Blue Beetle
                                                                                              
Director: Angel Manuel Soto
Year: 2023
Rating: 5.5
Damn, I was trying to keep up with the Kool Kids and watch the latest Marvel film, but I am not sure what it is. But not Marvel. Beetles? Really. Ant Man, Spider Man, the Green Hornet wasn't enough. This is a weird superhero movie in so many ways. Anti-Corporate, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-American - coming out of Warners. One of the biggest corporations in the world. I have no idea how closely this sticks to whatever its source is - but it is basically a nightmare scenario if Trump becomes President and enacts his promise to send 13 million people into concentration camps and then back to their homeland. ICE agents everywhere raiding families and homes. I don't think this was a co-incidence. The director is Hispanic and the scriptwriter is Hispanic and the superhero is Hispanic - second generation with members of his family undocumented. This is what I always tell people - stop worrying - by the second generation they will be doctors, lawyers and superheroes.



And Susan Sarandon? I thought she had been cancelled - by both the right and left. Everyone hates Sarandon though I still remember her fondly from Atlantic City. As an evil warmonger, she does fine.All this wokeness must have set the Internet on fire in rightwing white supremacist chatrooms. They are replacing us. Black mermaids and Mexicans superheroes. Next there will be transvestite superheroines! Buy more guns. Snowflakes. Go listen to Taylor Swift.



As to the film itself - the superhero stuff was just your typical CGI en masse - enough to kill brain cells and stunt your sex drive. Basically, a young attractive woman steals a super solider device from the lab of Sarandon and gives it to our hero Jaime (Xolo Maridueñato) to  hide. Instead his sister opens it and the device enters his body and gives him these massive powers. The bad guys come looking for it. The non-superhero part was corny, sweet, silly, manipulative and funny. Once I got past finding the lovable Mexican family extremely annoying, I kind of began to like them. Especially when Granny picks up the machine gun and kills all the soldiers and yells out "Down with Imperialism". My kind of girl. No idea how well it did at the box office and whether there will be a sequel but if so, I hope Grandma returns and kills some more imperialists.