Blue Beetle Review

“Whatever you can imagine, I can create” – Khaji-Da

Despite having spent most of my life reading superhero comic books in various forms, the Blue Beetle is a character I haven’t really engaged with. As far as I knew, the last I had heard was way back in the mid-eighties, when I regularly read the newly re-vamped and re-launched Justice League title (mainly because Batman was in it) and Blue Beetle was one of the members.

Back then, he was Ted Cord – a multi-millionaire with access to some amazing gadgetry, including a passenger carrying flying vehicle in the shape of a bug. The Beetle himself though had no particular powers. He was pretty much, in my estimation, a Tony Stark/Iron Man knock off. His role in the Justice League was mainly as comic relief, along with the over confident Booster Gold. And it worked. He brought levity to the whole thing. One thing I was aware of, vaguely, was that he was not the original Blue Beetle. That one was powered somehow by a mystical scarab ornament. But I never read any of those stories. Bear in mind this was the eighties, and the world was different. No internet, no access to vast online libraries of DC comics, collected editions of Golden Age material weren’t a “thing”.

From playing the PlayStation game Injustice, I was aware that Blue Beetle had undergone a radical change in appearance from the eighties, but I didn’t really take much notice. There were slight enhancements to every character’s costume in that game (except Aquaman & Batman) so I shrugged and moved on with my life.

There, my cards are on the table and we’re bang up to date.

With the above in mind, a peripheral character like Blue Beetle struck me as a curious choice to feature in a movie. DC has a huge cast to choose from. Why not Green Lantern, or better yet, really push things and give us a Deadman of Spectre movie? (For those of you who are curious, Deadman is a vengeful ghost, Spectre is God’s hitman). But okay – Blue Beetle it is. So it was that Steve and I wandered into the multiplex for a pleasant late summer evening double bill of Blue Beetle and a 30th anniversary showing of Jurassic Park. (This put right what Steve called the greatest injustice of his life, as he’d been denied attending a cinema screening of it on its first release, and it’s his all-time favourite movie. The ONLY one of the whole franchise he hadn’t seen on the big screen. Oh, the pain, the denial. In my defence, and for the record – he was only 18 months old at the time of the film’s original release!)

Jurassic Park, thirty years later, was the film of the evening.

From its opening, Blue Beetle seemed derivative. I felt I had seen the film before, in bits and pieces of other films. It seemed (to me) half hearted at best and had the appearance of a lower budgeted movie intended film intended for a streaming service, or worse – a high end TV pilot for a series. Not a summer blockbuster. Subsequently, I discovered that it was originally intended for the HBO service. Trust me, it showed.

The plot has Cord Industries co-founder Victoria Cord (Susan Sarandon) discover an alien artefact known as the Scarab in the Antarctic wastes. She intends to use this to power her cyborg army project.

Meanwhile, Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena) comes home, having graduated from Gotham University and finds his poverty-stricken family are about to lose their home having already lost the family business. Seeking employment at Cord Industries, he comes into possession of the Scarab when a desperate niece of Victoria’s hands it to him to smuggle out of the Cord building. The Scarab chooses Jaime (pronounced “Hammy”) and joins with him, fusing itself to him, bestowing the identity of the Blue Beetle on him. This involves an armoured flight suit, some additional mechanical arms that come out of his back and….

…wait a minute. Hold it right there. Let’s pause.

Alien device chooses a worthy champion to wield its power? Didn’t we see that in Green Lantern? The device can physically create anything its user imagines? Again, isn’t that what the Green Lantern’s ring does? The armoured flight suit? Isn’t that uncomfortably close to Iron Man? Isn’t the helmet/mask just a blue-coloured version of Iron Man’s? Not to mention the Scarab, named Khaji-Da, can talk to him in his helmet like Jarvis does with Stark. And those arms sticking out the back – didn’t Tony Stark create the Iron Spider suit for Peter Parker with just those attachments?

The ability to suddenly deploy an arm cannon from nowhere? Isn’t that what Cyborg’s go-to?

An over-the-hill Hollywood star relentlessly chewing the scenery as the villain? Hell, I can go all the way back to most of the villains in the 1966 Batman series, but let’s not forget Faye Dunaway in the 1984 Supergirl.

But hey, at least we’re breaking new ground and representing an underprivileged non-white ethnic group front and centre as a superhero right? Except, um, Ms Marvel already did that. And better.

This is where I started to feel underwhelmed. I didn’t dislike the film as such, it just didn’t impress me. But I wanted to like it much more than I did.

There is a climactic fight between Blue Beetle and an equally scarab powered foe, who starts off by using electric whips to lash out at the hero. (For crying out loud, we saw THAT in Iron Man 2, thanks to Mickey Rourke) then the fight becomes a bargain basement retread of the battle between Iron Man and the Iron Monger from the first Iron Man film, but without the crowds, the immense property damage, or much of the drama. Even the mid-credit sting harks back to Ant-Man and clearly signposts where the sequel will be headed.

If the superhero genre is to survive (and I want it to) both Marvel and DC need to raise their sights a little higher. After the Flash movie blew my shoes completely off, I was hoping for more of the same, but what I got was several steps backward. Okay it’s not an Eternals or Quantumania level snooze fest but it’s nothing original either.

I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed.

Rob Rating - 4