“The love that you feel for your family makes you weak!” the villain tells Jaime. And later on, he repeats, “I told you, the love that you feel for your family makes you weak!”

So I guess that’s what the love that Jaime feels for his family makes him, unless there’s any late-breaking reports.

Here we all are again, with another weekend popcorn post about another underperforming superhero movie. And I have to admit, despite my strongly-held view that superhero fatigue is not real, it’s been a bit of a grind watching this era of DC movies sputter to a gradual stop. I’m not saying my love of superhero movies makes me weak, per se, but after watching Blue Beetle, I have to admit I’ve been stronger.

Blue Beetle is about a tight-knit Latino family driven to mass murder after an evil corporation blows out their magic candle. The film stars cutie-pie Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes, a recent college graduate who’s apparently majored in “college”, and is struggling to find work.

Through blind luck and a little casual flirting, Jaime ends up with an ancient extraterrestrial Iron Man suit that crawls its way inside of him and “chooses” him, as per the Green Lantern-style “it is your destiny to have a dangerous, low-paying job” plot construction. As the alien bug machine entwines itself around his central nervous system, Jamie learns all kinds of useful new skills, like flying and breaking buses and begging his symbiote not to kill people.

It’s one of those unacknowledged horror movies where the lead character is essentially consumed by an alien force, which insists that really, he’s perfectly happy turning into a non-stop killing machine, because there are mean people in the world who deserve to be non-stop killed.

Now, I’m at something of a disadvantage in reviewing this movie, because I’m not Latino, and at this rate, I probably never will be. This is the first superhero movie with a Latino lead character, and the movie correctly caters to the Latino audience with a bunch of cultural references that don’t mean as much to me as they did to a lot of the people sitting around me in the theater. This is a good thing to do, because fuck white people, and let’s give somebody else a chance to enjoy a movie for a change.

For example, they hit the familia theme super hard. The film begins and ends with with Jaime surrounded by his loving family, who move through the world as a single unit. I was expecting, as per your typical white-person superhero film, that Jaime would leave the family behind for most of the movie as he went on solo adventures, and that was absolutely not the case.

In fact, the third act is actually more about the family than Jaime. He gets kidnapped by the evil corporation, and they all set off together to rescue him, including the grandmother, who turns out to be a terrifying badass. For me, the abuela material was cute and that’s about it, but it hit other folks in the audience in a big way.

There are also regular moments of micro- and macro-aggression that define the villains’ behavior. The white people in the film are constantly mispronouncing the Latino characters’ names, creating a barrier that seems impossible to overcome unless you just go ahead and murder them, which they deserve.

This is explicitly linked to Jaime’s difficulty getting a non-menial job, and there’s some discussion about why the family has to live in the lower-class part of town, rather than the big shiny city across the bay.

That being said, there aren’t a lot of surprises for anybody who’s seen a superhero movie or TV show lately. It’s an origin story that plays out just the way you’d imagine, including a romantic subplot that is depressingly routine. There’s a “learning how to fly” scene, and an “inspirational talk with a dead relative” scene, and a whole lot of “evil lady from a company called ‘(name) Industries’ doesn’t care about her underlings.” The family rescue plan feels specific, but everything else is by the numbers.

Really, the value of the movie is taking those familiar tropes and character beats, and applying them to a Latino cast. That’s a worthwhile thing to do, but after you’ve said that, you’ve said everything.

The thing that ended up making me crazy was the amount of filler dialogue that rattled out of everybody’s mouth through the entire movie. The top of the list is the inevitable “no, my love for my family makes me strong,” but really everything sounds like it came out of ChatGPT.

After a while, I started writing down the second-unit cliches that people kept saying, so that I could express to you what the movie sounds like. Here’s an abbreviated list:

“After fifteen years, everything we’ve done — every sacrifice we’ve made — has led to this moment.”

“All of our systems are spiking!”

“All right, you want to dance, huh?”

“Analyzing threat level.”

“Careful, he’s stronger than before!”

“Come on, is that all you got? We got this!”

“Come to Papa!”

“Don’t touch my family!”

“Everything is going to be okay.” (many times)

“Finally, the power of the scarab will be ours!”

“Here goes nothing!”

“How am I going to know what to do?”
“All the answers are here.” (touches Jaime’s heart)

“I got you guys. Don’t worry! It’s going to be okay!”

“Incoming! Brace for impact!”

“It’s like I can’t miss!”

“It’s time for you to accept your destiny, Jaime.”

“Let’s do this!” (many, many times)

“Let’s go get our boy!”

“Let’s kick their ass!”

“Now is the time to fight.”

“Oh my god, I’m bulletproof!”

“Okay, I think we’re good.”

“Okay, let’s see what you got!”

“Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.”

“So, what’s the plan when we get there?”

“That’s not what you think it is.”

“The generators are here. We could blow them up, and knock power out.”

“The kid’s in there. Find him!”

“The universe has sent you a gift. It’s up to you to decide what to do with it.”

“There will be a time to cry. This is not the moment.”

“They attacked my family. We’re going to finish this.”

“This is your purpose!”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“Use the pain we’re feeling and turn it into power!”

“We have to rescue Jaime. It’s what your dad would have wanted.”

“We need to go! We need to move!”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it!”

“When we get hit, we get stronger.”

“Yeah, that’s more like it!”

“You know what to do. Round them up!”

“You’re a genius.”
“I know! What did I say?”

“You’re really lucky. This house is full of stuff. Your house is full of love. Your family? That‘s a home.”

And then it ends exactly like Encanto, including a character saying, “We don’t have a house.” Still, as long as they’re enjoying themselves.

The most amusing part, for me, is the franchise management that James Gunn is continually forced to attend to, with everyone asking him whether Blue Beetle is part of the dying DCEU, or his upcoming unified DCU.

Naturally, Gunn has to support the new film, because it’s the home team and he doesn’t want another DC misfire on his conscience. That’s why he said that The Flash was “one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen,” an obvious pre-flop lie that fooled no one.

This time, he posted on Instagram, “ I can’t wait for audiences to meet Jaime Reyes, who will be an amazing part of the DCU going forward!” which is obviously contingent on the final box office tally. Then he told a podcast, “I mean, the first DCU character, for sure, is Blue Beetle, and the first full DCU movie is [Superman: Legacy],” which is nonsensical even in the world of superhero franchise politics.

We’ve got one more of these coming up — Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is coming in December — and then Gunn can finally get on with his core job responsibility, which is getting yelled at by Zack Snyder fans. To quote Blue Beetle: Don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. We got this!

Tomorrow:
A new podcast episode
about the 2020 haunted hospital film
The New Mutants!

Movie list

— Danny Horn