Blue Beetle due August 2023

Steevy Maximus

Well known pompous pontificator
Citizen
First trailer is out for Blue Beetle, based on the Jaime Reyes iteration. Definitely feels like they were pulling a page from the Shazam playbook with this one, though I think the Latino focus may well give it legs akin to Black Panther for that demographic.

Looks fine, but isn't high enough on my radar for a theatrical viewing. But I at least appreciate the nods to the Ted Kord Blue Beetle
 

Rhinox

too old for this
Citizen
The little fight scene that we saw and that sword scene really struck me as straight out of a Kamen Rider series. Not a bad thing at all.
 

ChessPieceFace

Active member
Citizen
I'm unfamiliar with the comic, but that trailer looks so generic. I feel like the trailer revealed most of the plot points of the movie, and it looks like a dozen superhero movies I've seen already.
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
I saw it. It's a bit eh on my part. Two extra scenes. Mid credit is sequel hook and end credit is garbage.

Mixed messages on killing.

Not enough establishing stuff for the 'we're family' theme thing. Makes an ending part weird for me. And I hate the sister for being the worst at the start. At least the uncle is cool ish.

Jaime feels like a bit of a non character. I didn't feel much love chemistry. And what's his driving motivation? If it was fear then cool. Character arc it. But if it's family, I didn't feel it. Like, the guy from Rise of the Beast at least had his little brother in mind a lot.

The Ted Kord stuff is weird like movie Ant-Man Hank Pym Michael Douglas having superhero adventures without other people knowing before. Weird.

I kinda tuned out during the important science part. If someone has seen it, can you tell me why that guy...
Sanchez aka Dela Cruz suddenly had a change of heart and wanted Jaime to escape. It can't be because of the name mistake. Did I miss a part where he saw something while Jaime was merging with the beetle? What made Sanchez suddenly decide to help him escape, to the point of him giving his life up for him?

Anyway, since I only know of Blue Beetle from Young Justice season 2 and eps of Batman Brave and the Bold, I'm just glad to see the Staple gun used. Also the sonics. And that... snow plow thing he used in Young Justice to push enemies away. What do you call those things anyway.

Also, is the scarab voice in the comics originally female sounding? It was Jaime's voice that's sorta garbled in Young Justice, I think.
 

LBD "Nytetrayn"

Broke the Matrix
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
I saw it. It's a bit eh on my part. Two extra scenes. Mid credit is sequel hook and end credit is garbage.

Mixed messages on killing.

Not enough establishing stuff for the 'we're family' theme thing. Makes an ending part weird for me. And I hate the sister for being the worst at the start. At least the uncle is cool ish.

Jaime feels like a bit of a non character. I didn't feel much love chemistry. And what's his driving motivation? If it was fear then cool. Character arc it. But if it's family, I didn't feel it. Like, the guy from Rise of the Beast at least had his little brother in mind a lot.

The Ted Kord stuff is weird like movie Ant-Man Hank Pym Michael Douglas having superhero adventures without other people knowing before. Weird.

I kinda tuned out during the important science part. If someone has seen it, can you tell me why that guy...
Sanchez aka Dela Cruz suddenly had a change of heart and wanted Jaime to escape. It can't be because of the name mistake. Did I miss a part where he saw something while Jaime was merging with the beetle? What made Sanchez suddenly decide to help him escape, to the point of him giving his life up for him?

Anyway, since I only know of Blue Beetle from Young Justice season 2 and eps of Batman Brave and the Bold, I'm just glad to see the Staple gun used. Also the sonics. And that... snow plow thing he used in Young Justice to push enemies away. What do you call those things anyway.

Also, is the scarab voice in the comics originally female sounding? It was Jaime's voice that's sorta garbled in Young Justice, I think.
You and I seem to have opposing views on like/dislike for a good few things, so this post is giving me hope that I'll enjoy it. =D
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Yeah, like I totally liked Flash and Black Adam but they flopped. It's bewildering. Me can't be a Bizarro, haha

Hope you do enjoy it! It needs support, regardless.
 

KingSwoop

Member
Citizen
I saw this today. Some of it was good; some of it felt like it was written by (bad) AI, but mostly it felt like no one bothered to think about what the movie was trying to tell us.

The big problem comes with Jamie's decision not to kill. At one point in the film, the suit goes to kill a threat, and Jamie stops it... saying "We don't kill." The threat then gets up and beats him, and almost kills him until his family rescues him.

Later, the threat identifies Jamie and they go to attack his family home to kidnap him. By "They" I mean a private military force that announces they have been "authorized to kill," (I know it's a fictional universe, but that's clearly a lie.) and illegally invade his home and drag his family out. Jamie comes in to save his family. The bad guys shoot at him... no luck, so they're told to shoot at his family (WTF?); so Jamie uses the Scarab to save them... temporarily, but refuses to use non-lethal force on them. (MISTAKE!) His sister trips, his father goes to save her, but has a heart attack and dies. He gets captured because he's distracted by his dad's death.

