Blue Beetle

Blue Beetle does contain glimmers of something fresh, but it also feels like too little, too late in the face of oncoming changing tide in audience tastes.

Blue Beetle has moments that are plentifully enjoyed, overall when the humor works, although it does so at the cost of those clichés it supposedly aims to avoid. [Full review in Spanish]

Director Angel Manuel Soto and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer do their best to weave a few additional progressive elements into this basically routine production, evidently aimed at younger viewers.

For me it's a bifurcated experience with this movie. I appreciated it from a "la familia" level, but on any kind of comic book, action-adventure level, I thought it was kind of subpar.

There's actually this battle not just between good and evil in the movie but also a little bit of class warfare that's going on, and that feels different than [other] superhero underdog stories.

This movie is really fun... The thing that makes this different from a lot of the big shiny noisy spectacles is that family element.

The Blue Beetle emerges as a noble superhero, so averse to wanton violence that it’s amusing to watch him apologize to some of the villains he’s forced to defend himself against.

Blue Beetle is the kind of throwback that reminds us just how far we’ve come with comic book movies... Especially when the studio behind them plays it so safe, the end result is as bland and flavorless as this.

There's a raid on the family home by Kord's private army that's easily the most emotionally devastating scene in any 21st century DC movie (you heard me, Martha), and would stand toe-to-toe with many of Marvel's as well.

Ten years ago, Angel Manuel Soto's "Blue Beetle" would have been a hit. But it appears at the lowest point of the genre to tell basically the same story. [Full Review in Spanish]