The Couch Critic
The Couch Critic is your laid-back guide to movies and TV shows that deserve your attention—or maybe don’t. Nathan dives deep into storytelling, character development, and cinematic style with a sharp eye and a wry sense of humor. Whether it’s a blockbuster hit, a hidden gem, or a cult classic, Nathan’s relatable approach ensures every episode feels like a cozy chat with a friend who just happens to love film. Perfect for casual watchers and cinephiles alike, The Couch Critic brings thoughtful critique without the fluff. Grab your favorite snack, settle in, and let Nathan guide you through the world of screen entertainment.
The Couch Critic
A Dissection of DCU's Latest Venture, 'Blue Beetle'
Strap in for a wild ride as we dissect the newest DCU movie, Blue Beetle, alongside our special guest, Scott. We're peeling back the layers of superhero cliches, CGI spectacle, and Latinx representation. We pair this cinematic venture with the likes of Iron Man and Shazam 2, scrutinizing its commonalities and deviations. Regrettably, the film underwhelms us, failing to ignite the spark we yearned for in the dawn of a new DCU era.
In the subsequent half of our chat, we shift our focus to the wider DCU. We assess the future of this cinematic universe, should Blue Beetle continually underperform. Join our debate on the potential ripple effects on the DCU, and whether it can afford such a mediocre start. We even venture into the past, revisiting Henry Cavill's performance in Man of Steel. And of course, we cap off our discussion with our honest rating of the film. Plunge into this riveting conversation! Let's navigate the superhero cosmos together!
One's a movie buff, one watches movies, just enough. Together, fun will be had by all. This is Nadia and Katie at the Movies. Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new episode of Nadia and Katie at the Movies. I'm your host, nathan, aka Nadia, of course, and with me this time is my good friend Katie, and we also have a special guest. Katie, can you introduce our special guest?
Speaker 3:Oh, I can, I can't. It's my sweet and loving, wonderful amazing husband, Scotty.
Speaker 1:Okay, enough of that. So today we're talking about. Today we're talking about Blue Beetle, the new DCU movie based on a DCU character, and it's part of the rebooted DCU. That's right, blue Beetle, it stars a bunch of people. Before I talk about that, I'm going to let Scott give us our synipsis, since he literally only watches the trailer while apparently driving, which I don't suggest doing.
Speaker 3:He was mostly listening to the game. But, yeah, Scott, I'm curious if you.
Speaker 2:There's a bug that's kind of like Venom. It jumps on a kid and then he becomes a superhero. He does stuff and people want this proprietary technology to utilize that military stuff, and then those are the people that end up coming after him and he learns how to use his powers, fights those guys and wins.
Speaker 3:Whoa Scott, no spoilers.
Speaker 1:That was a pretty good synopsis. It sounds almost like an alien relic chooses Hami Reyes to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the teenager with a suit of armor that's capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero Blue Beetle. Blue Beetle stars. I don't even know how to say this guy's name and I don't want to butcher it. Is it Zylo? Zylo Menden? I don't even know. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:It's written X-O-L-O.
Speaker 1:Yellow Meridin the guy from Cobra Kai, also Bruna Marquezine I'm so, oh my gosh and Susan Sarandon. Also. George Lopez and a couple of other people are in this movie. So, katie, what did you think of Blue Beetle?
Speaker 3:I will say there was a large Latina population in this movie. So I'm laughing. Maybe that's why some of the names were heard. You could pronounce the white lady's name. That being said, I really appreciated it was a very Black Panther vibes in terms of really doing a great job of displaying the Latinx or Hispanic populations, like culture, Not every Hispanic population, but more specifically the Cuban experience. Even as a non-Hispanic person myself, I picked up on a lot of the inside jokes, a lot of the jokes, a lot of the references. So that was really cool. But overall the movie was just like nothing stood out to me. Maybe it would be good for someone if they'd never seen a superhero movie before.
