Blue Beetle Isn't Filipino, But He Might As Well Be
Let’s be honest. Nobody was excited for Blue Beetle. I mean, in a year where we’ve had so many great films, including a couple of truly good superhero stories (with varying degrees of box office success), a movie about a virtually unknown Latino superhero seemed like something to wait for on a streaming service. But that would be a mistake. Blue Beetle is a joy, and you need to go out and see it with the whole barangay.
Who is the Blue Beetle, anyway? Xolo Maridueña from Netflix’ Cobra Kai plays Jaime Reyes, the freshly graduated son of Latin American immigrants who at the start of the film comes home to the fictional Palmera City in the Florida Keys. Palmera is to Blue Beetle what Gotham is to Batman or Metropolis is to Superman (incidentally, Jaime graduated from Gotham University), and its resident billionaire is Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), President and CEO of Kord Industries. You can’t have a superhero city without a billionaire like Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor, after all.
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Victoria gains possession of a mysterious artifact of extraterrestrial origin called the Scarab, and because billionaires tend to do billionaire things, she plans to use the tech to make America’s greatest export product: guns. Okay, not just guns but lasers, phasers, tasers, and every sort of weapon that goes zap! pow! or boom! in one Iron Manly armored suit dubbed the OMAC, or One Man Army Corps. Victoria’s niece Jennifer (Bruna Marquezine), son of her MIA brother Ted, doesn’t approve of these imperialist plans and steals the Scarab.
For something so powerful and important, the Scarab has virtually no security whatsoever, which allows Jenny to snatch it and toss it into a Big Belly Burger box and hand it over to Jaime, whom she’d just met once. She had absolutely no plan about what to do when she stole the Scarab, which is baffling and dumb but also super great for us because now Jaime gets his hands on it and the Scarab promptly decides to fuse with him in one of the most hilarious superhero origin stories ever.
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Unlike most superheroes who go through their superhero arc alone, the Blue Beetle’s origin story is a family affair. Jaime’s dad Alberto (Damián Alcazar), mom Rocio (Elipidia Carillo), younger sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), grandmother Nana (Adriana Barraza), and uncle Rudy (George Lopez) are all there when the Scarab fuses itself to him and it’s a real riot. Jaime’s family is the heart of the film, and it should resonate with every Filipino viewer who might find the Reyeses awfully familiar.
Rudy’s ‘taco’, a souped-up Toyota Tacoma with a car horn that plays La Cucaracha might as well be your tito’s family jeepney that plays buduts on full blast. Nana is everybody’s Lola, walking around the house in her duster and pinching her apos’ cheeks. And Escobedo is absolutely wonderful as Milagro, the cheeky and lovable younger sister — and blessed is the family that has one of those, right? From their Catholicism to their use of Vicks Vaporub, the Reyeses are practically Filipino, which makes perfect sense since we’re considered the Mexicans of Asia.
As a bonus treat, Blue Beetle’s Philippine release features social media star and voiceover sensation Inka Magnaye as the voice of Khaji Da, the Scarab’s sentient AI. It’s a wonderful touch, something Warner Bros Discovery really didn’t need to have bothered with, but Filipinos should be more than glad they did. It’s even more validating than Ned’s Lola in Spider-Man: No Way Home because Khaji Da is basically one-half of Blue Beetle and she actually has her own arc in the film, growing with Jaime from sentient, world-destroying weapon to empathetic AI.
Blue Beetle is an amalgamation of various superheroes we’ve already seen on screen: his armor is basically a better version of Iron Man; his awkward youth is similar to Spider-Man’s; and he has the support system of an entire family just like Black Panther, except unlike T’Challa, Jaime’s family is poor and about to get tossed from their home by a greedy corporation. But so what if the Reyeses are poor? They’ve got grit and they’ve got each other, and that’s all a superhero really needs. The Reyeses are Jaime’s personal Justice League, his own super team sans the superhero powers. When push comes to shove, the Reyeses have his back.
Of course, it does help to have an eccentric billionaire on your side, so Jenny Kord brings at least that to the table. Blue Beetle is far from perfect, and while Puerto Rican director Ángel Manuel Soto infuses the film with adequate Latino spice and humor — can’t get enough of George Lopez —the villains are paper thin and forgettable, a waste and misuse of Susan Sarandon. And though the OMAC project is an interesting concept from the comics, they’re just here to showcase Blue Beetle’s incredible power. “Whatever you can imagine,” Khaji Da drones, “I can create.”
In the meantime, Jaime’s imagination is limited to giant swords and generic energy blasts, but there’s potential for so much more. Ryan Reynold’s perennial shame, Green Lantern, was wasted with unimaginative constructs, and while it would be great to have Warner Bros Discovery come out with another Green Lantern film, it’s nice to have Blue Beetle fill in for the meantime. If James Gunn is to be believed, Jaime Reyes is the first superhero in the new, rebooted DCU. If that’s the case, it’s off to a good start because Blue Beetle is a genuinely fun, funny, and full-of-heart story that deserves to be seen on the big screen with the entire family.