Later, when his family goes to rescue him, his family - most notably his grandmother - explicitly shoots people, killing them. At one point his uncle uses a giant robot to step on a stormtrooper, who gets stuck on the bottom of the robot shoe. That guy's dead, but the movie uses it as a joke.

Later, in the big CGI Wonder Woman scene, Jamie wants to kill the bad guy, but the suit stops him, showing him the bad guy's memories. They bad guy, then, blows himself up, killing the villain behind it all.

Spiderman is, I think, a super hero most people are familiar with. Spiderman starts out using his powers for selfish gain, has the opportunity to stop a bad guy and refuses, and this leads to his Uncle's death. Spiderman learns that with great power comes great responsibility; that he cannot stand by and let bad people get away with things.

In contrast, Jamie is an extreme pacifist. He stops a villain from killing another person, but because he doesn't use lethal force, he almost dies, he puts his family at risk, and gets his father killed. His remaining family use lethal force to save him. He learns to use lethal force, but his computer sidekick convinces him not to... but the bad guy he spares uses lethal force to commit suicide, killing the woman who ordered an illegal strike on his family, tried to kill him, and killed What We Do In the Shadows' Guillermo because he got pissy his boss kept forgetting his name, and if he's willing to commit murder for her, the least she can do is remember his name!

If Spiderman had stopped the crook, his uncle would be safe and alive.

If Jamie had killed the evil cyborg child soldier in self-defense, his father would still be alive. But at no point does Jamie learn the lesson the script was trying to teach him (in between vacuous chatgpt dialogue about family), nor does he have a reason to do the thing that drove the plot. There was no scene where his father refused to kill a rat, where his grandmother refused to kill a soldier, etc. that lead to good things. The only "good thing" refusing to kill lead to in this movie was that it let someone else do the killing!

The actors were all serviceable. The CGI was a mix of Green Lantern and Spy Kids at worst, and video game cutscene at best. The story they're adapting was cool and engaging. But the script seems to be written inexplicably to teach Jamie that lethal force is morally justified, and this is a lesson that flies over his face... even as his Grandmother mows down two distinct sets of stormtroopers trying to kill him.

Another, admittedly lesser, problem with the movie is that Jamie has just graduated college, but not graduate school, with a Pre-law degree... that literally does nothing but put him, and his family who will lose the hose, into debt. Just as the movie seems to want Jamie to learn the lesson "killing in self-defense is not only morally justified, but good" it also seems to want to teach that college and hard work is a waste of time, and you should get a rich white sugarmomma to pay for everything for you. You know, after you help get her aunt killed so she can inherit the company.

This is not a good movie; but it is a good character and setup. I wouldn't mind seeing sequel, but DC is probably going to cut their losses here. Too bad.
 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
As mentioned above, the "no killing" message is definitely muddled... at one point one of the faceless henchmen is stepped on and impaled through the gut by the leg of a giant robot scarab tank vehicle, at which one character quips "12 points", lol. The henchmen is then carried for about a dozen meters on the leg of this tank before it shakes him off as you might a piece of turd stuck on the bottom of your shoe. I mean, even Batman has a rule against killing, so I'm not sure a superhero in a jokey, more light-hearted and family-centric film like this should kill. But as KingSwoop mentioned above, the villains he's up against in this particular film are incredibly, almost comically, villainous. This company, Kord, has a private security force that apparently has no compunctions about gunning down innocent civilians on their front lawn. It's shockingly and bizarrely evil, even moreso when this is supposed to be set in the United States, which hasn't quite descended to those levels yet. Against that degree of evil I'd probably just have let the suit tear loose and rip every single employee and board member of Kord into multiple pieces, as painfully as possible.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the film. A scene I would have liked, that this movie lacked, is an equivalent to the scene in the first Iron Man when Tony returns to Afghanistan and basically goes to town on the forces invading Gulmira. To this day, that's still one of the most badass fights in the MCU, and among the simpler ones in terms of things going on. There was nothing quite like that in Blue Beetle, in which Jamie and the suit are fully in sync.
 
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KingSwoop

Member
Citizen
Oh, and I forgot the bit where his family make fun of his tiny penis. Because, you know, it's a DC movie.

TM2-Megs, you compare this to the MCU, but Tony Stark flying halfway around the world to "get back" at some terrorists is probably one of the weaker moments of the film. It really plays off as a revenge fantasy, and the terrorists taking hostages feels a bit out of character (it's evil, but why do they think it'd be effective against the robot come from the sky to kill them?). To it's credit, Stark does save the hostages and moves away from "revenge" to "saving people... from his weapons." He's not a philanthropist or hero... yet.

Blue Beetle had a few scenes where he fought people non-lethally with his weapons. They were, more or less, fine.

