Jaime Reyes had great power thrust upon him. OK, it was actually a fast-food burger carton that was thrust upon him, but you’ll get the gist in a second.
It all started when he flew back home after finishing college. He touched down at the Palmera City airport, his family was all there to hug him and cheer him, and things looked sunny.
But then his sister, Milagro, let it slip that the Reyes family could soon lose their home. Turns out that Jaime’s dad had a heart attack while Jaime was away at school. And he had to sell his small business. Now, there are a mere three months to scrape up the cash they need.
After a number of failed job interviews, Jaime goes to the very impressive KORD industries building looking for employment. And that’s when Jennifer Kord, the pretty daughter of one of the megacorp’s founders, shoves a fast-food carton into his hands and tells him to protect it with his life.
An odd request, to be sure. But when someone that attractive gives you something to protect, well, you do it. Even if it’s a burger box.
What Jaime doesn’t realize is that Ms. Kord has just stolen an important bit of tech and put it in that carton: a scarab thingie that her wicked aunt, Victoria, has spent 15 years hunting. Victoria plans to use the scarab to create a full line of super-solder outfits. Think of them as a cross between an Iron Man suit and a symbiotic space alien.
Anyway, Jennifer stole the scarab to stop that super-soldier production plan, and Jaime was in the right place at the right time to get it out.
However, before you can say, “Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese,”the blue mechanical scarab in the burger box burrows beneath Jaime’s skin. And then the thing transforms Jaime and takes him out for a test drive. Now, he not only has to come to grips with a robotic voice in his head, but a whole bunch of incredible new powers.
He can fly, for one thing. And he’s invulnerable. His hands can transform into any weapon he can think of.
I mean, sure, Jaime was desperately looking for a great new job. But this is ridiculous!
Along with Jaime, a likeable guy who wants to do the right thing by his family, we also meet the whole Reyes clan. They obviously love Jaime and each other. And they fight for one another. We hear of their story, which spans three generations. It’s a tale of travelers immigrating to a new land while keeping their family, history and culture secure and strong.
Jaime’s dad, in particular, is a kind man who looks for positive possibilities amid difficult circumstances. He regularly encourages his son to find his purpose in life. He speaks of being thankful. He looks out for others financially despite his own monetary woes. Life is a journey, he says, and it’s important that they, as a family, travel together and support one another every step of the way.
We see the same sensibilities reflected in the surrounding Edge Keys community. It’s a working-class, Hispanic neighborhood whose community members rally together with food, drink and support when bad things happen.
We eventually see that Jennifer is cut from the same cloth. Her father, Ted Kord, worked diligently on behalf of others (he was the original Blue Beetle), and he instilled a desire to serve others in his daughter. Jennifer also talks about her deceased mother, a woman who taught others the value of protecting life. Jennifer tells Jaime that while her house is full of stuff, “Your house is full of love.”
When the scarab symbiote offers to give Jaime access to deadly weaponry, he declines in an effort to not kill. (Even though we see others, including Reyes family members, who aren’t so reluctant, as we’ll see below.)
During battle, Victoria Kord’s henchman, Carapax, ruthlessly pounds on Jaime and says that love for his family members makes him hesitate, makes him weak. But a rallying Jaime proclaims that his love for his family—and theirs for him—in fact makes him strong.
The is a painting of La Virgen de Guadalupe hanging in the Reyes’ home. We also see some family members cross themselves.
Jaime’s uncle tells him, “The universe has given you a gift.” While being drained of his life force, Jaime has a mental discussion with someone who recently passed away. It’s framed as an afterlife conversation of sorts in which that person tells the young man that his time has not yet come to die. And this individual declares that he will always be by Jaime’s side.
Jennifer wears some formfitting clothes. On a couple occasions, Jaime transforms back from his Blue Beetle symbiotic state (a Venom-like transformation) and is totally naked. His lower body is kept just offscreen. In one instance, however, his whole family sees him standing naked. Milagro winces and tells him to put his “huevos” away. And Uncle Rudy also references his own genitals at one point.