Speaker 1:It was very a generic superhero movie, 100%, I will say it did give me Shazam 2 vibes, and I say that because I am probably one of the few people that enjoyed Shazam 2, because it made me feel like I was actually watching a comic book movie, and that's what blue beetle did as well. So I'm gonna get right to my likes. One of my likes is, like I said, it felt like a comic book movie. There was, there was comedy, there was a little bit of drama I mean some heavy drama and we'll get into that and it was just. It was a fun time, I had fun with it. But, like Katie said, it's nothing new. It's not like groundbreaking and I guess it's a cool way to start the DCU. But it's not doing well in the box office already and I think it's because One people are just sick of DC movies and, to Zach Snyder, cult followers are Boycotting it and telling other people not to go see it and that's why I feel like this movie isn't doing well.
Speaker 1:But another thing I liked was I liked the action. I thought the fight scenes were really cool. I thought blue beetles suit was Kind of be a it was. It was cool to see him fight the bad guy who kind of turns into a good guy. Yeah, that was kind of lame. I thought he was a fun character. Katie, what did you think of the fight scenes in this movie?
Speaker 3:They were okay, but again it wasn't something new, like I felt like I was just watching Iron man do stuff, because you're watching a person yes, there's a scare up, so it's not like invented technology, but he's just doing things. Iron man, like it's the same thing. There's a woman like a voice in his head that he's like talking with and the. He can basically do anything and he has any tool at his disposal that can do really big things and he can fly, and it's all just because of the suit, and as soon as the suits off, he can't do anything like this. Just so, just felt like I was watching Iron man scene fighting scenes.
Speaker 3:Nothing really stood out to me. And, to go off of what you're saying about this being the first big new DC universe, you're right like you have to come out just with a bang. I mean, you have got to come out with something that feels entirely, entirely different from anything we've seen in Marvel or DC. If you're gonna try and you sell it. And this was the complete opposite. It was a culmination of everything we already have seen, so that's not a great start. It does not convince me that this is gonna be a new era for them.
Speaker 1:I think, going back to what you said about it being like Iron man, they're starting the DCU Exactly the same way they started the MCU with, literally Iron man. But going to another like about this movie we bashed the flash about CGI being horrendous, because it was. I think with this movie, the CGI was a Hundred times better than what they did with the flash. I don't know how much time the visual effects people had to Get the the job done for this movie, but I didn't see really any visual effect flaws in the movie, especially with the suit and the, the transformation that he goes through, and let's just talk about that real quick. How freaking gruesome was that. When you first transformed in the blue beetle, I was like this is borderline, seriously creepy, like George Lopez even jokes about him being possessed, but that's kind of what it looked like he was becoming. I loved that, though.
Speaker 3:I appreciated it and I really liked that there was lighthearted. I felt I felt like you had to do this like really disturbing thing happening and there's almost like bump, bumpy, fun music in the background. My only critique with all that was I, and maybe it was the acting, maybe the script writing, but the family is like way too chill about it all, like they don't seem as panicked as they should be. It just felt very like oh yeah, like that happened whatever moving on, and maybe again it's like if there was a TV show, you'd have longer to like parse things out. Like some of that stuff seemed way too rushed, that we're just like accepting that he's now a super robot. Like it felt like we moved on from that way too quick.
Speaker 1:And I think in the comics, from what the research I did before I watched this because that's what I try to do now, I try to do my research before I watch movies In the comics his dad was kind of like that. His dad kind of was accepting of it pretty quickly. His mom in the comics was very much like this is creepy. I need to get out of here. Give me some space to think about this. I didn't really see a problem with them being okay with it pretty quick. I thought they showed the holy crap moment when he first transformed and you didn't want it to go for too long because, like you said, you had to fit all this stuff in a short amount of time, which is probably.
Speaker 1:This is probably one of the shortest DC movies that they've had in a while, which I appreciated because I'm kind of tired of the two hour and 30 something minute movies that aren't really necessary. But I will say the highlight of this movie and a lot of people have been talking about that is the family dynamic and I thought everyone in the family, acting wise, did a really good job. I think George Lopez stole every scene he was in. I thought he was hilarious in this movie and I thought he was really fun. Katie, what did you think about the family dynamic that they chose to go with?
Speaker 3:Maybe unpopular opinion here. I really appreciated what they were doing and I think that was a good choice. I don't feel like it was executed as well. Some of it just felt too forced. It felt like it was trying to push an agenda a little bit on that too much. I guess maybe heavy handed might be the right word. It just was a little over the top in some of those moments and it almost took away from it being more natural.
