(courtesy IMP Awards)
Impressive though they are, with blockbuster epicness leaking from their every oversized, CGI-enhanced narrative pore, one thing that superhero often don’t have in abundance is a bold and affecting sense of real affecting humanity.
Oh, they have pivotally impactful moments – well, moments engineered to be that way, anyway with music and tears and grave, thoughtful words uttered just so – but like much of the rest of their stories, they come and go with little more than a whispered memory that they were at all.
They’re not bad films necessarily, and many are a great deal of fun to sit through and fulfill their calling to be popcorn-chomping, reality-diverting entertainment which is what one of the great gifts cinema has given us (along with all storytelling for that matter) but many, though not all, lack a sense that they are reaching into you, crushing your heart and then bringing it back to life in a way that makes all the emotional ups and downs, the cinematic suffering, seem more than worth the while.
Thankfully, there are entries in the genre such as Blue Beetle, a film likely discounted by many because it hails from the DC camp which, let’s be honest, has not exactly excelled when it comes to movies based upon its considerable IP.
At least in the modern age.
Once upon time, Batman and Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Aquaman were fighting figures on everyone’s lips, the subject of stories spun on TV and movies that connected with people in a way that kept well and truly part of the zeitgeist.
Those times are long past, and though DC keeps trying to join the storied rank of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to give its come book heroes a current life beyond paper, pen and ink, it hasn’t really succeeded all that well in the modern era, save for possible the first Wonder Woman movie, Joker, a stray Batman film here and there, and maybe the first Aquaman film.
But we are not here to rank DC films necessarily, though many sites have given it a red-hot go, but to praise the fact that in Blue Beetle, DC not only serves up a robustly impressive superhero film but one that represents everything that can be good and laudable about the genre.
For starters, its protagonist is not some twisted, agonised lone wolf soul finding redemption and purpose solely in his newfound abilities, and in this case, often unwanted abilities, at least at first.
Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle (Xolo Maridueña) sits firmly and happily in the bosom of a loving and gloriously dysfunctional family, the kind that may not always see eye-to-an-eye but which is unquestioningly and unconditionally there for each other in a way that we all want our families to be.
They’re facing some incredibly tough economic challenges on the fringes of Palmera City, a glistening, corporate-shaped mega city of glistening skyscrapers and wealth that sits hard along ghettoes of impoverishment, the place the Reyes family is nevertheless proud to call home.
Dad Alberto (Damián Alcázar), mum Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), matriarch Nana (Adriana Barraza), sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo) and uncle Rudy (George Lopez), who dotes on his truck Taco are a great big hug of inclusivity and love and while Jaime has been away in Gotham City studying pre-law, his heart has always been with his family and the certainty of belonging and home they represent.
Back from studying as Blue Beetle opens, Jaime is back to find a job, help his family surmount their current struggles (which, rather comically, are a litany of ever-escalating woes they have hidden from their son so he would keep his concentration on his studies) and forge a future until a sentient blue Scarab picks him to be its new host – quite how and why and where must be left to the film which, all the way along, gleefully mixes the seriously mythic with the gloriously grounded, black humour-laced and even mischievously comedic human to superbly watchable effect – and his life, and home, and really everything is turned momentously, and in some cases, cataclysmically upside down.
Yes, in the first cinematic adaptation of the Blue Beetle, which continues the trend of bringing considerable linguistic and cultural diversity to cinematic superhero storytelling, this time with a firm focus on Mexican family, love and lore, there is a larger-than-life cartoonish villain in the form of Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) who will stop at nothing to turn the Scarab into a super soldier weapon in the initial form of Lieutenant Ignacio Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), but really what sets the film apart from its genre mates, is the raw, unfettered humanity that is everywhere in the film.
Jaimes does not want to be a superhero and is understandably freaked out and appalled when he is turned into one; he doesn’t need an alien intelligence to turn him into a superhero to feel whole and purposeful because he has his family for that, nor does he need to feel valued and important by the acquisition of strange and scarily wonderful powers because his sense of self is already robust and full formed.
His family too may have issues aplenty on their hands but they love each other, they have each other and most importantly they will always be there for one another, something that becomes abundantly clear throughout, but most especially in the final act where every last one of them proves pivotal to Jaime’s eventual success over the Victoria Kord, whose neice, Jenny (Bruna Marquezine) becomes an ally of the Reyes family and a love interest of Jaime who is not even remotely a damsel in distress but very much a woman who stands on her own two dispossessed feet.
Every last part of the narrative reflects an intimacy of emotion that elevates some of the stock standard superhero moments – though even these are laced with rare humanity and humour and at times, some raw, grieving sadness that guts you as you watch; when bad things happen, they are BAD and Blue Beetle is not afraid to let them affect in profound and lasting way – and gives them an affecting emotional muscularity that makes all the violent fights for truth and justice, or is that just sheer survival, really feel like they mean something beyond epic set pieces.
Blue Beetle is a lot of fun to sit through no doubt, and we should give thanks to writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer for giving director Ángel Manuel Soto such richly, emotionally complex and comedically perfect material to work with, and much of the enjoyment of the film comes from its sparkling character interactions and hilariously, warmth-filled dialogue, but it is also a beautiful exploration of how anything that changes you, be it a new job or yes, a sentient alien Scarab symbiotically bonding with you, shouldn’t be a substitute for what makes you YOU, but rather something extra and that it’s only worth something if it happens when you are in the bosom of a loving family, sure of yourself and your sense of right and wrong, and ready to take on life no matter what it throws at you.