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It hasn’t been a great year for DC in movies this year. Both Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash have failed to find an audience as the old DC Extended Universe fades out to make way for James Gunn’s new plans as the head of DC Films (should the studios ever negotiate in good faith with SAG and the WGA that is) and his new release slate starting in 2025. Fortunately, their most recent release in the form of Blue Beetle is the best movie from DC of 2023 so far, which is good because it could carry over into the new continuity.
Blue Beetle follows Jamie Reyes (Xolo Maridueña), a recent college graduate who returns home to his family as they are in dire financial straits. He meets with Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine) who gives him an alien scarab (voiced by Becky G) that bonds with his body and turns him into a superhero. This throws him into conflict with Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) and Kord Industries, a weapons manufacturer that intends to use the scarab to create a new line of super soldiers. George Lopez, Belissa Escobedo, Harvey Guillen, Raoul Trujillo, and Adriana Barraza also star.
The best way to view the movie is as a singular experience, outside the wider worlds of both the DC Extended Universe of the past and the new DC Universe of the future, which is probably sound advice that works for any of DC’s movies after Suicide Squad in 2016. There are some cursory references to the wider DC Universe, with references to Batman, Superman, and The Flash, but by and large, there is nothing that ties this world to anything else. That’s probably for the best because the way the world is built, especially around the history of the Blue Beetle moniker works best completely independent of anything that came before it.
The relationship between the members of the Reyes family and how they gradually accept Jenny is also pretty fun and entertaining which sets this movie above a lot of other superhero movies in recent years. There is depth and nuance to each member of the family besides just the archetypal roles they fill, which leads to emotional moments that land surprisingly well. While providing comedic relief, George Lopez’s Rudy brings an impressive amount of heart to a role that could just have been to add levity to every scene he is in. The same goes for Belissa Escobedo’s Milagro as she has a particularly impactful scene in the second half of the film.
The movie’s biggest downfall is that the third act does devolve into a fight between two characters with identical power sets who just have to see who can punch harder to resolve the conflict. Carapax’s motivations are not well explained and there is no real reason why the fight should be as long as it is, but it does take up a considerable amount of time when there is a better way to resolve the conflict. It falls into the same pitfalls as Black Panther and Wonder Woman where it’s just a CGI mess that ultimately is uninteresting with a predictable outcome.
That said, Blue Beetle is a fun watch. If someone is looking for something fun to watch this weekend, this is an entertaining enough way to spend two hours, especially considering how it liberally borrows from other movies and cliches that work well. Viewers will probably notice the hints of Venom and Ant-Man and other movies across the just-over two-hour runtime. Regardless, it was the right decision for Warner Brothers to move this from an HBOMax/Max release to theatrical.
Final Rating: 8/10