Speaker 3:And like to go back to you with Shazam 2, I mean, that was also a big thing, for Shazam 2 was family, family, family. But I don't recall being as annoyed or thinking it was awkward in that one. That being said, I really do appreciate the focus on family. There was a lot of help from the family in defeating the bad guy, which is cool. The grandma has a big scene where she's I think it's hilarious they're insinuating that she was like helped fight the revolutionary in Cuba, so she's got this like military background they didn't know about, which is hilarious concept. Yeah, I actually didn't think the acting was fantastic in that way.
Speaker 1:Well, ok, then, going off of that, let's go to our dislikes. I will agree that sometimes the acting was kind of lopsided, and what I mean by that is there are moments that some of the people in this movie did a really good job with their acting and the way they delivered their lines. But then there's other times that these same people, like they, just came off as really cheesy or stale or whatever. And one example is the actor who plays Jaime At the beginning of the movie. When he was delivered his lines it would be like we got to do this now and I got to help the family, and it's just the way he delivered his lines. It kind of reminded me of how people say Mark Wahlberg acts majority of the time, just the way he ends his sentences. It kind of came off as really annoying, but as the movie went on he kind of dropped that. So I kind of got used to it. And then the actress who plays a love interest in this movie. Her acting was kind of off and on, good and bad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, same with the sister. I wasn't super impressed with the sister.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I think that was probably one of my biggest dislikes is it kind of took me out of the movie at times and then when they're acting out better, I was like, okay, I can invest again and it, but it kept. It was like a back and forth tug of war of do I care about these characters or do I not because of their acting? But again, I think George Lopez out of all of them, I portrayed a character that, yes, was sometimes over the top, but I think he did the best acting in the movie because I liked his character the most.
Speaker 3:I even liked. I thought the dad did well, like if I had to say anyone in the family that I thought that again, it's not a ton of lines, but I liked how he delivers lines. I was sad when he spoiler he doesn't make it, but I actually cared about that. But I wasn't convinced that anyone in the family was that sad, like there's some scenes where they're like crying, but I just didn't feel that you didn't see the gut wrenching that you want to. I don't have a ton of great things to say about it again, because I felt like a lot of it was hodgepodge and I didn't love the acting.
Speaker 3:One thing else that I didn't love is probably just a silly one. In terms of this is fiction, sometimes things that didn't make sense, like George Lopez's character is this kind of conspiracy theorist slash inventor slash also a pilot and he just figures out how to drive a bug scarab spaceship and no one else is helping him drive it. No one's helping him do it, like he just knows where all the buttons are. He knows what actions it can and can't do, which also doesn't make sense when you've got the daughter of the guy that invented it sitting in the like I would have thought she would help. She's virtually useless, even though this is all her dad's tech. That just felt super unrealistic to me. There was some, some portions of that that made no sense.
Speaker 1:Well, you're right. I mean you shouldn't overthink. It's just a comic book movie, Right? But one of my final dislikes is the character that Susan surrender plays.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, who's your bad guy? Her, more so than the you've got. She's the main bad guy.
Speaker 1:Then she's got her henchmen come to find out her henchmen is being used by her, and so he's like the victim, because, even though he is trying to kill people and he does kill people but he's still the victim, because you get a flashback of you know, that's, that's how he was raised, which I kind of like that they did, because it shows that, you know, everyone has a story, everyone has a reason, and we don't know the reason. But also, at the same time, it was hard for me to feel bad for him because he literally just killed someone, in front of which, which, by the way, usually you'd be like, oh man, that guy just died, but the guy, the scientist who helps the blue beetle get out. I couldn't help but kind of laugh when it happens, because, because he's like I'll be okay, and then he just it blood explodes on the door, I'm like, well, no, you won't be okay because you're dead.
Speaker 3:Because I did. Yeah Gosh, I hate to be ripped on this movie. Probably my last dislike. Again, it wasn't like the worst we've ever seen, but I have no recommendations necessarily to see. I don't want to see it again. But other other dislike was paired with a like. I love that the culture was brought in. Like I said, and this is the first time we've seen a Mexican American actor or someone that's getting to play a superhero, and I think that's really important. It's kind of surprising with the population we have in America of Hispanic people have this be the first. But there was a few like political things that I felt like were too on the nose, too heavy handed stuff about like the border and being illegal and immigration stuff.
