The Four Color Media Monitor

The Wrap announced Warner Brothers is planning production of a movie based on Blue Beetle. And wouldn't you know it, this film project is not only based on the Latino character who took over the role after Ted Kord was murdered by an out-of-character Max Lord in Countdown to Infinite Crisis, it also has traces of casting and crew employment based along social justice ghetto mentality:

“Charm City Kings” director Angel Manuel Soto is set to direct “Blue Beetle,” DC Films and Warner Bros.’ first superhero movie starring a Latino character, individuals with knowledge of the project exclusively tells TheWrap.

The screenplay is from Mexican-born writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, who wrote Universal’s “Scarface” remake and Sony’s “Miss Bala.”

In DC Comics, Blue Beetle is the superhero alter ego used by three different heroes, but the film will focus on Mexican-American teenager Jaime Reyes, the third character to assume the Blue Beetle mantle.

Notice how the main helmers of this project are of Latino background themselves? All that does is demonstrate how this is a project delivered to members of the same community as the star character comes from, most likely out of silly concern they'd be committing cultural appropriation if it weren't cast according to social justice narratives, which, now that I think of it, is what the mid-2000s series starring Reyes was built on.

Created by Keith Giffen, John Rogers, and Cully Hamner in 2006, Jaime Reyes was introduced during the “Infinite Crisis’ crossover event ahead the launch of a new “Blue Beetle” in May 2006. In contrast to Kord and Garrett, Reyes is a working class El Paso teenager devoted to his family and with no connections to superheroes prior to receiving his powers.

See, this bears the same problem as Green Lantern had with Kyle Rayner: they were just introducing a brand new, untested character into an old role by costume and codename, without even bothering to build up the new donner of the costume organically, and worst, doing it all at the expense of the predecessor. In 1994, Hal Jordan was victimized, and in 2005, it was Kord. Something that goes entirely unmentioned here, and even the NY Post, who followed up on the news, makes no mention of the wrong direction taken by the editors and writers for introducing a successor. On which note, if a Jewish character were introduced at Kord's expense, I'd firmly object, because I don't think new characters of the same ethnic background as mine should be made into successors based on politically correct motivations and shock value.

While DC has had Latino characters in its movie universe, (Jay Hernandez as El Diablo in “Suicide Squad,” and Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya in “Birds of Prey”), and cast Latina Sasha Calle to play Supergirl, this will be the first stand-alone title to feature a Latino lead.

But as the choice of writers and directors hints, it's bound to be ideologically driven, and less reliant on entertainment value. How can you expect such a project to deliver when there's political correctness behind the whole production? And they don't even mention how any series volumes headlined by Reyes weren't successful in the long run: his first series only ran 36 issues in about 3 years. And here's a later volume from 2016 that only ran 18 issues; barely half of the prior volume's run. Simply put, despite what the MSM is telling, the character not only never found a large audience of any background to sustain a serious series run (and come to think of it, neither did Ted Kord, admittedly, seeing as his late 80s series ran little more than 2 years and 24 issues).

And if Kord hasn't been fully resurrected to the living world, and Lord still kept in the role of a villain depicted potentially worse than in the recent, execrable Wonder Woman 1984 movie, that's one more reason why this social justice diversity pandering is simply not working. I've grown tired of superhero films anyway, especially when they're largely built around special effects rather than acting talent, as has been the case for over 2 decades now. I'd rather watch arthouse films instead.

I do know this though: if Giffen, who co-created Reyes, had a problem with Lord being turned into a villain, then there's something odd about him creating a replacement character coming at the expense of the hero Lord was depicted slaughtering in 2005. How does that help make a case against the handling of Kord and Lord when you're pandering to the SJW elements the Greg Rucka/Geoff Johns/Judd Winick story from Countdown led to?

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, golden calf of death, msm propaganda, politics