Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Blue Beetle’ on HBO Max, a Mildly Endearing DC Venture That Nevertheless Feeds Our Superhero Ennui

It’s hard not to see Blue Beetle (now streaming on Max, as well as VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) as anything more than a test: to see if DC can continue to maintain our interest after duds like Shazam 2 and The Flash, and of the public’s growing superhero-movie ennui. BB at least has plenty going for it: A lighthearted tone, a sturdy director in Angel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) and a Latino hero played by the very likable Xolo Mariduena of Cobra Kai fame. But that didn’t translate to ticket sales; it grossed $123 million worldwide, the lowest gross yet for a DC Extended Universe movie. Maybe we’re just looking past it, hoping that Aquaman 2 rights the DC ship – or maybe it’s just another loud comic-bookstravaganza that succeeds in the cultural-representation dept., but doesn’t do much else.

BLUE BEETLE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open in a very cold place. Doesn’t matter where. It’s just remote. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Maybe it doesn’t need to be here then? And why do I even bother to mention it? Because Blue Beetle shouldn’t be 127 minutes long, that’s why. Anyway. Jaime Reyes (Mariduena) is back in Palmera City, a fictional Miamiesque city, having graduated with a pre-law degree. His embarrassingly gregarious family greets him: Father Alberto (Damian Alcazar), mother Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), grandmother Nana (Adriana Barraza of Bingo Hell!), younger sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo) and Crazy Uncle Rudy (George Lopez). Odd for people who exist in the modern world with the entirety of the internet on devices in their pockets and purses, they apparently haven’t bothered to communicate with Jaime at all, because they drop all kinds of bad news on him: Dad had a heart attack, they lost the auto shop and they have to move out of the family home because the rent just tripled. Welcome back, Jaime!

Being the first Reyes to finish college, Jaime has big dreams of getting a good job and Saving The Family, a notion brought down to earth by wiseass Milagro: Anybody need a “pre-lawyer”? And so the two of them end up on a cleaning crew working for Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), who gives them an immediate Cruella de Vil vibe. And that’s right on the money, because Victoria is the head of Kord Industries, an amoral corporation developing superduper body armor for cops by using tech from an ancient scarab from outer space. That plan doesn’t sit well with Victoria’s niece Jenny (Bruna Marquezine), because Victoria has crazy eyes and authoritative tones and possibly a motive, although I’m not sure I ever found one for her. Maybe she wants to run the world someday, like every villain in every superhero story wants to do? Seems like a safe bet.

What with one thing and another, Jenny offers Jaime a job at Kord, and when he shows up for a meeting, she ends up stealing the scarab and making Jaime take it and hide it. As these things always go, the scarab comes to life and forces itself inside Jaime’s body and embeds itself in his spine and covers him with an exoskeleton that has a mind of its own and fires up its rockets and immediately zooms him up up up into outer space, and when he lands back on earth he’s in the middle of the road and since the armor can produce any weapon he can imagine, it generates a shield that cuts a bus in half the long way; doncha HATE when that happens? Thus, Blue Beetle comes to be – once Jaime gets used to this nonsense, that is. And he’ll have to get used to it on the fly, because Jenny really wants to see Victoria’s plan get flushed down the can for the sake of the greater good, and that means BB has to find himself smack in the middle of some action sequences, fighting bad guys and rescuing his family from bad guys, because if there’s one thing bad guys do, it’s kidnap nice people for leverage. Will Blue Beetle thwart their plans? NO SPOILERS, but, you know, probably.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Take the armor from Iron Man and any Spider-Man movies with the Iron Spider suit, add some Venomous symbiote mischief, stir in a flibbertigibbet Ant-Man or The Flash goofiness, top with a villain that’s a cross between a Power Ranger and Maximilian from The Black Hole, and you have the profoundly unoriginal superhero story that is Blue Beetle.

Performance Worth Watching: Lopez is the designated Scene Thief, playing a conspiracy-theorist loon who gets a bunch of goofball dialogue and just so happens to know how to pilot something called the Bug Ship, which can expel toxic gas from its rear port, hahahaha snort. But Lopez is also repeatedly upstaged by Lopez’s Mullet, which is just too majestic for this world. 

Memorable Dialogue: Crazy Uncle Rudy engages in some 51 annoying/49 funny meta-commentary: “Batman is a fascist. But Blue Beetle – he has a sense of humor!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Blue Beetle has a few things going for it – Soto and screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer ensure the story has enough cultural specificity to give it some agency, and they also never take themselves too seriously. The movie threatens to swallow Maraduena as he attempts to foster some goodwill with audiences who might be tentatively sampling the movie despite its many, many all-too-familiarities, and he mostly almost maybe not quite works through it. I mean, when he’s Blue Beetle, Maraduena is frequently just a voice shrieking about how This Thing Has A Mind Of Its Own, since the suit initially controls him more than he controls it. And if I’m interpreting the suit’s motions correctly, it also seems to know capoeira, which almost differentiates him from Iron Man.

Soto keeps the tempo nimble, nurtures a colorful aesthetic and oversees a few noisy-exciting, if generic action sequences, so the film is at least relatively light on its feet. Blue Beetle is eager to please, to a fault; the action is over the top, the human stuff is too melodramatic and the end result is a touch more grating than gratifying. The root of the story lies in the class divide between powerful White imperialists like Victoria Kord and the powerless people of color like the Reyes family, but the film’s thematic ambitions don’t offer much beyond shallow commentary on systemic inequity – before it gets to the inevitable CGI-heavy third-act confrontation that looks, feels and sounds exactly all those other superhero movies that really don’t have much on their minds. It’s best to appreciate the familial/community bond that bolsters Blue Beetle’s heroism; the world doesn’t need another superhero movie, but it really doesn’t need another Batman-loner type. 

Our Call: Our excitement wanes mightily in the face of another underwhelming DC movie. But Blue Beetle generates just enough goodwill to warrant a tepid recommendation. So STREAM IT, but it might be prudent to wait until it exits the expensive on-demand tier. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.