The Reyes family just got its first superhero. “Blue Beetle,” the latest superhero movie from DC and Warner Bros. Pictures, starring Xolo Maridueña (“Cobra Kai”) as the titular superhero, opens exclusively in cinemas across the Philippines August 16.
Says director Ángel Manuel Soto of the close-knit Mexican-American Reyes family at the center of the film, “In this origin story, the family – contrary to other superhero movies where the hero keeps the secret from everybody around him – the secret really happens in front of the family. So, Gareth [Dunnet-Alcocer, screenwriter] always said, ‘Good luck trying to hide a secret from your mom in a Latino household, they always know!’ And we kind of like embraced that, so this made for a very unique journey where the family is part of the adventure, not a group of people or an object of rescue, but on the contrary, an integral part of the construct of this superhero.”
BLUE BEETLE Int’l Print Generic Intv – Ángel Manuel Soto (Director)
Question: What’s happening in Jaime Reyes’ life when we first meet him in the movie?
Ángel Manuel Soto: Jaime is just coming back from studying at Gotham University, and he’s now graduated pre-law and he’s coming back to his family after being out for four years of college. But he doesn’t know they’ve been keeping secrets from him about what’s been going on back home. And that’s when he learns that they’re losing the house, they lost the auto shop, and his dad just survived a stroke. So, Jaime’s coming back with all these hopes and dreams of being able to go to law school and be the good citizen that plays by the book, the person that society pushes for him to be, only to realize that his family needs his help. Then he decides he cannot pursue his dreams anymore, he has to work to provide for his family.
Question: Tell me about his family—what is waiting for Jaime, literally, when he gets off that airplane?
Ángel Manuel Soto: So yeah, the first thing Jaime realizes is the whole family is there, receiving him, and definitely giving him attention. And it’s the whole family; he’s got his mom, Rocio, his father, Alberto, his younger sister, Milagro, Nana, his grandmother—everyone is there. And outside waiting for him, arrives his uncle Rudy in his pickup truck. It’s just such a great representation of how we can see a little bit of ourselves in every single one of them. And on the way home, he also experiences how the city has been changed in the past four years with the gentrification and displacement of the communities.
Question: And that early moment in the film sets the tone for the movie and signals to the audience something that sets Blue Beetle apart from many other superheroes—this family experience, the fact that guy isn’t a loner, right?
Ángel Manuel Soto: Correct. That’s in the comics, too; his family is very present. For us, for [writer] Gareth [Dunnet-Alcocer] and for me, it was very important to not have them [the family] as props in the film and also not have them as bait nor the villain. We wanted them to have their own arcs and their own heroic moments in the story. This is an ensemble cast and all of them need to show a little bit of growth, and it needs to show how they step up to the plate and together help Jaime become the hero he’s supposed to be.
Question: Jaime also has a very unusual experience as he literally is becoming Blue Beetle for the first time, doesn’t he?
Ángel Manuel Soto: Right. It does not happen in a dark alley. It doesn’t happen as he is left alone inside a lab or anything like that.
Question: He’s not changing in a phone booth.
Ángel Manuel Soto: [LAUGHS] He’s not changing in a phone booth. It literally happens in front of the whole family in the dining room.
Question: Where everything happens in a family, right?
Ángel Manuel Soto: Where everything happens in the family. If love enters through the kitchen, also does this alien superhero scarab, this weapon of mass destruction. Yeah, right there in the place where everything happens, that’s exactly where the scarab chooses and takes over Jaime Reyes.
Question: Talk about Xolo Maridueña and why he was perfect casting for Jaime.
Ángel Manuel Soto: Xolo, even outside of being on camera, he is very charismatic. He’s very much family-oriented. Also he can be quirky and serious. He’s so authentic to who he is that it was representative of Jaime right off the bat. It also helped that he had some martial arts training. I saw him on Cobra Kai. He definitely can do it. So, it truly helped that not only can he act it and fight it, but at the same time, he definitely looks it. Not just in theory—you see the comic, you see him.
Question: So you think the fans of the comics will be excited?
Ángel Manuel Soto: Yeah, it was very reassuring to know that my instincts on casting Xolo as Jaime were the same instincts that fans were having. And that type of connection is beautiful.
Question: And there’s Bruna Marquezine, who plays Jenny Kord—technically, not part of the Reyes family, but a vital character to Jaime’s journey. How did you cast her?
