The first trailer of the much-anticipated DCEU movie, “Blue Beetle,” has been released online, and fans have gushed over it ever since.
With the release date scheduled for August 18 of this same year, it was surprising how ‘under the wraps’ the movie’s production was. We are getting a look at the output with only three months to go until the release date.
However, as the audience reaction signifies, the action-packed, boomy, vibrant trailer has won hearts worldwide. DC’s teenage superhero movie has all the markings to guarantee a sure-shot blockbuster.
The trailer features Jaime Reyes as a college grad who returns home with aspirations for his future. However, he sees that his home is not the same as it was when he left. Fate intervenes, and he embarks on a journey to find his true purpose in life. Jaime then crossed paths with the Scarab.
The trailer gets interesting when the Scarab takes over Jaime Reyes and hurls him into space. While the movie’s first look is engaging, fans finally get to see the official Blue Beetle costume and Susan Sarandon as Victoria Kord, the villainous character in the film.
Let’s break down the trailer and get into more details.
1. Meet Jaime Reyes
The trailer opens with Xolo Maridueña as our hero, Jaime Reyes. Introduced in the comics in 2006 and created by Keith Giffen, John Rogers, and Cully Hamner, Jaime is the third hero in DC canon to take on the mantle of the Blue Beetle.
Much younger than his predecessors in the role, Jaime’s story radically overhauled the Blue Beetle concept.
2. Introduction to Palmera City
In the comics, Jaime’s early adventures occur in El Paso, Texas—but the movie has created a fictional city, Palmera, to root the character in.
Palmera City also very recently became DC Comics’ canon in the pages of the current miniseries Blue Beetle: Graduation Day by Josh Trujillo, Adrian Gutierrez, and Wil Quintana.
3. Kord Industries
Although the movie starts with Jaime working in the hotel industry, it looks like he’ll quickly be put in the orbit of Kord Industries. It is a major DC company with connections to Blue Beetle’s comic book legacy thanks to its founder, the second Blue Beetle, Ted Kord.
An acronym for “Kord Omniversal Research and Development,” Kord Industries is a scientific and technological corporation akin to STAR Labs in the DC Universe.
Ted has directly led Kord Industries himself, most recently in the comics and the Blue Beetle movie, his sister, Victoria, manages it.
4. Big Belly Burger
Jaime is given a mysterious package to safeguard his life in an innocuous hamburger box—which in and of itself is a DC Comics reference. Big Belly Burger has appeared in DC stories since John Byrne and Jerry Ordway created the franchise in 1988.
It has since been established as one of the U.S.’ most major fast-food chains in the comics. The brand also appeared in the CW DC shows Arrowand The Flash.
5. Enter the Scarab
Inside the Big Belly Burger box is not a Big Belly Burger—but the alien scarab that bonds with Jaime’s spine, transforming him into the Blue Beetle. This marked a significant change in the Blue Beetle mythos in the comics.
Jenny states that the ‘being’ named Scarab is a world-destroying weapon designed to protect the host—the being it binds itself with, in this case, Jaime. Standing in the middle of a street, Jaime gets covered by the suit’s mechanism as it splits an oncoming bus right through the middle.
The exoskeleton, the being, is said to be sentient and obeys the host’s commands according to its convenience. After a scene showing perhaps the origin of the Scarab, Susan Sarandon’s character Victoria Kord is seen to be stating that the Scarab chose Jaime. However, it belongs to her.
The Scarab is alien technology from a species of intergalactic conquerors known as the Reach. It is seeded worldwide to eventually adopt a host that can be turned into a sleeper agent for the Reach.
Finally, it names itself Kaji Dha, a reference to the Shazam-esque quote Dan Garrett would shout to transform into the Blue Beetle.
6. What could be Blue Beetle’s powers?
The flying vehicle is identified as the Bug, a personal airship of the second Blue Beetle, Ted Kord. He has no superpowers, as the Scarab didn’t bond with him. He used his tech genius and family wealth to fight crime, like Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. Hence the cheap shot at Bruce at the end of the “Blue Beetle” trailer. No offense to the Batfans out there!
Fans have been speculating about the possible appearance of their favorite iteration of the character, who might well act as a mentor figure to young Jaime. The Bug confirms his presence in the movie.
In comics, the mystical alien Scarab had found its way into ancient Egypt, and archaeologist Dan Garrett, the first Blue Beetle, came across it during excavation. It bonded with him and granted him superhuman abilities. This should clarify some of those unwarranted comparisons of the character with Ironman or Iron Spider.
The origin of Blue Beetle and Scarab goes way back to the Golden Age of Comics in the 1940s, a period when the other characters hadn’t even been conceptualized. The design of the tentacled, protrusion-creating techno-organic suit is brilliant, as seen in the trailer.
Not only is it highly comic accurate, but with equal parts prosthetic and CGI, it looks like one of the best super suits we have seen on the silver screen. Again, take notes, MCU.
The reference to Dan Garret/Garrett and Ted Kord, two predecessor heroes of the same moniker as Jaime’s, can be spotted at the end of the trailer. On the other hand, Jaime and his family can be seen in the lair of the Beetle.
The suits of the previous two-character iterations can be seen on the mannequin in the cave. The similarity with the Batcave perhaps ticks Jaime off to make an in-universe reference to Batman.
From Uncle Rudy’s reaction, however, we can speculate that he spends much of his time on Twitter. Indeed, the nerdy Jaime will recommend some Batman comics to get better informed.
7. Victoria Kord
The Scarab is a hazardous technology, so it makes sense that some people want to do potentially terrible things with it. One such person is Victoria Kord, played by Susan Sarandon in the movie and created for the film before she recently became comics canon in Blue Beetle: Graduation Day.
Victoria is Ted’s older sister in the comics and runs Kord Industries while he spends his days as a superhero.
8. Who is Carapax?
The film’s othervillain, played by Raoul Max Trujillo, has a much longer history in the comics. Conrad Carapax is a mercenary who first appeared as an enemy of Ted Kord in the ‘80s.
He is an old rival of Dan Garrett, the first Blue Beetle, who found his mind infused into a seemingly-indestructible robot body hidden on Pago Island.
9. The Bug
Given the shadow Kord Industries casts over this trailer, it’s no surprise we’re seeing much of Ted’s time as the Blue Beetle. However, Ted is not the star of the show in this movie.
As the trailer climaxes, we see Jaime’s family take command of one of his most famous inventions: the Blue Beetle Bug, Ted’s flying ship, and mobile research lab. In the comics, the Bug has been destroyed and rebuilt a few times and fires solar blasts and tech-disabling EMP pulses.
10. Blue Beetles Past
The trailer ends with a brief look at what appears to be inside Jaime’s eventual base of operations. It seems to be seemingly taken over from somewhere inside Kord Industries, given that we see the costumes of the two prior Blue Beetles in the background.
Dan Garrett’s second costume from the silver age is on the left, while Ted Kord’s iconic suit is on the right.
11. About Blue Beetle
Blue Beetle is an upcoming DC Superhero movie starring Xolo Maridueña as the titular character, directed by Angel Manuel Soto.
The movie will follow the journey of Jaime Reyes, a Mexican-American teenager who discovers an alien scarab giving him his superpowered armor.
The movie will release on August 18, 2023. It will be the fourteenth installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU).
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