BEFORE: Susan Sarandon carries over from "The Company You Keep". And I'm where I wanted to be, back on superhero movies, but getting here via Susan Sarandon is a bit weird, kind of like getting to "The Marvels" via Zawe Ashton or getting to "Barbie" via Helen Mirren. Sure, it counts, but it's far from the most obvious choice and I feel like I'm sneaking in some back door. I'm not going to worry about it, except for the fact that I could have maybe fit "Speed Racer" in-between, though I don't have a slot for it. I'm on a race to Father's Day, so something has to be cut loose, and it looks like that will be "Speed Racer" along with "Super Mario Bros." Those are the breaks, but both movies have big casts, I can probably circle back for one or both later on.
5 movies until Father's Day and the end of the Tribeca Film Festival, 9 movies until the start of the Doc Block. 147 movies until Christmas?
THE PLOT: An alien scarab chooses Jaime Reyes to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the recent college grad with a suit of armor that's capable of extraordinary powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero known as Blue Beetle.
AFTER: Well, I don't know if I'm suffering from superhero movie burn-out, or maybe the whole industry is. When you get down to making movies about Blue Beetle and Madame Web, I think you're basically scraping the bottom of the barrel. Just me? There's definitely a pecking order among the DC superheroes, but once you make the Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman movies, where do you go. Well, Aquaman was a good choice and I LOVE the second Suicide Squad film, but really, what's left? Flash seemed like a one-and-done, given all the controversy around Ezra Miller, and they worked Dr. Fate and Hawkman into the Black Adam movie, and that was a good way to cross them off, and the "Shazam" films were all right, but I don't hear anyone out there calling for a Zatanna movie or a Cyborg film. Bringing back Green Lantern wouldn't be the worst idea, but it would have to be done right. So I'm on hold until James Gunn tells me what he's got planned.
This was the 17th film in the DC Extended Universe, the first one was "Man of Steel" and the last was "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom", and I managed to see them all - plus I've got ZERO superhero films on my main list, and just "Madame Web" on the back-up list. It's essentially a dead category until Marvel comes out with something new like "Blade" or "Thunderbolts", and really, I'm not holding my breath. Wait, I guess the next one is going to be "Deadpool & Wolverine" in July. We'll see, the genre is due for a large break, I think, while I catch up on other things, time-travel movies and docs and horror films. It's going to be OK.
If this is the end for the DCEU for me, it's going out with a whimper, this film barely pushed the needle for me at all, it was all just such basic stuff - evil corporation making controllable super-soldiers, teen find mysterious alien object that gives him an intelligent armored suit that's sort of like the Iron Man armor, but also sort of like the Venom symbiote. Look, I know who Blue Beetle is, because I've been reading "Justice League" trades ever since three comic reboots ago, let's say I started in 1996, but the Ted Kord Blue Beetle was a member just before that, starting in 1986 with the Justice League International series. Still, I know who Ted Kord is, frequent partner of Booster Gold, but DC kind of killed him off in the 2005 series "Infinite Crisis". That's when he got replaced by this Jaime Reyes character, essentially the equivalent of the Miles Morales Spider-Man - same M.O. but cooler and designed to appeal to a new, younger audience.
As of the latest DC comics reboot "Rebirth", Ted Kord is now essentially what he is in this movie, a guy who USED to be Blue Beetle, USED to be dead but is now alive again because reality changed, and Jaime Reyes is still the new Blue Beetle after the "Flashpoint" storyline, but his last solo book was cancelled in 2013. I guess they thought maybe this film would make him hot again, and they're still waiting? Seems about right. That means the movie is showing us the best of the comic's storylines from about 5-10 years ago, only changing it around a bit to better suit a one-off movie and not a never-ending monthly series.
The scarab is an alien artifact that bestows the armor to a human, but they kept saying that the Scarab "chose" Jaime. I'm not sure about this, it seems more like Jenny Kord was using him to hide the scarab (in a burger box) but she told him to NOT open it. But it's his family who told him to open the box, at which point the scarab fused to him, so really, it's all his family's fault, if he hadn't opened the box, he'd still be a normal college kid. But then there's a neat tie-in between the alien armor and the O.M.A.C. (One-Man Army Corps) from other DC comics. Sure, why not get another storyline going in there, the OMACs are probably better than whatever weird villains the Blue Beetle usually faces in his own books.
Another neat tie-in for Father's Day, which is now just five days away. Jaime's father, who has worked very hard and sacrificed many things for his family over the years, is injured by an attack from Carapax (OMAC) and I think has a heart attack. This distraction unfortunately allows Blue Beetle to be captured, but then during his imprisonment he has a vision of his father, and we learn that having a family doesn't make a superhero weaker, instead it inspires them to be stronger. This is a semi-reversal of the typical back-story of most DC superheroes like Batman and Superman who are inspired and tortured by their dead parents.
One thing I could do, if I really wanted to keep going with superhero films, is catch up all the animated DC-based movies that are available on HBO Max. There are a LOT of them, and it would be a lot of work for me to track them all down, figure out the cast lists and determine the best order to watch them all in. Let me think about this, it's really a someday/maybe plan if I should run out of other movies, which of course doesn't seem likely to happen.
Also starring Xolo Maridueña, Belissa Escobedo, Adriana Barraza (last seen in "Spanglish"), Damián Alcazar (last seen in The Chronicles of NarniaL Prince Caspian"), Elpidia Carrillo (last seen in "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her"), Bruna Marquezine, Raoul Max Trujillo (last seen in "Blood Father"), George Lopez (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Harvey Guillén (last heard in "Strays"), Jorge Jimenez, Eyra Aguero Joubert, Gabriella Ortiz, Modesto Lacen, Oshun Ramirez, Bobby McGruther, Carlos Ponce (last seen in "Murder Mystery 2"), Isabella Aparicio, Yuli Zorrilla and the voice of Becky G,
RATING: 5 out of 10 Spanish stop-motion cartoons
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