One last thing - It strikes me the "Young Justice" Blue Beetle scarab-is-invasion-machine is a good story they needed to hint at and failed to. Maybe the scarab tries to eliminate a "threat" and Jamie talks it down. Maybe Jamie's ambushed by some gang members out to mug him - his neighborhood as gone gotten worse, what with Kord industry turning it into slums, but the Scarab reacts and scares off the "older" gang members, leaving only the "new recruit" (You know, it's the The Batman scene), and while the scarab goes for lethal, Jamie stops it, maybe Jamie recognizes the kid. Maybe Jamie hears the kid's folks lost their job, and the kid doesn't recognize him now that he's back from college. Now maybe Jamie would have necessarily been so "anti-kill" on the older gang members, he is explicitly anti-kill on the new recruit, giving a REASON for the scarab to spare him - it's not his fault, he's in a desperate situation.

But no... we get "lets go to space" and "let's destroy a bus" sequences that demonstrate no understanding of what they're dealing with.
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Yeah, the 'no killing vs actual killing' was a mess. I didn't want to give out spoiler details about it tho.

But I'd like to ask again to those who watched it, was there a trigger I missed with the scientist?

Also, I saw a review or something that said that movie Beetle action scenes took a lot of moves from Injustice 2's Beetle attack moves. Is that true?

The cool thing I liked from Young Justice Beetle was him using a lot of Staples to incapacitate and I was happy he used them in the movie. Does game Beetle use Staples?
 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
TM2-Megs, you compare this to the MCU, but Tony Stark flying halfway around the world to "get back" at some terrorists is probably one of the weaker moments of the film. It really plays off as a revenge fantasy, and the terrorists taking hostages feels a bit out of character (it's evil, but why do they think it'd be effective against the robot come from the sky to kill them?). To it's credit, Stark does save the hostages and moves away from "revenge" to "saving people... from his weapons." He's not a philanthropist or hero... yet.

I was referring mostly to the execution of the fight. The whole thing feels more real, more visceral than most of the more modern, CGI-intensive battles. The suit also felt more like a genuine piece of heavy-duty hardware rather than an almost magical sci-fi device.

His motives are secondary.

I kinda tuned out during the important science part. If someone has seen it, can you tell me why that guy...
Sanchez aka Dela Cruz suddenly had a change of heart and wanted Jaime to escape. It can't be because of the name mistake. Did I miss a part where he saw something while Jaime was merging with the beetle? What made Sanchez suddenly decide to help him escape, to the point of him giving his life up for him?

I don't think it was a single specific trigger moment, however the scientist did witness the whole debacle with corporate "SWAT" team and Jaime's family and his father's heart attack, and you could tell from his face he was uncomfortable with the side he was on.
 
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KingSwoop

Member
Citizen
Yeah, the 'no killing vs actual killing' was a mess. I didn't want to give out spoiler details about it tho.

But I'd like to ask again to those who watched it, was there a trigger I missed with the scientist?
I didn't mean to spoil it, but it's hard to discuss this movie without discussing that very amateur moral distinction.

Sanchez seems to have just "had enough" of his evil boss, so he commits suicide or something. At times the script felt like it was written by A.I., and you can certainly see the "inspirations" for this kind of character turn... and how the actual script just forgets to put the character beats in there.

The cool thing I liked from Young Justice Beetle was him using a lot of Staples to incapacitate and I was happy he used them in the movie. Does game Beetle use Staples?
No clue. Staples are "interesting" and "unique", but mostly because they're completely impractical.

In Ironman's first Thanos fight, he uses his nanite armor to lock down Thanos a few times, but each time he does this, he loses part of his armor. The same is true when Venom or somebody "webs" up someone, etc.

If Blue Beetle can generate matter from nothing... easily, he's the most overpowered character ever and uses his powers extremely poorly. But the OMAC armor clearly uses "Spy Kids"-style "logic"; we might rationalize it as nanites or whatever, but in reality it's just things coming into existence from nowhere because the animators didn't bother to think things through. It's "cartoon logic"; like Heman's Mechaneck having an infinitely long neck; you could include some pseudo-science to explain it, but infinite matter generation is such an incredible "power" that it would break any traditional warfare.

Philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson asks us to imagine a case where you're trapped in a room with an "expanding baby" who will kill you, unless you kill it first (to stop it's expanding); while Thomson uses it to make a point about self-defense, if Blue Beetle can just create infinite staples, he could just pile staples on top of his foes until they can't move. But if he can't create infinite staples, why does he waste resources making a staple when a club to the head, or bullet to the knee caps would similarly solve the problem?
 

Fero McPigletron

Feel the fear!
Citizen
Yeah, I don't know how the alien tech generates substance out of nothing but Stapling is Blue Beetle's version of Spider-Man's webbing people up. Beetle is sort of DC's answer to Spider-Man, sort of.
 

TM2-Megatron

Active member
Citizen
The suit's ability to generate... "whatever".... is very much like the later Iron Man suits in the MCU. By the time Infinity War rolls around, Tony's practically a Green Lantern.

Movies usually just chalk it up to the catch-all explanation of "Nanotech".
 


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