Director: Angel Manuel Soto
Genre: Action/Adventure
Cast: Xolo Maridueña, Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar, Raoul Max Trujillo, Susan Sarandon, George Lopez
Duration: 127 minutes
Now showing in Cinemas
Blue Beetle is DC’s first screen Latino superhero, a recent development in the history of a D-grade character summed up here in his own film as “like the Flash… or Superman… but not as good”. Scraping the character barrel and first meant for cable, his debut also resists the grim “adult” gravitas routinely borrowed from Alan Moore and Frank Miller’s Eighties comics, popping with bright colours and breezy, communal humanity.
Jamie Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) is our teenage hero, forced to give up post-college ambitions when his family home is threatened with repossession in Palmera City’s gentrifying ghetto. Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), head of the city’s dominant Kord Industries, has meanwhile located the Scarab, alien tech which turns its chosen host into the Blue Beetle, symbiotically gifting armoured flight, strength and strategy. Handed the stolen Scarab for safekeeping by Victoria’s hot young rebel niece Jenny (Bruna Marquezine), Jaime accidentally triggers a transformation splicing The Fly’s body-horror with Venom’s crawling alien infection. Jaime subsequently tests out his powers like Shazam!, discovers an ex-Beetle Batcave-like HQ, and has Iron Man-like armoured battles with Victoria’s pet Latino enforcer, Carapax (Raol Max Trujillo).
This threadbare super-material is emblematic of a genre that has become like the Western, burned out by TV and cinema overload. Even Westerns didn’t consume cinemagoing the way superheroes have.
–Grace Kenganzi
Don’t want to miss out on any story? For updates on all Sqoop stories, follow this link on Telegram: https://t.me/Sqoop
