I Watch Films: Blue Beetle

 

Blue Beetle

Victoria Kord, CEO of Kord Industries, uncovers a mysterious artefact, the Scarab, which she uses to create her OMAC (One Man Army Corps) super-soldiers. Her niece Jenny opposes Kord Industries turn to armaments. Meanwhile Jaime Reyes returns to Palmera City from university to discover that his family are likely to be evicted due to Kord Industries expansion; the rents are going up and they lost their auto shop. Jaime and his sister Milagro go to work in Victoria’s mansion; Jaime intervenes in the confrontation between Jenny and Victoria, is fired, but Jenny offers him a job if he goes to Kord Industries.

Jenny steals the Scarab, hands it off to Jaime to evade security. Jaime opens the box at home and the Scarab bonds with him, creating an armoured suit that can fly and transform itself into weapons and tools. He tracks down Jenny, who is being attacked by Victoria’s security, and rescues her. She fills him in on a bit of the Scarab background. It’s a sentient device that bonds with whoever it chooses. Jenny, Jaime and Jaime’s uncle Rudy, a conspiracy theorist who has built a jammer for security systems, break into Kord tower to get Jenny’s father’s smartwatch; they are attacked by Carapax, the first OMAC subject. Escaping they go out to the Kord family home and use the watch to enter the Beetle Cave (Ted Kord’s secret laboratory).

Realising that Jaime must have got the Scarab out, Victoria sends troops to the Reyes family home; Jaime returns to intervene, but his father has a heart attack and dies. Distracted by this, he is captured by Carapax and taken to an off-shore island, where the Scarab data is extracted for OMAC modules. Jenny and the Reyes Family team up in her father’s bug-ship and use her father’s gadgets to rescue Jaime in time for a final confrontation.

So what does this have to offer that other superhero films don’t? Well Jaime is embedded in his family, his neighbourhood (though he’s been away at college) and his culture, as Hispanic Americans; some of the family are immigrants without citizenship, something that places them at risk with the authorities. The film doesn’t, quite, get into a political space, though Rudy as comic relief does comment on Batman being a fascist, and Jenny unhappy with her father’s company making weapons, so we know what the politics would be if it had them. Which it doesn’t. For that matter it turns out Jaime’s Nana, exclusively Spanish-speaking (though she understands English), knows how to use guns as she was a revolutionary. Revolution against what? Against whom? Never mind.

There’s a current of darkness here (Carapax’s backstory is revealed in flashback, including a course of study at the (real) School Of The Americas, and a cycle of destruction). Yet on top of that the upbeat soundtrack, the neon of Palmera City and the good-hearted optimism of the Reyes family give it a positive feel. If not exactly a step forward in superhero films, at least drawing from a new set of inspirations and surfaces.

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