Ángel Manuel Soto: We wanted to have, front and center, a Latino cast, because it’s a Latino family. And one of the things that I’ve always noticed is that Brazilians are often left out of the conversation of Latinos. Brazil is part of Latin America, they just happen to speak Portuguese. But when people talk about Latinos, they don’t always mention Brazil. I have a lot of love for Brazil, and I wanted to have the Latino representation also include Brazilians. So, when looking for the character of Jenny, I saw a tape Bruna did for something else, and I saw her fierceness, I saw her vulnerability. I saw how strong she looked and how she carried herself very, very secure in front of the camera—all of the elements of a strong female character that stands out. I wanted her to manifest the fierceness that she brings into the screen and put it into the character, and she did an amazing job. I was so lucky to have her.
Question: I think it’s rare to see a superhero film that features not just one bilingual character but an almost entirely bilingual set of characters. What would that have meant to you to see on the screen growing up, and what do you think that will mean to kids and fans seeing Blue Beetle all around the world where they speak other languages, not just English? You’ve blended it so naturally in the film.
Ángel Manuel Soto: That’s why it’s always been odd for me that it doesn’t happen, because that’s what I think is unrealistic. It’s unrelatable for me to see somebody that you know would say something in their native tongue, to voice it in a different language just because. I don’t want to speak for anybody’s reasons of why they do what they do, but at least for me, it’s always been weird. You see it, or you buy it, you watch it, sure, because it’s there—what else are you going to do? Maybe nobody has had the bravery, or the opportunity, or the permission to do it, but now, I think audiences are more open than ever before to the fact that there’s other languages in the world.
Question: The Reyes family is truly representative of families everywhere, isn’t it?
Ángel Manuel Soto: It is. And it’s not just a Chicano family. Yes, you have the Chicano kids who were born in the US, but you also have the parents who moved to the US and grew up there. And then you have the grandma who left her whole life outside of the US and now she’s here. You have the person that only speaks Spanish, the people that Spanish is their main language, but they speak English because their kids grew up in it, and the kids who’ve always spoken both.
So you have all that, the whole experience within the family is in the spirit of authenticity, and it all feels natural when spoken from the heart—if the character’s heart speaks in Spanish, it’s in Spanish. If it’s in Portuguese, it’s in Portuguese. If it’s in English, it should be in English. It was all done with the intention of being true to the emotionality of the experiences shared by not just the characters, but also the actors playing those characters.
Question: Tell me about Palmera City—you and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer had a chance to bring to life an entirely new city for the DC canon, which does not happen very often.
Ángel Manuel Soto: Yes, when I came into the project, I noticed that the script was based in this fictional city called Palmera City. And what I came to learn was that because Superman has Metropolis, Batman has Gotham, Flash has Central City, we wanted to give Blue Beetle a city of his own. And Palmera City felt natural to me when I read it, like, “Oh, I think I know this city. I think I’ve been to it many times.” I want this city to live up to the expectations of a big metropolitan city, but also to still have a side of it like Edge Keys, a side like where many people grew up, the urban landscape but also the other side of the tracks where the lower incomes are, communities are being marginalized, and where you have a lot of the immigrant population—where you have all the flavor. [LAUGHS]
Question: The city really is inspired by Blue Beetle’s traditional home in the comics, El Paso, Texas, correct?
Ángel Manuel Soto: One hundred percent—designing a new city allowed us to do something totally new, but at the same time we wanted to hit the energy of El Paso. So we have areas that look like parts of El Paso, landmarks from El Paso like the Plaza building. Landmarks of El Paso let us honor the city where Jaime originally came up from. We also introduce everybody to the potential of this new world that lives in these neon lights, vaporwave aesthetic pool of nostalgia and futuristic energy that doesn’t feel like it’s so far in the future as movies like Blade Runner, it’s more grounded, but still carries that nostalgia with it.
Question: Thinking of the fans the way that you were when you were creating the look and the feel of the film as well as the connection between all the characters in this movie, what do you want audiences to experience when they see Blue Beetle? What are you hoping that they feel?
Ángel Manuel Soto: I hope people welcome a new hero into their lives! I hope people also welcome being part of a family that is presented in its own authentic way. I think I would love for people to have conversations about different topics in the movie, but most of all, I want people to have a great time. I want people to have fun, I want people to enjoy all the action—the movie has so much action! And I want people to cry and to laugh. I want people to ask questions. I want people to feel engaged, not just with the story and their characters, but just wonder where the character could be, or wonder where he can go. For me, that’s very exciting.
