“Blue Beetle” tiene sazón.
DC’s biggest competition over the last ten years hasn’t been Kevin Feige and the Avengers. Its biggest foe has been its past — a storied era of glory that produced some of the finest superhero cinema of all time. When Richard Donner’s “Superman” and Tim Burton’s “Batman” set the pace, it can be hard to keep up. And after Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” trilogy and the late Heath Ledger’s legendary Academy Award-winning performance as the Joker, the DC fandom arguably expected nothing short of perfection when DC got back into the fold in 2013 with Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel.” Perfection is not what followed. In the time DC has tried to match Marvel’s success, it produced some good movies and exactly one masterpiece, Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot’s first “Wonder Woman” movie in 2017.
“Blue Beetle” is the second masterpiece — the first of what Warner Bros. hopes will be many in the James Gunn era of the new DCU.
Don’t let a modest budget, a mid-August release date and a promotional void during the actors strike fool you into thinking this movie doesn’t matter. There’s a feeling that those of us who love superhero cinema get when we know we’ve seen something special. The feeling that compelled us to buy a ticket for a midnight screening back in the day. That feeling that makes you see a superhero flick four to five times in theaters because you want to see it again and can’t wait for it to arrive on home video. “Blue Beetle” will leave you feeling that way when you walk out of the theater. It certainly made me feel that way.
I did not expect “Blue Beetle” to punch me in the face the way it did. I walked into a private screening with no one else in the theater other than my daughter, prepared to view a film I was convinced didn’t matter in DC’s grand scheme of things. I thought “Blue Beetle” was a dead movie walking that would join “Batgirl” in the Warner Bros. graveyard, never to be thought of again after its release — and that was even with encouraging words from Gunn, who confirmed the film’s future in the connective cinematic world he’s building at DC.
After missing a chance to see the extremely talented Dominicana Leslie Grace in a cape and cowl in Gotham City, my hopes weren’t high for DC’s new Mexican superhero. But I was wrong.
Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes (the kid under the Blue Beetle armor) gives a performance that I can only describe as Downey-esque. Yes, I have no qualms in saying “Blue Beetle” gave me “Iron Man”-in-2008 vibes. Not just in the individual performance of the lead actor or the high-tech suit of armor, but also in the feeling that this is the start of something big.
The second “Blue Beetle’s” credits started rolling I knew I had seen the best DC movie of the last decade. The movie had heart. Humor. Multiple complex villains. Now I had to ask whether it deserved a place in the hallowed halls of DC’s finest movie moments. Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent ripping open his shirt in a phone booth and revealing the most famous “S” of all time. Michael Keaton’s Batman gliding down from the sky as a black bat silhouette on unsuspecting criminals. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman deflecting gunfire with her bulletproof bracelets in the image of Lynda Carter. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn doing pretty much anything. Does Blue Beetle deserve an audience with the GOATs of DC?
The answer is sí. Claro que sí.
And then there’s the matter of “Blue Beetle’s” Latinidad. This film was made for Latinos by Latinos. Puerto Rican director Ángel Manuel Soto was able to tell a beautiful tale of a Mexican American family raising a superhero only because Mexican writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer wrote a script that lands like a game-winning goal by El Tri against los Estados Unidos. Soto’s upbringing in Puerto Rico and the island’s complicated relationship with the United States, combined with Dunnet-Alcocer’s pinpoint depictions of what it’s like to be Mexican and grow up American under the gaze of gringos, are all over this movie. Those very Latino moments of immigration, gentrification, growing up bilingual in a world that thinks English is the only language there is — that feeling of knowing you’ve earned your place but at any moment someone can come and take it away — wash over you like a tidal wave in “Blue Beetle.”
Throughout “Blue Beetle,” I found myself doing something I rarely do when watching a superhero movie: crying uncontrollably. I reached out to other Latino journalists who screened “Blue Beetle” to make sure it wasn’t just me. Sure enough, I wasn’t the only one shedding tears. That’s what happens when you know you’re watching something that was made specifically for you. And let me tell you, in Hollywood’s last two decades of the superhero genre, I’ve only had that feeling twice, with “Black Panther” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”
Imagine that for a second. Loving something your entire life, since you were a child back in 1989 when Keaton was Batman, and only seeing yourself twice in decades. “Blue Beetle” marks the third time I saw myself in a superhero, and I guess it’s true what they say.
The third time really is the charm.