Two years ago, DC’s cinematic universe was in the midst of an unexpected yearlong funeral procession. After setting a post-pandemic release schedule that amounted to the company’s most ambitious single-year slate ever, with four movies planned for release in 2023, the news dropped that DC was restructuring, and had handed control over DC’s movie slate to James Gunn and Peter Safran. A fresh reboot of the entire DC cinematic universe was in the works. Suddenly 2023’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom looked like dead superheroes flying, or maybe like action figures at a fire sale.
Sitting on the same slate as two sequels and a multiversal crossover, Blue Beetle stood out as the odd origin movie out, the only title featuring characters never before depicted in a DC movie. Even Gunn treated Blue Beetle differently from the rest of these movies, by floating the possibility that Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) might carry over to his new revamped DCU. (He also floated the possibility that The Flash was an all-time great superhero movie, so clearly he was trying to defer to the outgoing administration and/or cooperate with his new DC bosses.) Following the release of Gunn’s Superman and the solidification of the 2026-2027 DC slate, this seems unlikely. But the movie’s arrival on Netflix points to another what-if, regarding smaller-scale superhero movies that briefly seemed viable for streaming services.
Blue Beetle wasn’t originally intended for movie theaters. It was greenlit as part of a mini-slate of superhero movies that would take place in the broader DCEU, but debut on HBO Max to entice subscribers — the DC equivalent of the MCU TV shows airing on Disney Plus. The other movie assembled with this intention? The ill-fated Batgirl, which Warner Bros. famously binned for a tax write-off rather than releasing it either to streaming or theaters.
Whether execs were spooked by the optics of nixing the first Latino-led live-action big-two superhero movie, or were just genuinely more enthusiastic about Blue Beetle’s quality, Jaime escaped Barbara Gordon’s fate, even though Batgirl is a more famous character than Blue Beetle, and even though Batgirl features a supporting role for Michael Keaton’s version of Batman, and a post-Oscar role for Brendan Fraser. Score one for George Lopez; he doesn’t have an Oscar, but his scene-stealing supporting performance actually played in theaters worldwide.
It makes sense that straight-to-streaming superhero movies never really became a thing. Even the smaller superhero stories are expensive to produce without the prospects of ticket sales to offset that cost. The MCU had some movie-proven, marquee-level characters flounder in streaming shows that can’t, by design, turn a profit on their own, and Warner Bros. ultimately decided that their superhero movies should be big-ticket events, not supplementary content. The new Gunn-led DCU seems to be continuing that policy, sequestering TV shows to HBO Max and keeping movies on the big screen, while also not flooding the theatrical market; another four-movie year seems unlikely for the foreseeable future.
That said, streaming is a fine way to enjoy Blue Beetle, not least because it stands alone from its DCEU siblings. Without all of the production backstory, and apart from the 2020s-era references and tech, Blue Beetle could pretty easily pass for a superhero movie from the first boom of the mid-2000s. That’s a designation that’s been assigned to the recent slate of Sony Spider-Man spin-offs — and not a complimentary one! In the fine tradition of what-if comics, though, Blue Beetle asks the highly specific but enjoyable question of “What if there was a superhero movie like the 2005 Fantastic Four, but pretty good?”
Given that Jaime’s superhero status comes from a supersuit, it could also be described as “What if Iron Man was (only) pretty good?” But let’s focus on the positive: a family-friendly superhero story that doesn’t descend into bombast. Xolo Maridueña’s Jaime is a recent college grad who returns home to the fictional setting of Palmera City to find his close-knit family on the brink of financial ruin. By chance, he comes into contact with an alien artifact: a glowing blue scarab that grows an exoskeleton around its host. Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine) is attempting to keep this tech from her aunt Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), a CEO who wants to use it as a basis for weapons manufacturing. Eventually, Jaime embraces his accidental destiny in a superhero lineage begun by Jenny’s father. He gets plenty of help from his semi-wacky family along the way.
It’s the family business that makes Blue Beetle both a DCEU novelty and a comfy streaming watch. Its bustling, chatty dialogue scenes are reminiscent of Ms. Marvel, the most creatively successful of the MCU shows, and the family members (including Lopez, Damián Alcázar, and Belissa Escobedo, among others) have a natural charm and chemistry that elevates them above the usual canned comic relief of so many event-sized movies. They’re a believable familial unit, not a multi-headed punch-up quip machine. To the extent that they still engage in sitcommy moments, that only makes the movie small-screen-ready.
And again, while the movie was good enough to play theaters, it also doesn’t miss much when it’s shrunk down to living-room size. Though some of the daytime exterior scenes have the computerized, washed-out look that makes the movie an aesthetic fit for streaming in the bad way, director Ángel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) uses a lot of blue and pink lighting on his night and interior scenes. Blue Beetle doesn’t have the day-glo splash-page elegance of James Wan’s Aquaman world, or the poppy feel of the best parts of Birds of Prey, but it’s not chintzy, either.
Thematically, Blue Beetle breaks no new ground. Would you believe that the bad guys claim that Jaime’s love for his family makes him weak, but he comes to learn that it actually makes him strong?! But that’s less noticeable in a streaming-scale superhero movie where most of the fun is hanging out with a bunch of likable characters who don’t need a direct line to Batman to justify their existence. The era of streaming live-action DCEU superhero movies ended before it began, but a version of it will continue as long as some fun second-tier titles stay in circulation, unburdened by expensive continuity.
Blue Beetle is on Netflix now, and remains streaming on HBO Max, as well as TBS and TNT for anyone with a cable subscription.
