In a better world, Blue Beetle would have been the flagship of the Warner Bros. summer line-up. It has all the elements a good popcorn flick should have. Action. Romance. Comedy. It is also, in my professional opinion, the best superhero movie of any kind since The Suicide Squad.

The story centers around Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña), a recent college graduate and prelaw student, who has just returned home to his family in Palmera City. While it is a time of celebration, there is still trouble on the horizon, with the family home and his father’s car repair shop threatened by Kord Industries’ taking over the old immigrant neighborhoods. To add insult to injury, the only job Jaime can find, even with his degree, is as a house boy to Kord Industries CEO Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon).

Jaime’s good heart and an effort to try and stop a fight between Victoria and her niece, Jenny Kord, (Bruna Marquezine), leads him to lose his job. It also leads to an appointment with destiny, as Jaime winds up becoming the unwitting mule who helps Jenny steal an artifact called The Scarab from Kord Industries. Jaime unexpectedly becomes the Scarab’s latest host and is soon on the run from the authorities and Victoria Kord, who has been trying to unlock the Scarab’s secrets for decades to make weapons.

It should be noted that Jaime’s origins in the movie are changed substantially from the comics, where he was still in high school and had two close friends, Paco and Brenda, who helped him out when he became bonded to the Scarab. I suspect this was changed to differentiate Jaime from Peter Parker and Miles Morales. While Jaime has been around longer than Miles in the world of comics, comparisons between two teen Hispanic heroes would be inevitable. Also, general audiences would take one look at Jaime’s struggles with his sentient suit and his friends and conclude that Blue Beetle was ripping off the MCU Spider-Man, Ned and Michelle.

Despite these changes, the core of what made Jaime and his family unique in the comics remains untouched and Blue Beetle is a stronger film for it. The theme of family recurs throughout Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer’s script. What truly sells the film, however, is the ensemble. There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, but the stand-outs are Adriana Barraza as Nana Reyes and George Lopez as Uncle Rudy.

This focus on characters over CGI separates Blue Beetle from every other superhero movie to be released in 2023. The Reyes family feel like real people, dealing with problems with which the average American family can relate, from underemployment to gentrification. This could have become preachy, but director Angel Manuel Soto deals with these topics with surprising subtlety. As a result, the finished movie feels more grounded, even during the parts where Jaime is reshaping his armor into a variety of awesome swords.

Blue Beetle also does a better job of standing on its own and being its own thing, unlike other recent DC Studios productions. There are nods to the larger universe, but most of them are understated Easter eggs, like the Scarab being hidden in a Big Belly Burger box or Uncle Rudy mentioning Metropolis and Central City. I personally find this preferable to the constant cameos and endless name drops of The Flash movie, which didn’t seem to trust its main character to hold the audience’s interest without Batman propping him up. Blue Beetle has no such issues.

Blue Beetle may have been considered the black sheep of DC Studios’ 2023 offerings, but it rings true blue. While developed for the DCEU setting, Blue Beetle has been described as the first hero of the new DCU. Hopefully we will get to see more of Jaime and his family in future films.