Speaker 3:Again, I think maybe some would argue that you have to incorporate that. If you're truly integrating culture, then that's a fair thing to bring up. For me as a just a movie goer, it takes me out of the movie like I'm gonna now. I'm not thinking about the movie, I'm just reflecting on what's happening in the world and it's not changing my mind. It's not like making me reflect on it in a positive way, it's just like a roll I roll.
Speaker 1:The only reason I want this movie to do well is number one. I actually did enjoy it. I thought it was a fun movie. But, more importantly, I actually want this new DCU to do well Because if this movie bombs in the box office which it looks like it probably will, it might even do worse than the flash, which is mind-boggling, because I think this movie at least is better than the flash. But if this movie bombs, it's not looking good for the future of the DCU and I'm actually excited About the new Superman movie. I know a lot of people like Henry Cabell. I liked them, but rewatching man of steel, he wasn't that good, and so I'm interested to see how.
Speaker 3:Hold on. Those are fighting words, I think. I think Scott's ahead of the cabell team.
Speaker 1:Again. This is after me rewatching. When I first watch I was like, oh my gosh, it's Superman, because I love Superman and and I do believe that he has the look of Superman. But I thought his acting was very stale and stiff. And Superman is supposed to be uplifting and I understand what Zack Snyder was doing with the dark. You know, tone of it, I kind of understand. But it's Superman. You can't. You can't mess up Superman and you can't make Superman a doom and gloom character because he's kind of supposed to be the half of America justice and that other stuff which is what they say nowadays, because they don't want him to stand for American way.
Speaker 1:But I'm going on a tyrant. I'm sorry, but I want this movie to do well because, again, I want the new DCU to go somewhere and it looks like it's already not going anywhere.
Speaker 3:I'm with you and I mean we can get right into ratings. But I will say I agree, although I didn't really like the movie that much, I I do really wanted to succeed because I like where their heart was at. I appreciated the culture, I appreciated the Genuineness of that main character I thought he did a pretty good job of. I like the heartfelt moments and, yeah, I Do want to see a new future that would be enjoyable to watch with superhero movies, or maybe we're all just super, I don't know.
Speaker 1:So if you rated this out of six, I Would actually give this a four point five because I did enjoy it. I thought it was fun, I thought George Lopez was hilarious, I thought the action was was good, even though, like you said, it wasn't anything new, I would still give it a four point five Because, yeah, I want the DCU to continue and I actually enjoyed the film.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna give it a Three point five. I was thinking about a three, but when you bring up the fact of the visual effects, they really truly were incredible. It felt on par, or if not much greater than the stuff I love from the Marble Universe. So for that, three point five, scott.
Speaker 2:Think is this a strong four?
Speaker 3:Yeah, how about, instead of a reigning based on what you've heard, would you want? Would you go see this movie?
Speaker 2:I Like you, spent it. Culture I like Superhero movies. I'm pretty, I'm pretty low maintenance.
Speaker 1:I'm okay, mike Pence. Would you answer the question, sir, and try not to pause every five seconds so, and I'm probably gonna edit all this out.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna go for more, and that, my friends, is blue beetle. That's right, blue beetle. And so we end August with blue beetle and we begin September With a movie based on a video game, but also based on a true story Gran Turismo. That's right, gran Turismo. Based on the hit PlayStation video game, but also based on a true story of a nerdy gamer who ends up being a race car driver. Are you excited?
Speaker 3:Sure, I'm just kidding. I am excited. I think it's a nice break from the topics that we've seen in movies lately. I'm ready for a non superhero, non remake of another movie, so I'm excited.
Speaker 2:Again. It's a noxious video, yeah the things they dock you for points wise is unbelievable.
Speaker 1:So, katie, how would you like to end this blue beetle episode?
Speaker 3:That man is a fascist.
Speaker 1:I love you guys. Thanks for listening to Nadie and Katie at the movies. Feel free to leave us a review so people can find the show. Follow us on all our social media platforms and if there's a movie that you want us to watch, feel free to contact us at Nadie and Katie at gmailcom. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
