Blue Beetle is sadly failing to crawl to great heights at the global box office, but on a creative and critical level it’s a barnstorming success. With a Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score that’s put it ahead of all but one of every other Marvel and DC movie released in 2023, Blue Beetle is enjoying glowing reviews and an equally warm response from those that are actually going to see it in cinemas. And for those that haven’t yet, I urge you to do so, as it points us to exactly how James Gunn will ensure his upcoming DCU will stand apart from the ubiquitous MCU.
While Xolo Maridueña’s Jaime Reyes and his eccentric but loving family certainly steal the show in director Angel Manuel Soto’s movie, a character all in itself in the film is Palmera City, the fictional Texan town that the Reyes call home. Not since Wakanda was first introduced in Black Panther have we seen such a vibrant and memorable location in a superhero movie. A techno-metropolis, Palmera City is a shimmering sea of skyscrapers covered in bright neon holograms, and yet the poverty-stricken Edge Keys neighborhood on its fringes speaks to the social injustice lingering behind this facade of extreme progress.
Given that the DCEU was so fond of turning its fictional cities into interchangeable grungy cesspits — Metropolis and Gotham were depicted as neigbors in Batman v Superman, which only stripped away both of their unique identities — it’s highly encouraging for the future of the franchise that Blue Beetle excelled in its world-building in this way. In fact, although he had nothing to do with its production, James Gunn must’ve loved this element of the movie as it is thoroughly in sync with his own vision for the DCU.
Back in June, Gunn appeared in an eye-opening episode of Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast. The biggest takeaway from this interview was Gunn’s revelation that Jaime is “the first DCU character for sure.” However, the new DC Studios co-CEO also dropped another fascinating tidbit about his plans that actually has much more to say about how Blue Beetle lays the groundwork for what’s to come.
When asked about what makes DC different from Marvel, Gunn explained his belief that “there’s a bit more of a fantasy element to [the] DCU.” He elaborated that he sees DC’s tendency to center around fictional cities, such as Gotham, Metropolis or Palmera, instead of Marvel’s habit of focusing on New York, as a chance to “create true world-building” in the DCU that can even be compared to something as ambitious as George R.R. Martin’s Westeros. As he said:
“One of the things I love about DC, that excites me about DC, is that in a way it’s another, alternate history. It is Gotham City and Metropolis and Star City and Bludhaven and all these different places in this other reality. And it makes it a little bit like Westeros in some ways. I love that about it. I love that we get to create true world-building in DC. It isn’t just ‘we’re throwing some superheroes on Earth.’”
In other words, we can no doubt expect many future DCU movies to repeat Blue Beetle‘s trick of making each location stand apart from the rest, which we can already see from such projects on the docket as the cosmic Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow or Paradise Lost, the Wonder Woman prequel that will examine Themysciran society more than ever before.
So don’t listen to the doom and gloom around its box office performance, Blue Beetle is already ringing in a bright future for the DCU.
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
