While DC Studios deals with one hell of a production reworking (one of several over the last decade), this film has been released in limbo. Following on from The Flash, whose reality-twisting premise seems to have officially spelled the end for the DCEU timeline as we know it, but still coming out before James Gunn’s official re-establishing of the universe. Between the burnout that the superhero genre has been experiencing post-Endgame, and the ongoing fandom civil war concerning DC on the big screen, it’s unfortunately easy to see why this production would get left behind in the shuffle. Even the upcoming Aquaman sequel, which also exists in the same state of flux, has a stable connection to what past films have shown us; this has to stand entirely on its own. Although, it should be said, that this film arguably does manage to do that, albeit with some stumbling blocks along the way.
After both Marvel and DC managed to screw up the idea of the superhero family this same year with Quantumania and the Skittles movie respectively, credit is immediately due for how well this film does with it. The extended family of main character Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) have their annoyances early on, but even when the audience is still warming up to them, there’s a definite close-knit feeling coming from how they all interact with each other.
Belissa Escobedo as the brattish younger sister, Elpidia Carrillo as the no-nonsense mother, Damián Alcázar as the optimistic father, Adriana Barraza as the grandmother with an adventurous past, and George Lopez (an inclusion I was genuinely expecting to dislike, given I’m not the biggest fan of Lopez’s style of comedy on the big screen) as the paranoid and technically-minded uncle. On their own, they’re all quite charming, but together, there’s something about this family of tech-assisted arse-kickers that I found rather endearing.
Same goes for the world-building around them, putting them in the run-down ghettos of a technologically advanced city that has kept running through Kord Industries, run by Susan Sarandon’s Victoria Kord. The way that Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer’s script goes into the legacy of the Blue Beetle in-universe, starting with Jaime but then later getting into Ted Kord and even Dan Garrett, who both went by the same superhero name during the Silver and Golden Ages, expands on the central idea of family and looks into other ways that the notion of what we hand down and what we honour is reflected in the characters. It even finds a neat way to bring the OMACs, a concept that’s been knocking around the DC universe since the days of Jack Kirby, into the story that makes sense with everything else around it.
I like how, even though we never actually see Ted on-screen, we end up learning quite a bit about him just through the gadgets he left behind. An ‘80s kid with a bordering-on-obsessive desire to learn how things work, balancing out a brilliant technical mind with a pretty childish sense of humour (albeit a cute one; I can’t say I’d be able to resist giving my giant Bug vehicle a fart cloud ability either). He’s like if Tony Stark leaned even further into his more immature traits, to the point where the sense of mystique around his absence likely covers up how iffy his character might have been in the flesh. This is stronger characterisation than I’ve seen from some big-name heroes over the last few years… which unfortunately includes this one.
Yeah, as much as the supporting cast do a lot to bulk up the emotional and even comedic stakes of the story, the biggest letdowns come from the two big names: The main hero, and the main villain. Xolo Maridueña is a bit of a blank slate in the lead role, only ever really being generically good-looking when he’s made to perform outside of the family unit. He’s an unfortunate example of being way more interesting in the suit than out of it, as the fight choreography and frequent use of one-takes really show him off as a badass. But as far as the more personal side of things, trying to keep a roof over his family’s heads and live up to the name of not just Reyes but also the Blue Beetle… there’s not a lot of strength in there, which is a shame.
But hey, at least he still has his place within the Reyes clan to keep him watchable. Hell, there’s even a possibility that a sequel could do some meaningful expansion of his connection with the Scarab (and yes, with how solid the world-building is here, I genuinely think a follow-up to this would be a good idea). The same can’t be said for Victoria, who is somehow even blander and honestly one of the weakest of any superhero film I’ve reviewed on here.
Now, on paper, there’s a lot to willingly seethe about: She’s the personification of the Western military-industrial complex, right down to her involvement in the recruiting of child soldiers in Third World countries. But Sarandon never manages to really bring out the sliminess of that kind of person in her performance, leaning more towards naturalism in a role that positively did not need it. It’s quite a shame when her henchman Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), as underdeveloped as he also is, still does a better job at showing the haves/have-nots divide at the heart of the setting than she does.
In light of the title character being a bit on the milquetoast side, and the main villain ultimately taking the wind out of the prominent anti-imperialist tones of the writing, I have to admit that this isn’t quite as good as it could’ve been. But even with that in mind, this is still pretty fun. The aesthetics, combining ‘80s-infused neon sci-fi with Puerto Rican cultural trappings, are a nice change-up from what this sub-genre tends to offer nowadays, the action scenes are cool, the jokes land way more times than not, most of the cast manage to get on my good side despite some early apprehensions, and as a look into yet another corner of the DCU, it includes a fair bit of lore while still making it fit with the actual story being told. It’s nowhere near the heights that certain capeshit features have managed to reach over the past couple years, but conversely, it’s also far and away better than the mystifying lows they’ve cratered into alongside.
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