Blue Beetle

 This review may contain spoilers!

 

Blue Beetle follows Jaime Reyes, a young Latin-American graduate who becomes bonded with an alien scarab. Working with some incredible new powers Jaime must work to protect his family, keep this power from the wrong hands and forge his destiny as a superhero. This film works really well when it wears its heart on its sleeve, the major theme surrounding this feature is family and love. While these themes don't always find their footing the genuine connection Jaime has with his family is really sweet and marks him as one of the more charismatic superheroes we've had this year. Jaime has a really strong sense of morality and you feel like he's quite a classic superhero figure; which in a landscape where every superhero project is trying to subvert the expectations can be a nice change of pace. The sequence in which Jaime first bonds with the scarab also deserves a shout out as it stands out for being one of the best origin moments in a superhero film I've seen in a while.

 

The score for this film has a lot of fanfare and really pumps up the excitement during a big battle sequence. Yet the soundtrack is what really shines to me, with a lot of Mexican or Latin American artists on offer that champion the heritage of this Blue Beetle rather nicely.

 

Damián Alcázar, who played Alberto Reyes, really feels like an incredibly moral compass in this film; the bond Alcázar shares with Maridueña makes for a really beautiful father/son dynamic. George Lopez, who played Rudy Reyes, really goes all over the show with just how much his comedy lands in this feature but that wild and random quality works for the most part; it's also nice to see Lopez take a beat in a few more grounded scenes and really deliver a powerful conversation about crossing the border to the US. Belissa Escobedo, who played Milagro Reyes, is really the comedic backbone of the first half of the film; Escobedo really just feels like the biggest presence in a lot of her scenes and she knows how to command audience attention really well. Harvey Guillén, who played Dr. Sanchez, isn't in this film much but he steadily really won me over throughout; I liked Guillén's gentle approach to presenting one of the bad guys who was having a real crisis of conscience the further the film went along.

 

However, the best performance came from Xolo Maridueña, who played Jaime Reyes. I really found this performance to be something worth getting excited about from the very beginning. Maridueña is finding a lot of success right now but to lead a major blockbuster feature like this takes a lot of skill that he is clearly capable of. There is a lot of determination and outpouring of love from Jaime when it comes to his family and supporting them, this really grounds the character with the audience from the very first scene. But more than that Maridueña brings a playful charisma that allows him to be both charming and extremely funny in even measure. I loved the moments that really tested this young actor, watching him portray grief and saying goodbye to a loved one was a real sucker punch. Yet it was also a thrill seeing him present a vengeful anger in response to this too. Xolo Maridueña is a really versatile up and comer and i only expect to see far bigger things than a DC superhero from him in the future.

 

There have been a lot of superhero films this year that have failed because they try to cram too much in, or they take creative risks that simply don't pay off. Blue Beetle fails for a refreshingly different reason: it's a painfully clichéd experience. The first couple of acts boast a pretty passable heroes journey but it is bogged down with side characters who crack jokes or interrupt the flow of the tone to intrude in on scenes. The film opts to make the hero lose a loved one so that he can then become strong and a better superhero. There is a big fight at the end of the film which ends because our protagonist triumphs over the antagonist with a speech about the power of love. This was made even worse because we then get a nearly minute long montage showcasing why this speech works on the villain. Scenes of our hero bumbling through learning his powers are undercut because scenes later we are told he has worked out his problems with the scarab he is working alongside, even though the film really doesn't show the evolution of this relationship at all. The antagonists for this film being an evil corporation wanting the thing the good guys have and there being a back and forth struggle to get it feels extremely unoriginal and nothing is done here to set that apart. Jaime is a great character and his love for his family is very heartwarming but the family as a whole are pretty annoying the further along we get; often the tone is seriously hijacked by a comedic moment forced from that ensemble. Ultimately while the protagonist of the film has a lot of potential he is placed in one of the most forgettable superhero scripts of the year after Shazam: Fury of the Gods.

 

The way this film is shot really highlights a director who isn't used to the scale of a blockbuster feature like this, intimate shots feel cramped and wider shots make you feel like you are on a set. Even when the film tries to get creative with its visuals the risk often doesn't pay off and you get a visual that highlights a film incapable of crafting the desired goal. The visual effects look well enough with the practical suits standing still but the moment things are in motion that illusion shatters pretty profoundly. Across the board there are so many glaringly bad effects-crafted set pieces like the bus being chopped in half, the giant Beetle ship and especially the cityscape and Kord Tower external shots.

 

Bruna Marquezine, who played Jenny Kord, feels like she can't quite capture that heiress to a business empire aspect of her role at all; Marquezine feels out of place paired against Sarandon and the Kord Industries storyline and you often feel she's just here for the thin romance subplot at play. Becky G, who voiced Khaji-Da, is quite bland in the AI character voice she has chosen to take; Becky G is really capable of a high energy role so it's disappointing to see her so entirely underutilised. Adriana Barraza, who played Nana Reyes, was a lightly comic character at first that just got plain ridiculous; Barraza's over the top "storm the enemy" performance in the third act felt cartoonish and pulled me out of the film entirely. Elpidia Carrillo, who played Rocio Reyes, is perhaps one of the most forgettable characters in the film; Carrillo gives quite a generic overly concerned mother performance that just doesn't stick out. Susan Sarandon, who played Victoria Kord, clearly isn't entirely interested in this role or this film because she gives the bare minmum throughout; Sarandon puts a lot of surface level meanness into her delivery but is content at playing her baddie as very two-dimensional. Raoul Max Trujillo, who played Carapax, is little more than a henchman type role with too much screen time; Trujillo gives about as much range as a boulder in this film and is comfortable with letting the visual effects do all the talking for him.

A blockbuster film that looks like it wasn't made with enough money pushing a script that is unbearably clichéd. I would give Blue Beetle a 4.5/10.