[Review] Blue Beetle (5.5/10)

 

Title - Blue Beetle
Production - Warner Bros., DC Entertainment, The Safran Company
Starring - Xolo Mariduena, Belissa Escobedo, Bruna Marquezine, George Lopez, Adriana Barraza, Damian Alcazar, Susan Sarandon, Elpidia Carrillo, Becky G
Writer - Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer
Director - Angel Manuel Soto
Release - 24 August 2023

If you blow up this poster and take a look at the blonde lady, that's not Susan Sarandon! Who's doing these touchups that are going overboard?

But the movie, like this poster, was very underwhelming. And if I were to describe the movie with one word, I'd use "unimpressive".

Had Blue Beetle came out before the very first Iron Man, maybe we'd be celebrating this as a comic book movie that had a good family dynamic with a bit of heart at the end. But we've already seen that even in another DC property, Shazam!

Other than being the first Mexican superhero on the big screen, the writer and director didn't do very much to make me care for the protagonist, even though it's competently performed by Xolo Mariduena.

Also, personally, it's very difficult for me to follow a story when there's alien technology involved (cue one of the few jokes that made me laughed and delivered by George Lopez). Because when there's alien tech, that means you have to buy in to the alternate science the movie would have to employ. And when there's no explanation for how the tech works, it then seemed like the laws of the alternate physics were made up as we went along. 

Plus towards the end of the final fight, the alien tech also contradicted itself when it stopped Mariduena's character from wanting to do something. The way that character arc unfolded I would have thought their intentions would have synced up by then.

But credit to Lopez who easily was a scene stealer throughout the film, though I did find it hard to accept the fact that this older gentleman-hippie was a tech wizard.

The main few cast members with Bruna Marquezine and Belissa Escobedo were enjoyable, with the rest of the supporting cast delivering a believable family dynamic. But the movie suffered also from a lack of consistency in the form of Susan Sarandon's character with Marquezine's character from when they first met to their final scene. 

Also, the editing were very wonky at times. It felt like the editor knew how to stitch a sequence together but the way each scene was shot didn't gel well together.

There wasn't anything that's really worth catching for this movie other than it being the first movie in the new DCU.