‘Blue Beetle’ director talks representation, music and the film’s working class roots

“Blue Beetle,” the first live action superhero movie with a Latinx lead, hits theaters nationwide this Friday.

It tells the story of Jaime Reyes (played by “Cobra Kai” star and L.A.’s own Xolo Maridueña) a recent college grad chosen by an alien scarab that gives its host incredible superpowers.

The Warner Bros. movie has received largely positive reviews.

“As a hard reset for the troubled DCEU, it’s refreshing, despite its adherence to formula,” wrote Katie Wash in Times review, adding that the movie’s lightheartedness “proves to be a powerful antidote to the otherwise dour tone that has bogged down DC movies of late.”

Despite the critical praise, “Blue Beetle” finds itself in the unfortunate situation of being released during an ongoing writers’ and actors’ strike, which raises questions about how it will perform at the box office.

Ahead of its release, I spoke to “Blue Beetle” director Angel Manuel Soto at a recent press junket about bringing a Latinx story to the big screen. The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

First of all, congratulations on the movie. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you so much.

I did have one gripe with it, and I’ll go ahead and get it out of the way: the comic book is set in El Paso. Why is it a new city in the movie?

When I came into the project, [the studio] had already been working on a city for Blue Beetle called Palmera City. I knew him from El Paso, and so I asked why we were changing it from El Paso. They told me they have plans of bringing Blue Beetle into the top tier of the superheroes. According to DC, whenever a hero reaches that level, they give them their own cities — like Batman with Gotham, Superman with Metropolis or Flash with Central City.

But for me, coming from Puerto Rico, where sometimes it’s misrepresented or they use it as a stand in for something else, I wanted to bring as much as I could from El Paso into the movie. We wanted to still give honor and respect to the city that came before Palmera City. That’s why we decided that [the Reyes] would live on El Paso Street. The architecture of the house is that kind of adobe architecture. The interior of the house is all based on all of these different houses that we went to in El Paso. We included the Plaza Hotel in the skyline of the city. The nopales gardens, the murals from el Cimi. The beer that they drink is from Old Sheepdog Brewery, which is from El Paso as well. The pink crosses around. We tried to bring in as much as we could because although Jaime Reyes and his family don’t live in El Paso anymore, that doesn’t mean that El Paso is not with them.

Let’s talk a little bit about the soundtrack. There are a lot of really good bangers in there. You have Selena. “La Chona.”

The same way that I grew up consuming traditional Puerto Rican music that probably nobody in the world listens to except in Puerto Rico, I also listened to all this other pop culture, not just from the United States but also from Latin America. I grew up listening to Café Tacuba. I grew up listening to all these great rock bands. Soda Stereo, for example. We wanted to have this playlist of something that everybody in the family could probably listen to.

Before I started shooting, I made this playlist with [writer] Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer. He grew up in Queretaro, Mexico, and I grew up in Puerto Rico, yet we both connected through music and through TV shows. I think that for me, art allows us to have a conversation that doesn’t care about borders, that doesn’t care about boundaries or frontiers. Music and arts connect people no matter what. I felt like we didn’t have to rely on American music [for the soundtrack]. Latino music, we have punk, too. We have great 80s synthwave. We have ballads, we have reggaeton. We have everything! So why not celebrate it?

Something that struck me about the movie was how low-key subversive it is. Obviously, the grandmother character, Nana, alludes to a very interesting, revolutionary past. The “Batman is a fascist!” line, which I thought was really funny…

It’s a funny line! Rudy [played by George Lopez] is into conspiracy theories. He’ll say funny, absurd things.

Is it a conspiracy though?

Those are the debates. Like, you know, those are the conversations that are healthy to have after you watch the movie.

It feels like a very working class movie…

100%.

It’s almost an indictment of the American dream a little bit because you have Jaime, who goes to college and does the right thing, and what’s next is like, “Congrats! By the way, your family is losing their house and now you have to work this service job.” Personally, I liked that setup. I think it works and it gives the movie a semblance of authenticity, right? I realize I don’t have a question and am just ranting at this point.

No, no. But I like it! I like what you’re saying because when we were given the task of telling a story about Latinos, I thought, “Well, I am a Latino. Garreth is a Latino. Let’s talk about what we know. What was our experience growing up like?”

We don’t come from privilege. We come from the same idea and the same life. [Latinos] have had to face a lot of stuff — from being marginalized, to being segregated, to being displaced, to being gentrified, having housing insecurity, having fear that everything that you have worked for so much can be stripped away just because somebody with more power can decide for you. Especially in Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony. So, for me, it was very important to finally have a hero that lives like we do, that experiences life closer to the way we experience life. A hero of the proletariat, if we want to say. So that we can finally have somebody who gets us. Not the whole idea of waiting for Godot.

Personally, I think it’s a wonderful film, but it also finds itself in a difficult situation with an ongoing labor dispute. What challenges has that presented?

The main challenge is not being able to have the wonderful cast be celebrated for the amazing job that they did. It doesn’t weigh on me as much, like, ”Oh, now I have to run with this all by myself!” I’ll do anything for them. I’ll wear their shirts. I’ll represent them wherever. They deserve it. They deserve all the flowers. I wish they were here to see and listen to people respond to their work, to see all the love for the passion that they put into this project.

At the same time, I’m so proud of them because not only did they give a performance that for me was amazing, but also I’m very proud of them for taking a stand for better pay, for a better future. The sacrifices that they’re making, they’re going to pay off in the future.

Their protest is necessary, and they have my full support. I stand by them. I stand by the union 100%. I just wish that people see that the work that they did, which they’re fighting for to protect, could be celebrated the same way that you and I are celebrating it. So I stand strong with them. I hope the right thing is done and hopefully we can get back to telling more stories like this.

Things we read this week that we think you should read

— De Los contributor Rodrigo Cervantes took at look at why Latinxs are fascinated by mythical heroes that date back centuries.

— Walter Mercado shot back into the public consciousness a couple years ago thanks to the Netflix documentary “Mucho Mucho Amor,” although you could argue he never really left us. And if you’re ever in Puerto Rico, you can go to an antique shop inside a mall that sells his memorabilia. In an essay for De Los, Edgar Gómez wrote about discovering the shop and the memories it brought him.

— In what can easily be a love letter to Latinx Miami, De Los contributor Noé López writes about his love of Oaxaca and how going to the 305 and interacting with all the cultures that reside in South Florida helped ignite his passion for being Mexican.

— One of the goals of De Los has been to uplift and celebrate the work of existing organizations in the community who are doing good work. This week, we partnered with Boyle Heights Beat on a story of mother-daughter bonding and generational trauma.

— Ice cream has magical powers. Just ask SueEllen Mancini, the driving force behind Sad Girl Creamery. Mancini has parlayed her pastry chef pedigree into a new ice cream brand that riffs on beloved Latinx flavor profiles with swirls of cajeta, mezcal and chocolate with flan. One of the key aspects of Mancini’s venture is its focus on mental health. Story by Times food writer Stephanie Breijo.

— Brittany and José Montero have grown closer thanks to their love of plants. This hobby has turned into a business; the siblings have opened Prop House Plants in downtown San Pedro. The Monteros grew in Hawthorne with Cuban parents and say their love of plants started thanks to their grandmother, who had avocado and guava trees in her backyard.

— No story generated as much nostalgia in the group chats this week as this New York Times feature on Brazilian pop culture icon Xuxa. Her presence on Spanish language U.S. television and her merchandising seemed was a constant in Latino households in the 90s. It’s a fascinating read as Xuxa reckons with her place in Brazilian society and how race played into her success.