NOW IN THEATERS! We now have the first installment of the James Gunn DC-Universe in Angel Manuel Soto and Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer’s Blue Beetle. Full Disclosure: I’ve never heard of the Blue Beetle until the movie was announced. I don’t know, nor do I care about the lore. Just make a good movie. That’s all I ask.
This is the story of Kord Industries. Its founder Ted Kord discovered an alien artifact, the Scarab, which held great powers to anyone it melded with…which wasn’t Ted Kord. But Kord created technology to replicate what the Scarab might have done and became the legendary Blue Beetle for ages ago.
Jump to today, Ted Kord is dead, and his sister, Victoria (Susan Sarandon), has taken over the company, found the Scarab, and plans to create an army of Symbiotes for the highest bidder. Her bodyguard, Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), is the guinea pig super-soldier.
Seeing the greed in the dangerous Victoria, Ted’s daughter, Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), steals the Scarab and gives it to an unwitting Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña), who was applying for a low-level job at Kord Industries that day. When Jaime takes it home, the Scarab chooses him as the symbiote’s new host, and he becomes the Blue Beetle. Now Victoria will stop at nothing to get the Scarab back, even if it means killing Jaime and his loveable immigrant family.
I’m leaning barely to the recommend side of the equation here. There’s enough good in his very flawed movie that is worth taking young, but not too young, viewers to see it. The biggest downfall of Blue Beetle is the general story, and with a better focus on character development, Blue Beetle should have been a much better, if not great, movie.

“…the Scarab chooses him as the symbiote’s new host, and he becomes the Blue Beetle.”
The problem is Jaime Reyes. We only sympathize with him because he’s a nice, good-looking young man who is also an immigrant for more sympathy juice. He’s put in danger along with his family. Yes, that’s sympathy, but that’s hardly an inspiring character study. Ultimately, the film’s theme becomes “My family is better than your family.”
How does Jaime change throughout the film? By the end, he has thoroughly learned his superpowers with the help of his family. That’s not the hero’s journey and audiences…even small audiences deserve more from their heroes.
That said, there’s good in the Blue Beetle. As Jaime, Xolo Maridueña is a very likable person. Belissa Escobedo is also likable as Jaime’s almost side-kick, Milagro Reyes, as well as Adriana Barraza as Nana Reyes, who is a gun-toting grandma (it’s in the trailer) and finds a way to justify her skills. George Lopez is fine as the conspiracy tech-genius Rudy, who built a device long ago that just happened to solve the one major problem Jaime needed solving.
I appreciate the fact that his film was made with a modest Hollywood budget—decent effects for a mid-range superhero movie. Otherwise, the superhero story is pretty straightforward. Good guys need to defeat the bad guys. The inclusion of Mexican culture worked the same way Shang-Chi did with Chinese culture (though Shang-Chi did it better)—the story of family and the inclusion of a romance angle jettison the film across the recommended line.
Worth seeing, but with many missed opportunities. Here’s how Blue Beetle could have made a lot of money. Give Jaime a fatal flaw that young kids…particularly boys, can identify with. Maybe devotion to family or casting aside Gen Z narcissism for the betterment of the world. Something to give him an inspiring story to tell. Now remove the dick jokes and the swearing, and you have an excellent, wholesome film to which parents can bring their kids. It’s a proven measurement of success… creatively and financially.