‘Blue Beetle’ and The Benefits of Taking Your Time
Everyone wants to get the the laser-taggy super-punchy fights scenes, but taking your time to get there is essential for a strong story.
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The definition of “superhero fatigue” is when a film that cost $104 million to make vanishes without a trace and you stumble across it, drunk, on a Sunday evening and for a moment you’re confused as to what you’re looking at1. Blue Beetle was released August 18, 2023 and landed on Max with a thud some time later, finding me sitting on the couch with my fifteenth ill-advised beer in one hand, three cats on my lap, and a lack of will to stand up2. So I watched it.
And was pleasantly surprised. It’s as ridiculous as any superhero movie, complete with inexplicable, magic-like technology, ridiculously hot people pretending to be normals3, and a villain who is, of course, basically a carbon copy of the hero in terms of power and abilities. But Blue Beetle does one thing very, very right, and that one good decision pays off throughout the whole movie, making it a more cromulent story than some other recent superhero turds: It takes its damn time.
Bidi Bidi Bom Bom
Blue Beetle is based on the comic book character, a guy named Ted Kord who developed a lot of Batman-style technology and crime-fighting equipment. In the film he does this because he’s trying to replicate the capabilities of an alien scarab that symbiotically fuses with a chosen host4. After Kord’s disappearance and likely death, the company he owns is taken over by his wife and co-founder Victoria (Susan Sarandon, using those googly eyes to great effect). She’s in conflict with his daughter, Jenny (Bruna Marquezine), who steals the scarab and tries to smuggle it out of the building just as Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) shows up for a job interview. As security closes in, she gives the scarab to Jaime, who takes it home and promptly fuses with it, reluctantly becoming the Blue Beetle5.
What’s interesting about this story is that the film takes a while to get Jaime into the Beetle suit6. This isn’t because it’s poorly written or because of an obsession with explaining the complex lore of the scarab (actually, there’s almost zero lore, leaving the audience to just accept the fact that an alien scarab can, at its own discretion, burrow inside you and turn you into some kind of cyborg that looks like a blue beetle, for ... reasons7). No, it takes a while to get to the fireworks factory for one pretty solid reason: It spends a lot of time establishing Jaime’s world and his family. Especially his family.
Films—especially the sort of super-slick films that the superhero genre tends to inspire—often establish characters with a few quippy lines of dialog and a single scene of domesticity8, reasoning that the audience didn’t come to see superheros put groceries away or ponder how to pay the mortgage. But rushing through those kinds of establishing scenes usually makes the emotional beats that come later feel thin and unimportant. What director Ángel Manuel Soto and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer get is that giving Jaime’s family a lot of goofy screentime means that everything they do later in the film pays off.
There are Many Things You Don't Know about Your Nena
I’ve seen this sort of rushing in a lot of stories—books as well as films—particularly in speculative stories, because writers are just like everyone else and we are often impatient to get to the cool stuff9. I recently read a book involving travel to an alternate universe, and the author spent a grand total of three pages in the original universe before jetting us off to the new one, which made it impossible to appreciate any differences. Writers know that potential readers want to get to the good stuff. So skipping over the early set-up stuff can feel like writing a sleek, efficient story and giving the people what they want10.
But there’s a price to be paid, and when your story is already one step removed from realism because it involves, say, an alien scarab that transforms goofball twentysomethings into formidable war machines with really questionable branding,you actually need a bedrock of realism even more11. Blue Beetle treats the Reyes family with affection and a sharp eye for cultural detail, and they’re a fun group of people that provide lots of comic relief. But they also provide a lot of emotional beats, and Jaime’s relationships with each of his relatives tells us something about his character and why he makes the choices and decisions that he does. It’s time well spent: Entertaining, but also doing a lot of plot work.
After all, if you’ve ever been tempted to wonder how an unstable sociopath like Bruce Wayne manages not to commit suicide after spending a trillion dollars on bat-themed murder equipment and dressing up as a bat12, you might appreciate a superhero story that takes the time to demonstrate how stable and loving Jaime’s life is before he takes on the Blue Beetle role—not to mention giving the film’s larger themes of capitalist oppression and cultural exploitation some real bite, because we can see how they actually affect real people13.
Of course, I’m a man who gets freaked out if he gets a splinter14. If I accidentally ingested an alien scarab that turned me into a flying, energy-bolt shooting superbeing, I’d be worried about infections, frankly15.
NEXT WEEK: The forgotten 1990s comedy that manages to skim past its overtly disturbing premise with writing tricks!
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Yes, I stumble over a lot of things drunk on Sunday nights, including myself. What’s your point?
There are worse ways to live. Wait, is that the title of my memoir? I like it! JEFF SOMERS: THERE ARE WORSE WAYS TO LIVE. Admit it, you’d buy that.
Trust me: We normals see you, and we resent you. Just let us own our homeliness and you can have everything else, okay?
With my luck, if I ever stumble upon a power-conferring alien scarab the powers the scarab will turn out to be a dung beetle and all my powers will be dung-related.
Kicking off one of my least favorite tropes: The advanced alien technology that the hero just sort of figures out how to use. I can’t even get Bluetooth speakers to connect reliably, do you think I’d be flying around in my Dung Beetle costume fifteen minutes after fusing with it?
Just once I want a superhero movie to end without the hero once putting on the suit. That kind of spectacular mindfuck I’d pay to see three, maybe four times.
And hey, why not? We believe that there are real, actual people who want a Cybertruck, so anything is possible.
Usually involving a breakfast feast that obviously cost $100 and took four hours to cook that everyone in the family ignores, racing out the door. The amount of food waste Hollywood sees as normal is disturbing.
Also: The cocktail hour.
The problem often lies with the sage writing advice to “skip the boring parts” which really should be amended to read “make the boring parts not boring.”
I can only imagine the destruction and terror 20-something Jeff would have caused if he’d suddenly been imbued with superpowers. Manhattan would still be a softly glowing slab of melt, I think, and I’d still be apologizing from my Fortress of Solitude, somewhere.
I imagine Batman about to race to the scene of a crime in progress, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and collapsing into sobs. I mean, he’s dressed as a bat.
Well, real-ish people. This is a DC movie, after all.
I’m not kidding. When I get a splinter it’s like 3 days of amateur surgery that eventually lands me in the ER with sepsis. I become obsessed.
Alien infections. Also, if the alien symbiote was one of those alien symbiotes that keeps your physical body in tip-top shape for its own purposes I’d be concerned about its affect on my drinking.
Bruce Wayne's insurance premiums must be through the roof. Bat-erang anyone?