Most up-and-coming filmmakers making the jump into blockbuster territory for the very first time tend to have the “happy to be here” mindset when hitting the promotional circuit in support of their big budget debut, but that’s clearly not something Blue Beetle director Ángel Manuel Soto is interested in.
Instead of toeing the party line and saying all the right things in the right order, Soto has instead been speaking directly from the heart, and it’s refreshing to hear. The latest case in point came during an interview with Inverse, where he laid out his disdain for the perils of being lost to the endless reams of content on streaming back when his DC Comics adaptation was pegged for an HBO Max release.
“If you get to decide how big the explosions are going to be for me, then you cannot tell me how Latino I’m going to be. Every superhero movie gets a chance to play on the biggest screen possible. And the first time you allow a Latino to direct one, you’re going to put it into the algorithm so that it gets lost with all your big movies?”
Not only that, but he succinctly summed up one of the major problems with the superhero genre, one that many of Blue Beetle‘s DCU contemporaries have been guilty of.
“Superhero movies often are about the banality of who comes up with the most unrealistic thrill ride. But why do we have to sacrifice emotion and depth for fun? Why can’t you have a lot of both?”
Unfortunately, stellar reviews may not be able to save Blue Beetle from box office disappointment, but Soto can be proud of the fact he got to make a superhero epic that remained true to his vision, something that can’t be said of DC all that often.