Blue Beetle Rotten Tomatoes Score Is DC’s Best Since 2021

Blue Beetle is squashing the DC competition. The first Blue Beetle reviews arrived online Wednesday, with critics calling the Latino-led superhero movie an authentic and charming — if formulaic — standalone origin story. Currently sitting at 87% from more than 60 reviews on the Tomatometer, Blue Beetle is the best-rated DC movie since James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (90%) in 2021. As the score stands at the time of publishing, Jaime Reyes’ big-screen debut is faring better with critics than this year’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods (49% rotten), The Flash (64% fresh), and last year’s Black Adam (39% rotten). While reviews are still being added and the score could fluctuate, Blue Beetle‘s 87% approval from critics also tops 2022’s The Batman (certified fresh at 85%), which exists in its own universe.

The Blue Beetle Rotten Tomatoes score is the fourth-best of the DC Extended Universe, behind only 2017’s Wonder Woman (certified fresh at 93%), The Suicide Squad (90%), and 2019’s Shazam! (90%).

DCEU Rotten Tomatoes Scores

1. Wonder Woman (2017) – 93% (Certified Fresh)
2. The Suicide Squad (2021) – 90% (Certified Fresh)
3. Shazam! (2019) – 90% (Certified Fresh)
4. Blue Beetle (2023) — 87% (Fresh)
5. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (2020) – 78% (Certified Fresh)
6. Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) – 71% (Fresh)
7. Aquaman (2018) – 65% (Fresh)
8. The Flash (2023) 64% (Fresh)
9. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) – 58% (Rotten)
10. Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023) – 57% (Rotten)
11. Man of Steel (2013) – 56% (Rotten)
12. Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023) 49% (Rotten)
13. Black Adam (2022) – 39% (Rotten)
14. Justice League (2017) – 39% (Rotten)
15. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) – 29% (Rotten)
16. Suicide Squad (2016) – 26% (Rotten)

Blue Beetle Movie Reviews

Critics are comparing Blue Beetle favorably to the relatively smaller scale of 2002’s Spider-Man and 2008’s Iron Man, with praise for the predominantly Latino cast. Led by Cobra Kai star Xolo Maridueña in his feature film debut, the movie breaks from the secret identity trope by having the tight-knit Reyes family — his parents (Damián Alcázar and Elpidia Carrillo), sister (Belissa Escobedo), his Nana (Adriana Barraza), and his uncle (George Lopez) — along for the ride (and the action). However, some reviewers criticized the origin story as bland, familiar, and stale — despite the star-making performance from Maridueña as the fan-favorite Mexican-American superhero.

David Rooney writes for The Hollywood Reporter, “Remember the first Iron Man movie, or the initial Sam Raimi Spider-Manchapters? Long before the narrative overcrowding of cross-pollination,composite timelines and the damn multiverse brought fatigue to themodern comic-book superhero adventure, those movies had freshness and abuoyant sense of fun. They had warmth and humanity, which have graduallybeen diluted by quippy smugness and a bludgeoning more-is-moreaesthetic. DC’s unexpectedly charming Blue Beetle is somethingof a throwback to that era, bolstered by humor and heart that stem fromthe Mexican American title character’s love for his tight-knit family,and no less so from their reciprocal support.” Rooney adds that director Angel Manuel Soto and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer “don’t exactly break the mold of the superhero film, but they do treatthe genre with an endearing fondness for retro qualities that havemostly been lost in recent years.”

According to Rolling Stone‘s David Fear, the beats of Blue Beetle are familiar as the latest installment of “a dying cinematic universe” in the DCEU.

“It’s a superhero origin story movie, so you’ve got a good sense of whatyou’re getting right from the get-go: someone ordinary getting throwninto something extraordinary, CGI battles, some wisecracks and ribnudges and heartstring thrums (no Snyderverse dude-brooding here), lotsof destruction of public property, more CGI battles. There are richgeniuses with bleeding-edge tech and functioning moral compasses, andother rich folks dying to get their hands on the former at the expenseof the latter. There’s an army of lackeys to dispatch before the bigboss fight,” Fear writes, adding: “And at the center of it all is a good-hearted kid, who’s’bitten’ by an alien creature that resembles a beetle (not a radioactivespider, but still), then is gifted with an extraterrestrial exoskeletonsuit (not made of iron, but still) complete with weaponry, computerizedstat readouts, and the ability to fly. The déjà vu is strong in thisone.”

DC’s Blue Beetle opens only in theaters August 18th.