I saw Blue Beetle this last weekend, and this is a review with a few very minor spoilers. I'm not sure why I thought this movie was going to be spectacular. Maybe it's because I've enjoyed watching Kamen Rider with my roommate, and I've enjoyed that to some extent (it's hit or miss from episode to episode, and the acting is never great). If you don't know, Kamen Rider is a Japanese live action series that features flimsy plots where it's all about the guys in crazy suits fighting each other (the suits look like bugs or have many bug-like features to them). Think of Iron Man but only with a preying mantis helmet, and you've got the idea. Needless to say, the entire Kamen Rider community has been buzzing about Blue Beetle, so you know this movie is targeting a certain demographic.
After having viewed it, I can say confidently that I would watch another Jaime Reyes movie for sure. But Blue Beetle was just okay. The family interaction is great, I liked every scene George Lopez was in, but in many ways the movie just kinda made him into the Mexican version of Doc Brown from Back to the Future. And Reyes' roll as "Blue Beetle" gave off a lot of Spiderman vibes, but it wasn't Spiderman. I felt (while watching) that it would have been more effective to have him stand as his own and not borrow so much from Spiderman. However, now that I've seen the movie, I have no idea what that is going to look like, and maybe the writers didn't either, which is why we got what we got.
Additionally, the source material highlights a problem with DC heroes in general. The whole "Anything you can imagine, I can create" thing is the reason why most DC heroes are overpowered, and its difficult to portray them in movies. At the same time, a lot of people did criticize Iron Man for his magical nanotech that can solve any problem by the time Infinity War came out, but at least the few iterations had mechanics and weaknesses. The scarab creates a perfect magical suit, and because of that, I'm less invested in the "hero who gets swept up by a super powerful artifact that he doesn't know how to control" trope.
I did love that the movie went out of its way to treat Mexican culture in a way that I suspect Mexicans might agree with as opposed to "hard-working and plucky working class people fleeing drug lords" which is usually what we get. And in that respect, DC does deserve to be rewarded for at least trying to not paint-by-numbers about non-white characters.
So, to finish, it's not the most original superhero movie, but it's crafted with love. It was worth full price. I just don't know if I'd ever watch it again. It'll be interesting to see how it meshes with the new DC universe being put together by James Gunn. Anyone else see Blue Beetle over the weekend? If so, what did you think?
I didn't see it. Not really regretting it as you're the second Blogger reviewer who's said it's just OK. It's a little sad because I liked some of the comics I read and I liked the second season of Young Justice that prominently featured this version of the character.
ReplyDeleteThe Spider-Man parallels I would agree with though I think in some ways it compares more to the Miles Morales version than the Peter Parker version. For one thing, this Blue Beetle is not the original (it's the third iteration) and the character is a minority. And it originally spun out of the 52 series in the mid-2000s, which was around the same time Miles Morales was introduced, so DC was probably trying to compete. Kind of like how after the success of Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan version) DC came out with a Dr. Fate who was an Arab or Arab-American teenager, which wasn't nearly as successful.
Anyway, they probably should have just stuck to the original plan and put it out on streaming. Then it's a lot harder to categorize it as a flop. Which even though it was #1 in the weekend, it definitely was a flop. Though it probably didn't cost DC/WB as much as The Flash or Shazam 2.
Sometimes it's just nice to see a movie. I had not even heard of this before.
ReplyDelete