Something borrowed, something blue

Although the latest movie from DC, “Blue Beetle,” is an OK film it has the potential to be something much more.

The film stars Xolo Maridueña, an actor previously known for his role in the Netflix show “Cobra Kai” as well as his role in the NBC show “Parenthood.” Maridueña stars as recent college graduate Jaime Reyes, who, upon returning home from school, seeks out a job at Kord Industries to help his family and accidentally comes into contact with a piece of sentient alien technology that transforms him into the superhero Blue Beetle.

Frankly, Maridueña’s performance in the film is nothing to shrug off. He definitely took the role of Jaime Reyes seriously and gave us a great performance that fits both the comedic and dramatic parts of the film very well. George Lopez was also another stand-out member of the cast who absolutely steals every scene that he’s in and really helps the movie to be funny.

However, these two great performances do not excuse the film from having flaws. One of these flaws is the writing. Although the story is funny most of the dialogue is passable at its best and at its worst sounds like it was generated by AI.

Speaking of AI, most of the scenes in this film draw clear parallels from other comic book films, whether that be 2008’s Iron Man, 2021’s Shang-Chi, 2002’s Spider- Man, 2018’s Venom, or even 2011’s Green Lantern, and this is certainly not by accident. Some of these parallels are so heavy that it seems as though the writers fed 100 hours of comic book films into a computer and asked it to generate a “Blue Beetle” movie.

My main complaint is that everything in this movie has been done by another superhero movie already, and even the parts that the film does a better job at like the scenes with his family or the inventive fight choreography are spoiled by the fact that 20 other films have done those concepts to death twice over.

This isn’t to say that the movie is bad; it honestly was pretty good and I enjoyed the film as a whole. It was a nice breath of fresh air for this genre and it was nice to just have a solid origin story for a fun, lighthearted hero. But I also think this film would have been much better if it had been released 15 years ago before all of the superhero fatigue set in.

Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a fun movie about what if Spider-Man had Iron Man’s suit and Green Lanterns powers, this is the movie for you. 6/10