★★★☆☆
If you’ve seen the trailer for Blue Beetle, DC Studios’ latest stab at this whole superhero business, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’ve seen this one before.
You might reckon the lad in the suit is probably a promising young scamp given special powers by some kind of alien/parasite/science experiment gone wrong. You might guess he has to learn to control his powers, trust his friends and/or family and stop the schemes of a nineties icon-turned nefarious corporate psychopath.
You could also safely assume there’ll be a villain in a slightly bigger, more gun-heavy version of the hero’s suit at the opposite end of the colour spectrum, one never referred to by his name because in the comics he’s called something which a Hollywood exec has decided is no longer a menacing-enough title for a man with missiles coming out of his spine. Something like Red Lobster, only not that.
And, in fairness, you’d be right. The villain’s name, for those wondering, is Carapax, the Indestructible Man. It’s a shame they didn’t have the confidence to roll with that.
In this version of the standard superhero template, the young lad in the suit is Jaime Reyes (Cobra Kai’s Xolo Maridueña), a bright young spark back from college with dreams of pulling his family in Palmera City out of poverty. Struggling to find a job and stuck scraping gum from deckchairs for the wealthy Kord family, he stumbles across a sparkly blue scarab that turns him into something closely resembling Iron Man.
But Blue Beetle is also slightly more than that. Sure, the character is more or less a cookie-cutter substitute for Marvel’s Spider-Man, with the powers of Iron Man and Green Lantern thrown into a blender. And the film completely wastes Susan Sarandon in the role of villainous exposition machine, a crime so heinous they really should drop a pound or two off the ticket price. But the film is also very funny, and has just enough of its own quirks and foibles to distinguish itself from the rest of the super-powered pack.
To put it crudely, at least the blue beetle costume does look pretty cool (Credit: Warner Bros.)
Maridueña proves perfectly charming in the lead role, even if several of his scenes are stolen by his extended family. The ‘stoic superhero with a goofy family’ trope might not be the film’s most original addition, but the Reyes clan add enough inventive humour and a genuine, slightly chaotic group feel that they really mark Blue Beetle out as something a little more special than you might expect.
The film also embraces its character’s inherent silliness with only a little bit of snide “can that hunk of junk even fly” commentary. With this and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, it really does feel like DC have finally nailed the light-hearted, family adventure tone missing from most recent super-powered offerings.
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If Blue Beetle had come out fifteen, ten, or even five years ago, it might have been a smash hit. As it is, it seems destined to spend its life condemned to the “not another superhero movie” drawer. And while that is a bit of a shame, it’s hard to argue that it does much to avoid that accusation.
Blue Beetle arrives in cinemas on 18 August.
