Blue Beetle Movie Reviews Are Pretty Mixed

Blue Beetle trailer screenshot

The latest superhero movie in the DC universe, Blue Beetle, is finally out in the US, and reviews have been rolling in over the past few days. After a long string of high profile failures, culminating in The Flash’s massive underperformance earlier this year, Blue Beetle seems to be off to a decent enough start, with some, but not all, reviews being quite positive.

At the time of writing, Blue Beetle has a metascore of 60/100 on review score aggregator Metacritic, denoting mixed or average reviews. Rotten Tomatoes on the other hand, on the other hand, shows it doing a little better, with 78% of reviews being positive — a certified fresh, if only just.

So far, the comic book movie has been praised for its standalone story, strong performances and characterization from the main cast, and the heavy focus on family — all things that the comics have been praised for in the past. The criticism for the movie is primarily leveled at some of the cliches present, CGI effects that are a little too overbearing at times, and being a little bit derivative at times.

Blue Beetle as a superhero has been around for quite some time, starting all the way back in 1939. The current iteration of the hero was introduced after DC bought the rights to the character in 1983, and the moniker is currently held by Jaime Reyes, a teenager who bonds to a sentient technological scarab which gives him special powers.

The hero really shot into the public eye following the release of the animated series Young Justice, which introduced Jaime Reyes in its second season. DC tried to make a Blue Beetle movie for a good few years before finally getting the ball rolling a couple years ago, and its efforts seem to have paid off, at least critically. We’ll have to wait a little while to see how it performs at the box office, but it’s unlikely to perform worse than The Flash.

Blue Beetle is available to view at all major theaters in the US now.