Blue Beetle Is The Hero DC Needs In the midst of the DC inside turmoil and the SAG-AFTRA, WGA strikes, Angel Manuel Soto had to promote the movie he directed without any of its actors, and after the great disappointment that The Flash was, Warner Brothers Discovery needed a good movie to lift themselves up, and they succeeded admirably.
Xolo Maridueña is perhaps better known as Miguel Diaz on Netflix's Cobra Kai, but he also excels at brining Jaime Reyes to life. Maridueña is a very charming and talented actor, who has proven he could lead an entire movie. His boy-ish naivete helps him melt into Jaime, a recent College Graduate that needs to find a job to support his family.
This job hunt leads Jaime into the Kord family war, but more specifically to Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine).
Jenny wants to prevent her aunt Victoria Kord from harnessing alien power in order to create indestructible and unbeatable mercenaries. That alien technology has been in their family for decades, and it is one that Jenny's father, Ted Kord studied most of his life until his disappearance.
The Scarab is a sentient being that once it chooses its host, it provides them with an exoskeleton that can withstand many attacks ad create whatever weapon the host can imagine.
But of course, what comic book movie would be complete without a villain? And this film has two.
The first one being Ignacio Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), a Guatemalan soldier recruited as a child to fight communist in the area, and who also became the first test subject of the OMAC, which is a suit powered by the Scarab, and its name means One-Man Army Corps. Producing this in mass to the United States Government would be a great win for Kord Industries and its CEO, Victoria Kord.
Carapax however is not a one-note villain. We can see that he lost his mother due to civil unrest in Guatemala, and as mentioned before he was recruited as a child by the United States into becoming a weapon to fight communism. He is a tragic villain, one that you can feel sympathy for.
But the undisputable villain here is Victoria Kord. Played by the ever-amazing Susan Sarandon, Victoria is a woman with a vision.
Victoria and her father created Kord industries from the ground, they created a company that would manufacture weapons of mass destruction, and she would even go into countries affected by them to report on the success of their terrible merchandise.
But when her father passed away, he left the company to Victoria's brother, Ted Kord, which infuriated Victoria into a corporate takeover once Ted disappeared out of thin air, and having the Scarab in her hands would not only mean her father was wrong, but she would also stop at nothing to harness its powers, even if it means killing children or entire families "for the greater good".
Under less-capabale hands a character like Victoria Kord could have easily be cartoonish in a James Bond villan-esque kind of way, but Sarandon is amazingly scary in the role, which she does not allow to go into camp territory.
Blue Beetle has a great supporting cast in the Reyes family, with actors such as George Lopez, Damián Alcázar, Adriana Barraza, Elipidia Carrillo and Belissa Escobedo as Jaime's sister, Milagro.
Not only do I bring it up because they are amazing actors, but also because their presence makes the movie that much better.
This film is about a reluctant Latino hero who gets his strength from the love of his family, it is an emotional roller coaster from beginning to end, and as I mentioned at the beginning Xolo Mardueña is amazing on every scene he's in.
The director of Blue Beetle, Angel Manuel Soto has given DC fans the hero we need in these times of uncertainty. This was perhaps the absolute best comic book movie I have seen in years.