First Take: Blue Beetle - how and why did film Twitter write it off that early?

SYNOPSIS: An alien scarab chooses Jaime Reyes to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the recent college graduate with a suit of armor that’s capable of extraordinary powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero known as Blue Beetle.

DC’S run of late has been very hit and miss, you just have to look at the box office returns to see how the extended universe has fared post-Snyder to see how fans have taken to it. But with two more films before Mr Gunn takes over fully, Blue Beetle feels like the end of school term summer party, the season finale if you will, that just goes out to have some fun before Aquaman 2 takes us home later in the year.

The Mexican representation is strong with Angel Manuel Soto’s direction, and coming in at 2 hours 7 minutes, it gets the job done with a good pace (the 7 minutes are end credits), although at times feeling a bit cliched for its own good. Saying that, Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer’s script does have some fun with the whole origin story, as it uses the formula that rival Marvel used for Ant-Man 1, which is taking humour and heaviness and blending the two together. Plus on the tech side, we have two names from the indie scene to round it all out- it’s shot well by Pawel Pogorzelski, and fellow Ari Aster collaborator Bobby Krlic handles the score.

As for the cast, we have Xolo Mariduena as the lead, and it is obvious that he could carry this franchise if DC push on with a sequel under the new Gunn/Safran regime - he handles this role fairly well, and he could easily grow into the character more if he is given the chance to do so. They also leaned into the world of the telenovela while casting, with Bruna Marquezine, Adriana Barraza, Damian Alcazar and Raoul Trujillo representing the local culture, with George Lopez as the comic relief, and Susan Sarandon as a rare villainous character. Sure, Twitter and the comics community might’ve ripped this one apart, but all things considered, with the background of this film’s commissioning (originally being made for HBO Max)… it will find its audience regardless of being a box office bomb in cinemas.

THE VERDICT

Blue Beetle is a perfectly fine, fun, but predictable DC film that just goes out to have as much of a good time as it can. As a standalone thing, it works. But with the wider restructure of the studio looming, and that box office result, whether it gets a sequel or not remains to be seen- if it does, then this could be a bit of a refreshing new franchise.

RATING: 3.5/5