With a little over 24 hours to go before Thursday previews begin, the review embargo for Blue Beetle has finally lifted. Warner Bros. wisely decided against marketing Jaime Reyes' big screen debut as the "greatest superhero movie ever made," but it at least sounds more worthy of that description than The Flash.
The verdicts so far have been mostly positive, and all signs point to Blue Beetle being a much-needed win for the DCEU (and seeing as James Gunn has promised this hero will be a big part of the new DCU, we're sure that comes as a relief).
Empire awards the movie 3*, concluding its review by saying, "Blue Beetle owes a lot to the sheer wit and warmth of its supporting cast, which will earn it far more approval than its so-so CG antics and origin-story familiarity." Total Film went with the same rating and exclaims, "Stand down the undertaker: this spirited outlier shows there’s life in the old DCEU yet. Over to you, Aquaman 2."
IGN goes with a 7/10 score and wraps up by explaining, "Under Ángel Manuel Soto’s direction, Blue Beetle is a superhero movie that sets itself apart within the bloated genre through the deeply connected bonds of Jaime and the Reyes family."
The Hollywood trades were also largely impressed; Variety says "the brisk, cheeky, unabashed gizmo-happy triviality of 'Blue Beetle,' a superhero origin story from the DC side of the tracks, is enough to make the film feel like a breath of fresh pulp." The Hollywood Reporter, meanwhile, states that "The director and writer don’t exactly break the mold of the superhero film, but they do treat the genre with an endearing fondness for retro qualities that have mostly been lost in recent years."
Less impressed were Uproxx ("Blue Beetle kind of encapsulates what is good and stale about these movies right now all in one package") and Slash Film ("Give it a few more drafts and "Blue Beetle" may have emerged as something extraordinary"), with IndieWire surprising no one with a scathing "C" grade review.
The Daily Beast also wasn't kind, declaring that "Blue Beetle is an underwhelming also-ran to begin with (culled from the coolest parts of more iconic and interesting DC and Marvel do-gooders), his big-screen outing wouldn’t exist in the first place if not for the success of his precursors." The Guardian, however, lets us know "there’s a perkiness that’s hard to resist and a base-level competency that’s hard not to appreciate, a small beam of blue light in an otherwise dark time for superheroes."
The only place for the DCEU to go after Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and The Flash was up, and the movie sounds like a relatively fun ride. However, whether Blue Beetle is remarkable enough to help it exceed disappointing box office expectations remains to be seen.
Will you be checking the movie out in theaters this weekend?