Blue Beetle isn't the first, second, or third choice for a standalone superhero film, but after 15 years of superhero movies, producers are starting to have to look for other heroes. That brings us to Jaime Reyes, the modern take on DC's most famous insectoid hero, Blue Beetle. Who could've ever imagined Blue Beetle getting his own movie? But it's here, and we've seen it. Here's our review for Blue Beetle, which may have some light spoilers depending on your threshold for such things.

Blue Beetle is a brisk film that starts running very early on and never really stops. This resulted in a great first impression that started to fade as I got further from the theater.

Synopsis

Here's the plot, in short. Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), sister of the missing-presumed-dead Ted Kord, has spent the last 15 years searching for the Scarab, a powerful weapon that will allow her to take her weapons manufacturing company, Kord Industries, to the next level. At the same time, Jaime (Xolo Maridueña) is returning home from college to find that his family has lost their auto garage and their home. Desperate for a job, he inserts himself into an argument between Victoria and her niece, Ted's daughter, Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine). He ends up with the Scarab in his hands, and then on his face, and then inside his back. Victoria wants her superweapon back. With the help of his family, Jaime has to get the hang of his new hitchhiker and fight Victoria and her head goon, Lt. Carapax (Raul Max Trujillo).

More Family than a Fast and Furious movie

The best and worst parts of the movie are the Reyes family. Jaime is, weirdly, one of the least-developed characters in this entire movie. Here's everything we know about him by the end, and none of it counts as spoilers:

• He went to law school in Gotham
• He loves his family

And that's really it. Despite being the main character of this film, we know almost nothing about him. We don't know what he likes or likes to eat, we don't know how he lives--is he a neat freak, or a slob?--we don't know his work ethic. When the Scarab leaps onto his face, we have no idea why it chose him. When the credits roll, we're to believe that it made the right choice, but we still don't know why it chose him. It just Had A Good Feeling about him. If we think back to the things we know about Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and Wolverine, they all have quirks about their personalities. Clark is a doofus, Bruce Wayne is a fake face, and Peter Parker is eternally unlucky. Wolverine smokes cigars and has lots of war wounds. We know things about those characters.

Jamie is one of the most underdeveloped superhero leads I can remember seeing. Maridueña has charisma to spare, and that gets Jaime a long way, but it's just not enough.

The side characters have more going on than Jaime

In comparison, we get a few minutes of Lt. Carapax's history, and it explains in short order why he is the way he is, why he might not want to be that way, what he's been through, and who he's lost. It's late, but it's there, and it's basically enough. We mostly just know that Jaime has an immensely supportive family.

Within the Reyes family, even some characters there are more developed than the protagonist. Rudy Reyes (George Lopez) and Nana (Adriana Barazza) both have fun quirky hooks. Rudy is a Latino take on the paranoid tech weirdo. Nana seems to just like her shows and her tea, but she has a wild history that she reveals at a crucial moment. But Jaime is just a guy.

There are lots of fun performances, though. Lopez stands out the most. He gets many of the movie's best lines, and he chews the scenery like crazy anytime he's on camera. Many of us are most familiar with Lopez as this megastar comedian who is best known for having had a sitcom and a talk show, but he gets to play a real weirdo here and he just owns it.

Damián Alcázar, who plays Jaime's father Alberto, brings so much warmth to his character that you'll wish he was your dad by the end. The whole family has a great dynamic, and they're an absolute blast to watch throughout the movie. Susan Sarandon made the most of her role, too, as the Business Villain (versus the Combat Villain).

Missed Opportunities

Blue Beetle feels, otherwise, like a series of missed opportunities. He's huge for representation as a Latino superhero--the big superhero franchises haven't managed this yet. But what we get is, in the end, little more than Latino War Machine. I was going to say Latino Iron Man, but with Tony Stark we got an entire movie establishing him as a brilliant inventor full of regret and shrapnel, and we don't get any of that with Jaime. He just... gets the suit. The calibration sequence is fun, but it really feels just like watching someone get used to an Iron Man suit; Flying is hard! Civilians are surprised by it! Let's go to space. How do weapons work?

We get into Ted Kord's old base of operations partway through the movie, and it's this dusty old nerd cave with huge computers, superhero suits, and an Area 51 arcade game. Again, this area is jam-packed with personality, but it's just a backdrop for Reyes Family interactions. Rudy is apparently a big fan of Blue Beetle, but they don't use this to get meaningful information about Kord into the movie or to establish what the world thinks of superheroes in the movie.

There are all of these things just missing from the movie that could've fit into an extra ten minutes that would've made it an infinitely better film. I had a good time watching Blue Beetle, but I could almost see the footage on the cutting-room floor that would've taken this from a fun but empty popcorn movie to something really special. What we got instead though wasn't bad--it's just really forgettable. And that sucks.