Rotten Tomatoes Critics Praise Blue Beetle’s Latine Representation & Earnest DC Story
In a post-“Black Panther” world, superhero origin stories are finding ways to incorporate diverse cultures into their storytelling, and it seems like “Blue Beetle” definitely pulls this off. Yolanda Machado at Entertainment Weekly writes, “Blue Beetle never loses sight of the community it seeks to honor, not once pandering nor offering surface-level representation of what it means to be Latino.” Inverse‘s Jake Kleinman seconded that thought, saying, “With deep roots in Latin American culture and a tone that blends Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop with Marvel’s quip-based comedy (before it wore out its welcome), DC’s latest movie succeeds entirely on its own terms.” Yet another agreement came from David Fear at Rolling Stone: “What director Angel Manuel Soto and screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer are bringing to the screen via Reyes’ rise into the good-guy ranks isn’t just a genre, but a culture.”
Beyond putting a spotlight on Latine culture, critics also said the loving family surrounding Jamie put the movie on a different level than some of its peers. At Mashable, Kristy Puchko wrote, “While this hero might sound like a mash-up, Blue Beetle breaks the mold by celebrating Jaime’s greatest strength, his family, rather than defaulting to a story about yet another brooding solo knight.” Jesse Hassenger of Paste Magazine said the characters’ on-screen bonds definitely made the movie sing: “The movie seems to genuinely like these characters – and, moreover, the characters seem to genuinely like each other, lending Blue Beetle some real warmth amidst the standard business of super-suited enemies smashing into each other.”