Jaime and Jennifer kiss. After their first “almost” kiss, Jaime has to cover the front of his pants to mask his physical reaction. A painting of a “pregnant” woman showcases a female figure holding a globe in the place of her extended abdomen.
Explosions and gunfire abound. Vehicles are smashed, a bus is sliced in half, a home explodes, and scenery is detonated by missile attacks and heavy weaponry.
Much of that destructive force comes from scores of Victoria Kord’s soldiers; their high-tech vehicles; and her super-suit clad henchman Carapax. She repeatedly tells them not only to kill Jaime but to target his defenseless family members as well. (In the heat of those attacks, family members are battered about, one is shot, and another dies from a heart attack.)
On the other side of that equation is Jaime’s Blue Beetle suit, and Ted Kord’s Blue Beetle weaponry.
Jaime flies into explosive battle but repeatedly works to pull back on the symbiotic scarab’s desire to kill anyone who is a threat. But the suit still unleashes powerful blasts of electricity, explosive shells and other weaponry. (By the story’s end, however, Jaime and the scarab have become so well synced that it stops an enraged Jaime from murdering a downed foe.)
The Blue Beetle battles escalate and become fiercely frenetic and destructive as the tech-clad Carapax gains more fearsome power and weaponry. We also see a Carapax flashback that features warring carnage. He’s physically decimated by an explosion and left heavily scarred and torn.
Jaime’s family members avail themselves of Ted Kord’s weaponry. Unlike Jaime, they have no compunctions about killing bad guys. (Ted Kord could never access the scarab’s powers, we’re told, and created other tech weapons and tools of his own.) Some of the Reyes family members use that weaponry to kill soldiers left and right. A large Blue Beetle ship bashes soldiers around and impales them with its metal legs. And Jaime’s grandmother, Nana, equips a large blaster and kills scores of men with glee. (It’s played for laughs that she was a revolucionaria in her youth and is adept at killing.)
Uncle Rudy talks about attacking people with a Molotov cocktail. Jaime is attached to a large piece of equipment and drained of his energy and lifeforce while the scarab is drained of its code. Victoria tells her technician to get all the information she desires and make sure Jaime is dead. A man on the other side of a window is attacked, and gore splashes the glass.
After his pounding first stint as the Blue Beetle, Jaime is left covered in bruises and cuts.
The dialogue is scattered with 15 uses of “h—” and a dozen uses of the s-word. There’s one unfinished f-word in the mix. And we hear multiple exclamations of “d–n,” “a–” and “b–ch.”
God’s name is misused more than a dozen times (once in combination with “d–n”). And there are a handful of crude references to the male anatomy.
Jaime and his sister drink beer together. His dad drinks a glass of tequila. We see people quaffing champagne at a Kord event. A community gathering features food and beer.
Two guys on a street corner talk about taking drugs and waiting for the effects to kick in.
Things get a bit crazy after Jaime comes into his volatile Blue Beetle powers, but Uncle Rudy declares that Jaime’s mother must not call the police because some of the family members are illegal.
Uncle Rudy is also a conspiracy-minded man who sees some form of cloaked collusion and deception at every turn. While in Ted Kord’s Blue Beetle ship, Uncle Rudy flips a “bug fart” switch that blows a cloud of knock-out gas at soldiers.
Blue Beetle is one of those movies that should have been way better than it is. Way better! The whole Blue Beetle concept has a great comic book pedigree. And on paper the film has so many things going for it.
This story sports a handsome and likable underdog protagonist. He’s surrounded by a loving and supportive Hispanic family. He has a beautiful love interest whom he’s endearingly awkward around. Opposing him is a greedy and destruction-minded villainess who almost screams, “Hate me!” And then there’s all that CGI-friendly superhero tech just ready to light up the screen.
Despite all of that, however, the film as a whole still falls far short of the potential of its parts.
Why?
Because the writing is clownishly bad.
Because this film’s comic action is absurd to the point of being cringy.
And to top it all off, Blue Beetle’s assortment of crude language paired with its granny-kill-those-bad-guys violence is bad enough that young viewers—who ought to be flocking in with superhero exuberance—will be better off watching cartoons at home.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
