In ‘Blue Beetle,’ a superhero movie expands Mexican American representation in Hollywood — finally

It’s difficult to explain why I was crying five minutes into watching the new superhero movie Blue Beetle. It wasn’t a sad scene. On the contrary, it was a celebration of lead Jaime Reyes coming home after college to his loving Mexican American family, who had papered over their struggles and sacrificed much for the benefit of the kids.

If nostalgia means the pain from an old wound, what do you call the pain from recognition?

It’s not just that Reyes and I share a hometown in El Paso, Texas, (at least in the comics; in the movie he lives in the fictional Palmera City, a kind of Mexican American Miami), or that my grandmother also hated imperialists. It’s that the movie presents Mexican culture with little fanfare or explanation; just one more fact of these people’s lives.

The characters are Mexican and Mexican American, and they live their lives normally — or as normally as a story where an extraterrestrial scarab gives Jaime superpowers. The family is surrounded by cultural touchstones and quirks. Their Thalia telenovelas, their Virgen de Guadalupe paintings, and Selena on the radio.

If that doesn’t seem like a big deal to shed some tears over, congratulations — you’re part of the dominant culture.

Do you know how rare it is to see Latinos in the movies? A recent study from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that out of 1,600 films released in 2022, 5.2% of speaking parts featured a Latino actor. (Don’t get me started on the even lower numbers behind the cameras.)

We are almost 20% of the U.S. population and buy about 30% of movie tickets sold, yet to see ourselves on screen is one special effect that apparently Hollywood can’t afford. Even when we are represented, it’s more of a box check or part of a Fast and Furious-style rainbow coalition with no discernible cultural signifiers. I mean, Latinos aren’t having a backyard barbecue and slamming Coronas every time they save the world (wait, no, that’s pretty accurate).

Seeing Latino characters on screen is sadly uncommon. Rarer still is the kind of cultural representation on display in Blue Beetle. And this isn’t some small-scale independent production meant for a niche audience; this is a mass market, $100 million-plus, big studio picture — which dethroned Barbie at the box office last weekend.

And it’s pretty good.

The film takes the characters’ predicaments seriously, and there are consequences for the Reyes family going up against a billionaire, high-tech weapons manufacturer played by a malevolent Susan Sarandon. Yet it never forgets that superhero movies are supposed to be fun, and the family dynamic that takes center stage feels fresh.

Xolo Maridueña, who plays Jaime, leads a winning ensemble that includes Damián Alcázar as his father Alberto, Elpidia Carrillo as mother Rocio, Belissa Escobedo as sister Milagro, George Lopez as Uncle Rudy, and Adriana Barraza as grandmother Nana.

I checked in with one of the youngest members of my own family — my nephew Nathan, 10, in San Antonio — to ask if representation was something he thought about or even noticed. After all, while Latinos are still woefully underrepresented, you can at least point to animated movies such as Coco, Encanto, and the Spider-Verse films centered on Afro-Latino Miles Morales.

“When your dad and I were growing up, I always felt like I would look at shows on TV and movies and I would never see anybody that looked like me,” I explained as preamble. “More like …”

“A bunch of jacked white dudes?” he asked, mainly because we were talking superheroes, but he may as well have said, “A bunch of white dudes named Jack.”

Clearly, I didn’t need to do much explaining.

“In some sense, it’s nice to see people that are like you, because then you feel like you’re acknowledged,” Nathan said. “Like people know that you’re a kind of person.”

Ouch. I almost started crying again.

As a person of color, it is so very easy to be dehumanized by the dominant culture. So easy to be “othered.” To be made the dark face of crime, or the faceless waves flooding the border. And it’s not only about how others see us, but how we see ourselves. If you don’t recognize yourself in the larger cultural conversation, can you ever feel that you belong?

When I was younger, there were times when I was embarrassed to be Mexican. The word itself — a simple descriptor of nationality — felt like (and was used as) a slur. I grew beyond that, but I don’t think you can ever grow out of it.

I wish I had had a Blue Beetle back then, but I’m happy it exists now, for all the brown kids to see that our culture is part of the fabric of America. No more, but certainly not less.

It seems silly to hang so much on a story about a blue bug. Call it the magic of the movies.