Film Review - Blue Beetle (2023)

Blue Beetle is the latest DC comics film to come out this year after Shazam: Fury of the Gods and the Flash with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom to come out in December (I can’t believe that kept its release date instead of Dune 2: Long Live the Fighters but I digress) and stars Xolo Mariduena as Jamie Reyes a young university graduate wanting to find a good job so he can help his family including his sister (Belissa Escobedo), his Mama (Elpidia Carillo from Predator), his Papa (Damian Alcazar), his Nana (Adriana Barraza) and his Uncle (George Reyes) but one day he finds an Alien Scarab that then bonds itself to his body and that gets the attention of the head of Kord Industries (Susan Sarandon) who wants the Scarab for her own purposes.

Blue Beetle isn’t a bad movie in the least and I had a lot more fun with it than I thought I would but if you have seen the preview you have more or less seen the movie in a condensed form as it just hits every single beat these movies have hit so often especially in the last 15 years since Iron Man and the Dark Knight in 2008 which led to the genre being so thoroughly mined for every version of this concept that this just feels way too late especially with James Gunn hoping to salvage the DC franchise with Superman Legacy.

And this again is not a bad movie mainly because the family dynamic works very well in this movie and brings a lot of heart to it which has been sorely missing in the Fast and Furious franchise no matter how many times Vin Diesel says Family in a low monotone voice since the passing of Paul Walker 10 years ago and all of those actors play off of each other very well, I particularly liked Lopez as the Uncle and Barraza as the Nana who may have an interesting past of her own.

As for Xolo as Jamie/Blue Beetle he is very good and holds his own very well and he has good chemistry with Brune Marquezine as Jenny his potential love interest but as for Susan Sarandon it really feels like she took this part for the cash and a lot of her line readings sound that way at times as this role does very little for her.

And so that was Blue Beetle and look its perfectly fine and a better movie than Shazam 2 or the Flash were but if you saw the preview you more or less saw the movie and there’s nothing new here and this genre has been so hollowed out now that its time for a rest from it all for a while despite the well done family plotline, 2 out of 5.