Blue Beetle – 2023 – DC Super Hero
First of all, I’ll have to admit that I never heard about the DC comic superhero Blue Beetle before. I have never read any adventure featuring him, or it, or whatever it is supposed to be. In the movie, however, it’s kind of a thing that comes from outer space and lays dormant for a number of years until it finds its host. With that said, it is a parasite of sorts. Not necessarily a bad parasite, but still a parasite that needs a host to function.
As I said, I never heard of Blue Beetle prior to this film but I figure you don’t really have to. The story and origin seem fairly simple. I guess, what happens next is the complicated one, if any. The story centers around this Mexican family and in particular the son of the family – Jamie, who has gone to school and has some kind of degree. I’m not sure what his degree is in though. But the main point of it is that since he’s of Mexican descent, nobody will offer him a job anyway. He has to get by with cleaning jobs and other non-qualified job descriptions. It’s about racism in the world today.
Blue Beetle
There are a lot of small details leading up to the point where he gets his hands on this thing that is smuggled out of the big corporation – Kord Industries. He has nothing to do with the smuggling, really, it just sort of happens and he becomes part of it. Furthermore, this thing, which looks like a Blue Beetle lights up when he touches it, and somehow it gets incorporated into his body, in his DNA. Those are the main parts and setup of the story to come. For me, it is far too humorous, silly, and even ridiculous at times. I get that it’s supposed to be funny and light-hearted but it’s just annoying. I think the movie would have benefitted from a more serious tone. There doesn’t have to be a joke embedded in every scene.
Now we get to know the secret of the Kord cooperation. They are really developing a new kind of weapon based on the Blue Beetle. But they haven’t been able to crack the code even if they had access to the Beetle for a very long time. We are talking years here. No one has been able to access it like this Mexican kid has. In other words. The cooperation needs it back, or rather they need the code embedded in this Mexican kid. So, what do they do? They capture him and try to extract the data from him. He is expendable of course and they don’t care if he lives or dies. Actually, it’s preferable if he dies in the process. This in turn leads to the final battle. The Blue Beetle needs to fight for its survival against this man-made man-machine.
Annoying
First of all, most of the humor got to go. It gets quite annoying when they try to squeeze in a joke with a shoehorn every other sentence or scene. I know they mean well and try to make it funny but it’s really not. If you try too hard you’re bound to fail in the end.
I also think that the morals of the film are pretty annoying. The racist tone, or rather anti-racist tone is tiresome. The Mexican family, where family is the only thing that really matters. They take care of one another and standing against this multinational corporation is commendable of course. But also quite improbable. The characters are either black or white, either good or evil. There’s nothing really in between. It would work in a movie aiming for very small children perhaps, but I think Blue Beetle has its main audience in a little older youngsters.
The action scenes are pretty cool though. I like them. Most of them anyway. And I like the overall story about the original idea the Kord corporation seems to have had with the technology. But I feel that action scenes alone cannot carry the movie. It becomes a flashy surface that barely makes the film watchable where everything underneath the surface is way too much to handle. The characters are so wooden that it’s not even funny. This could have been done so much better!
