Movie Review: Blue Beetle

My kids wanted to go see a move this weekend for National Cinema Day (so they were offering tickets for $4 per ticket). Blue Beetle seemed the least objectionable of those films offered, and it had been given a so-so review by the Critical Drinker, so off we went spending a small fortune for popcorn and sodas. Based on the offerings, these were all movies that had been or were doing poorly in the theaters and the theaters were probably doing this to recoup some of their money.

    In any event, Blue Beetle is a mashup of the 1980s television show, The Greatest American Hero and the Iron Man franchise with a bit of Green Lantern and Ant Man on the side. It was aimed at a Hispanic/Latino audience and quite heavy on the pro-illegal alien propaganda which appeared to be quite popular with much of the audience (although the theater was only about 1/3 full). The basic moral of the story is that white people had their chance and now it is time for Hispanics to take what is rightfully theirs (even if it was created by white guys) due to their working hard in sneaking across the border and taking crappy jobs for the last couple of decades.

    The basic plot is that the main character, Jaime Reyes, returns home having just graduated from college with a useless degree to find that his father has had a heart attack, lost the family business, and the family is broke and on the verge of losing their home. Being a Hispanic family, there are three generations living in the home, but apparently only the main character's father actually held a job. As we learn as the move progresses, Reyes' parents and grandmother are illegal aliens (making Reyes and his sister anchor babies), and the grandmother apparently was some sort of communist revolutionary/terrorist. While Reyes, himself, is reluctant to kill anyone (and it becomes a plot twist between him and the AI that controls the Scarab), the rest of his family don't share that aversion. I assume it must be their communist background.

    The story takes place in a city (Palmera City) which apparently is the DC's Universe's version of Miami. The neighborhood in which Reyes' family lives is being bought up by the evil Kord Industries to be developed into high-end condos. Kord, under the direction of a strong female leader named Victoria Kord, is also attempting to build an army of Iron Man type suits using a mixture of Earth technology and a bit of alien technology (the Scarab from which the move derives its title). It's not clear why they need the Scarab because the prototype suit seems to work well enough without it, but whatever.

    So with Kord trying to take his family's home, Reyes (and his sister), of course, get jobs as janitors/caretakers at Victoria Kord's mansion. Reyes sister decides she has to take a dump in one of the bathrooms in the main mansion instead of using the facilities reserved for the hired help, gets caught, and so the two are fired. But it provides an opportunity for Reyes to meet a young, Latina-looking Jenny Kord (the rightful heir to Kord Industries), who has just learned of Victoria's evil ways. This will prove important because the next day, Jenny steels the Scarab and, in desperation after a security alert is issued, hands it off to Reyes for him to sneak out of the Kord Headquarters. (How he is able to leave the headquarters during a security lockdown without being searched is never explained or shown). 

    Reyes and his family, against strict instructions, play around with the Scarab which decides it likes Reyes and immediately decides to form a symbiotic relationship with him and takes up residency in his spine and brain stem. What follows is some highjinx as Reyes tries to learn how to control his Iron Man like "suit" which can apparently create whatever weapon he can imagine. He also gets into a fight with Victoria's bodyguard, Ignacio Carapax, who has a prototype super suit that appears to be almost the equal of the alien suit used by Reyes. Reyes has an opportunity to kill Carapax but doesn't because, he proclaims, it is wrong to kill people. 

    Reyes and Jenny then head to her father's old mansion and his secret Blue Beetle bat cave ... er, beetle bunker. In a nod to Ant Man, we learn that Jenny's father had originally found the Scarab decades earlier, developed a lot of high tech gadgets and weapons and apparently been the original Blue Beetle before mysteriously disappearing. 

    In the interim, wanting her Scarab back, the evil white woman Victoria decides to track down and capture Reyes and his family. Reyes is not there, but Kord's SWAT team captures the family. Reyes rescues them, but not before his father dies of a heart attack. Of course, Reyes is captured and hauled off to a secret base purchased by Kord Industries from the Cuban dictator Batista before Castro's glorious revolution.

    But as the saying goes, when you fight one Latino you are fighting the whole family. The Reyes family unites, grabs up a bunch of deadly high tech weapons developed by Jenny's peace-loving, anti-military father, and storm the island stronghold. There they proceed to shoot, crush, blow up, and otherwise kill dozens of Kord guards because killing is wrong ... unless it involves white guys. Reyes has  a vision of his dead father and learns that his destiny is to become the blue beetle. He gives in and fully merges with the Scarab and is then able to break free, but not before the software from the Scarab is downloaded into the super suits being developed by Kord.

    Finally, there is a big boss battle between Reyes and Carapax (now in an even more powerful suit curtesy of the software upgrade), but after Carapax is defeated, he realizes that he is only evil because of the American Yankee imperialists attacked the peaceful Sandinista village where he lived as a child, killing his mother. So Carapax turns on Victoria Kord, dragging her off before activating a self-destruct mechanism. 

    The end of the movie reminds me of the end of the book of Job. Jenny shows up to announce that Kord is no longer going to be buying up the property, will pay to fix the Reyes' house, and gives Reyes' uncle a new car to replace the one shot to pieces in the adventure. 

    Then Reyes and Jenny kiss and fly off to presumably make more Jaimes and Jennies. Because this film is aimed at Hispanics, it features a real family (i.e., all related, not some made up "family" consisting of close friends and associates) that was loving, not dysfunctional, and even openly religious (although there are limits even to that: Reyes' father tells him that the "universe"--not "God"--has a plan for him). There were also no openly homosexual characters. 

    So, to sum up, there was nothing tremendously new or inventive here, although it does stand out for not preaching LGBTQ. It had decent special effects and some good action scenes.

    Besides the glaring plot holes and lack of any real story (but what do you expect from a super-hero movie), there were three things I disliked about the film: first, the heavy "anti-imperialist" propaganda; second, the "we deserve your civilization because we successfully sneaked across the border" messaging; and, third, the way they made the Hispanic characters look stupid and foolish all through the film. The only character for which you have any respect is Reyes' father because he is the only one that behaves like an adult.