it feel generic. Sure, the plot of the movie is very straightforward. You know pretty early where everything is going. There’s no real big shocking moments, even some of the aspects treated as twists and reveals you know they’re coming. Honestly, that didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the film.

Another big positive for the film are the cast and characters. Everybody in here is fun and charming, everybody has something about them that makes them pop and stand-out and differ then from other characters. In the lead is Jaime Reyes played by Xolo Mariduena, and he was a lot of fun in here. He can be the hero when he needs to be, the family man, and the fun and charismatic lead of the film. I haven’t seen Cobra Kai so I’m not familiar with him prior to this, but I think this movie helps prove that he’s a solid lead actor and he’s going to be leading man for years and years to come. In the first act of the film, the film focused a good bit on the dynamic between Jaime and his sister. I really dug that dynamic. They have great chemistry with one another and they really much feel like siblings, they bicker and make fun of one another. But the scene stealer of the movie would be George Lopez as the uncle of the family, and George Lopez brings his humor and his wit to the movie and it’s really funny. He had a lot of great laughs that made me chuckle all through-out the film. But honestly, everybody in the movie does a really good job with what they’re given.

The film can also be very heartfelt and emotional at points in time, it has a lot more heart then I was expecting going into it. Another aspect of the film that makes it stand out is that it’s very family centric, even more so than Shazam! was. So the film focuses a lot on The Reyes Family and the dynamic between them. So when bad things happen to them, you feel it and you feel the emotion and weight of it all. Honestly, they say the word “family” about as many times as Dominic Toretto says it in the Fast and Furious movies. Again, with it being so family focused with the Latino culture it can once again find another way to stand out in the genre. Leading into the finale of the movie, something big happens where it draws out all of these big emotions from you. 

Finally, while they can be heartfelt and emotional it can also be very very funny at points in time. Most of the humor comes from George Lopez, the way he’s written and the way his character is designed makes him very much the scene stealer of the movie. But all of the Reyes family members get some great jokes that put a smile on your face. Nana Reyes gets some great moments in the finale of the movie that once again put a smile on your face. 

The Bad:

The first thing that comes to mind is our villains of the movie and they feel very much like the most generic aspect of the film. It felt like the movie was trying to focus on the origin story, the family dynamic, romance, and making it feel very different. That the villains felt like they didn’t get as much screen time as maybe they should have. This is frustrating because they got Susan Sarandon as our main antagonist and she’s a world class actress. So her being in a comic book movie as a villain should be a big positive, and she’s not the issue but the writing for the character makes her come off very generic. There’s even her main muscle man, who is the one out fighting with Blue Beetle even though he feels very generic in here. In the finale they tried to humanize him and show more of his backstory, but those moments came too late into the film to make me really care about him or what was going on. That’s really frustrating because what they revealed about him as a character could have made him this very interesting character. But they kind of wasted the potential of the villains for me. 

I would say it’s a film that does get better as it goes along. It starts off maybe a bit shaky and as you move into the third act is when things get into high gear. And because of that, the first act of the film can be a bit clunky. Where the film is trying to introduce the lead character, his family, the scrab, and the villain are fairly quickly in the film. So from the start of the film to when Blue Beetle first suits up I wasn’t really on board and found it clunky at points. Where the film basically mirrors the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. Where it’s established that The Reyes Family have a very strong family bond but not a lot of money. And then it’s showing the villains have a very broken family bond and have lots of money. And some of the ways it’s portrayed in the film, especially the first 20ish minutes of the film can feel a bit clunky and forced at points. 

Finally, I felt like the Blue Beetle side of things was very underdeveloped and underused in the film. It really wasn’t until the finale where I feel like Blue Beetle, the superhero was all that interesting. Where they have this idea of the AI voice in the suit is helping Jaime learn the weapons and techniques of the suit, and while they do have that it’s cool. It feels like that was put on the back burner and wasn’t developed as much. If this movie gets a sequel or we see more of the character in other movies, I hope the relationship between Jaime and the AI voice gets fleshed out more. And I think you want a sequel, you focus on that. You focus the story and everything on that dynamic, and I think you could get some very cool. 

Final Thoughts: Blue Beetle was a really solid DC movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. I found the movie entertaining, funny, and heartfelt. And while parts of the film are generic, I think the movie finds some ways to stand out and make things a bit more interesting. It’s not perfect, this isn’t one of the greatest comic book movies of all time. But it’s one of the better DC movies in a while, and as of now the best DC movie of 2023. 

The Score: 8.5/10 (B)