The following contains spoilers for Blue Beetle, now playing in theaters.
DC's latest film Blue Beetle, starring Xolo Maridueña in the title role, is breaking barriers for representation in Hollywood. The superhero genre -- on film at least -- is historically and overwhelmingly white, with little room for actors, creators and characters of color in meaningful positions up until very recently. Blue Beetle blew critics out of the water with a 78 percent "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It also performed excellently with audiences -- particularly in the Latine and Hispanic demographic -- and received a 91 percent audience score. The overwhelming success the film has with moviegoers is a hope that the film will continue to receive good word-of-mouth press and start breaking box office records in the coming weeks.
Blue Beetle's first weekend's box office reports show that it dethroned Barbie for the first time in weeks to become the #1 movie in the US -- no small feat given Barbie's overwhelming popularity for a solid month, even if it was lower than expected. Owing to the film's success is the fact that Blue Beetle's story resonates so deeply with moviegoers across the board. Instead of being a hollow or tokenizing film about a Latine character, it delves deep into the Latine experience in order to tell the story and develop Jaime as a character. The legacy of Blue Beetle's cast and crew, story and themes will hopefully prove to major and indie studios alike that meaningful, authentic stories about the Latine community are not just possible but here to stay.
Blue Beetle Captures an Important Aspect of Latine Experience
If there's one thing many Latine and Hispanic families in the US can relate to, it's the importance of a strong family unit that goes outside the nuclear one. Like many other Latine families, the Reyes are a multigenerational family all living under the same roof. While they don't have much money and struggle to pay the rent in their increasingly-gentrified neighborhood -- something Latine communities across the country currently face -- they are determined to stand strong. The Reyes family is no exception to this, as they travel in a pack all around their US hometown of Palmera City. Even when their family home burns down after being attacked by Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), they refuse to back down and stand their ground. It motivates them to fight back and rescue Jaime from Victoria Kord's (Susan Sarandon) research facility, too, resulting in a magnificent display of heroism from the central female characters of the film.
Jaime's opponents often tell him that his love for his family makes him weak. These characters, Victoria and Carapax perceive family attachments as weakness because of how they'd been betrayed or abandoned by their own families. Jaime's family -- who offer nothing but love and support in his greatest hour of need -- exist to counter that. Uncle Rudy drops everything to help Jaime and Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine) steal an important smartwatch from Kord Towers and drive them to safety. Jenny along with Jaime's sister, mother and Nana don't hesitate to get inside Ted Kord's airship, the Bug, and fly across the ocean to the island fortress where the Kords are hiding Jaime. The Reyes family even accept Jenny as a de facto member of the family when she proves herself to be loyal and dedicated as well, proving that the definition of "family" isn't so hard and fast either. Without his family, there is no Jaime and there's certainly no Blue Beetle either.
Blue Beetle Is a Superhero Origin With Heart and Meaningful Character Arcs
One of the most beautiful sequences of Blue Beetle comes when Jaime is near death and is thrust into a vision where he meets his now-deceased father. Jaime tearfully confesses that he's not sure whether or not he can be a hero or even live without his father there to guide him, showing just how strong his family ties are. However, his father encourages him to persevere by telling him that it's not his time to die yet, and that his purpose is to become a hero for his family and community. Where so many other DC characters are estranged from their families, Jaime's is the only reason he feels strong enough to take the leap into becoming Blue Beetle. Jaime comes into his new identity in a refreshing moment of character development that takes him from scared and unsure to confident and secure.
Another moving scene that shouldn't go overlooked is at the end of the film, when the scarab Khaji-Da (Becky G) stops Jaime from killing Carapax. At this point in the film, Carapax had already killed Jaime's father and hurt his family. Jaime understandably wanted revenge for this, even though he'd insisted to Khaji-Da that he wasn't a killer several times over. Jaime and Khaji-Da just become fully symbiotic, and she uses this moment to assert her sentience and show Jaime Carapax's traumatic past living under imperialism, being orphaned and fighting as a child soldier. The moment of mercy shows just how much of a hero Jaime (and by extension, Khaji-Da) is. He recognizes how a history marked by trauma shapes someone. Without this scene, Jaime doesn't become the hero he was meant to be. It's powerful and makes it stand out from other recent DC films.
Blue Beetle's Success Creates Opportunities for Latine Actors and Filmmakers
Much like Black Panther before it, Blue Beetle uplifts Latine actors and filmmakers in a way rarely seen in Hollywood. After being pitched the role of director by DC, Angel Manuel Soto knew he wanted to work with fellow Latine writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer to bring an authentic story of Latine representation to the big screen. There are very few Hispanic and Latine superheroes, with Blue Beetle being the most high-profile yet. Where some of the biggest projects about Hispanic and Latine characters had no Latine writers or directors involved like Wednesday, Blue Beetle has both of those and shows studios that these stories deserve to be told and represented meaningfully. Casting Latine actors both newer to the business and veterans makes it well-rounded and will hopefully lead to more roles for the younger cast members in the future post-strike.
As Blue Beetle enters its second weekend in theaters, the hope that it touches more moviegoers with its simple yet moving story of family, self-discovery and heroism remains. The film's emphasis on word-of-mouth publicity from Hispanic and Latine audiences can potentially make the film a sleeper hit in the coming weeks even while summer winds down and school starts back up. It could even become something of a cult classic or a Latine classic because of its powerful story and Jaime as a role model. With Blue Beetle's success, there is definite promise for more films about the Latine experience in a variety of genres and in superhero movies in the future.
You can catch Jaime and the whole Reyes familia in Blue Beetle, now playing exclusively in theaters.