Review: There’s little to recommend about ‘Blue Beetle’ except for its vibrant Mexican heritage

Let’s start with the good, and there actually is good to be found in “Blue Beetle,” the second-to-last comic book feature of the current DCEU (“DC Extended Universe”) era.

Xolo Maridueña (“Cobra Kai”) is fantastic as Jaime Reyes, the first Hispanic superhero to topline one of these movies, and here’s to hoping that DC’s new shepherds James Gunn and Peter Safran keep the actor and his character for future adventures.

Reyes’ Mexican heritage also takes center stage early on in “Blue Beetle,” which is both refreshing and long overdue. Much like the MCU’s “Ms. Marvel” on the streaming Disney+ platform, which provided viewers with a deep dive into Muslim culture, “Blue Beetle” treats its hero and his family with respect, even when making jokes about certain aspects of the culture, and it consistently reinforces the importance of family over material possessions.

That said, the final thing that “Blue Beetle” gets right—and I can’t believe I’m typing this—is casting George Lopez as Reyes’ eccentric uncle Rudy. I have never, not once, not ever found Lopez to be funny—until “Blue Beetle.”

For its first 20 minutes or so, “Blue Beetle” appears poised to break the recent streak of subpar DC movies, including “The Flash,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” and “Black Adam.” But then the script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, who previously penned 2019’s underwhelming human trafficking thriller “Miss Bala,” inexplicably pivots to an increasingly overloud and overlong series of fight sequences, coupled with a could-have-been-cool secret lair reveal that defies logic as soon as Rudy suddenly, immediately knows how to operate alien technology.

That’s right, “Blue Beetle” falls victim to the same bullshit that has derailed almost every one of the studio’s efforts in the DCEU era.

The villain is laughable, which pains me to write because I love Susan Sarandon as an actor, but her Victoria Kord is the female equivalent of Snidely Whiplash minus the moustache. There’s zero character development. She’s just evil with a capital E.

Kord’s henchman Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo) has little to work with as a result. Despite a compelling backstory set in the jungles of Guatemala, which is only glimpsed through flashbacks, Carapax exists to fight, and fight, and fight, before having a moment of redemption that feels so pre-planned you could time it on your watch.

Oh, yes, the fights.

“Blue Beetle” once again presents a character who is imbued with special powers through a symbiotic attachment, in this case an ancient alien scarab, that attaches itself to Reyes’ body and merges with his brain. It provides him with regenerative healing powers and the ability to withstand pounding abuse as well as scores of bullets.

All that means is that whenever Reyes fights, which is quite often in the final two-thirds of the movie, the fights go on, and on, and on, and on, and…you get the idea. Buildings get destroyed. Vehicles get destroyed. Lots of secondary unnamed characters get killed.

It’s all so exhausting.

Just like “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” or “Wonder Woman,” or “Justice League,” or “Aquaman,” or the entire third act of “The Flash,” the fights lose all significance because they involve characters who can’t be hurt, who can’t be killed, who don’t get tired and who never stop fighting back.

It’s impossible to become invested when there’s nothing at stake.

One reason so many people cried at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War” was not because it was unexpected that so many heroes would die, it was because Thanos was such a great villain that when he finally, inevitably snapped his fingers, there was nothing that could be done to stop it.

I don’t know how to reconcile this conundrum, but I do know that it doesn’t feel the same in most Marvel Studios’ movies, and it doesn’t feel the same in any of the DC-directed Gunn movies like “Suicide Squad,” because Gunn understands how to properly execute a fight so that it slowly builds in intensity, allowing viewers to realize not every hero might make it out of the fight alive, including their favorites.

There’s a mid-credits scene at the end of “Blue Beetle” that teases a possible storyline steeped in the character’s initial introduction in the mid-1960s.

Here’s to hoping that tease means we might eventually see Booster Gold on the big screen.

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This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2023.