Blue Beetle(2023)

Plot Summary

• Somewhere in the frozen wasteland, an expedition from Kord Industries, led by mercenary Ignacio Carapax, locates an alien Scarab, and delivers it into the hands of Victoria Kord, the company's CEO.In Palmera City, new college graduate Jaime Reyes returns home to his father Alberto, mother Rocio, sister Milagro, uncle Rudy, and Nana. After catching up, Jaime finds out that his family have fallen upon hard times while he was away. New developments by Kord Industries are slowly gentrifying his hometown, leading to his father losing his business, and the family are in dire threat of losing their home. On top of everything, Alberto has developed heart problems. Jaime is confident that he can get a good job with his college degree and support them, but despite his credentials, no one will hire him. Milagro gets him a job with her as a cleaner at Victoria Kord's mansion, meanwhile, Victoria finds that her niece, Jenny Kord, has come to confront her about a defunct superpolice technology called the One Man Army Corps (OMAC) that her father, former CEO Ted Kord, had ordered scrapped before his sudden disappearance. Victoria has revived the project and is developing it to sell to world powers, using a strange new tech. Jenny demands Victoria stop the OMAC project, as her father had turned Kord Industries away from weapons manufacturing, but Victoria refuses. Jaime sees her threatening Jenny, and steps in to defend her, leading to him and Milagro getting promptly fired. Jenny appreciates the gesture however, and tells Jaime to see her at Kord Tower so she can arrange another job for him and his sister. After a pep talk from his father, Jaime decides to take Jenny up on her offer.Jaime goes to Kord Tower, but is made to wait in the lobby. Elsewhere in the building, Jenny find's the source of OMAC's new technology; the Scarab. She steals it and runs, Jaime seeing her in the lobby and trying to catch up with her. As the alarm is sounded, Jenny panics and gives Jaime the Scarab, hidden in a burger box, and orders him to guard it, but never touch or even look at it. He confusedly agrees and takes it home. His family convince him to open the box and they examine the strange statuette. Upon being picked up, the Scarab suddenly comes to life and attaches itself to Jaime, painfully fusing to his back and encasing him in a set of alien armor. The Scarab speaks to him, and begins a check of its systems, launching him into space, sending him back to earth, and flying him helter skelter through the city causing damage before eventually returning him home. The family argue about what to do, Rudy insisting they not get the police involved, convinced that they work for Kord. Desperate to get the Scarab removed, Jaime decides to find Jenny and get some answers. He finds Jenny fleeing armed enforcers, and helps her get away. Jenny knew about the Scarab, as it had been in her father's possession long ago, but didn't know it would bond with Jaime, as it is sentient, and chooses it's own host. The only chance of getting it off him might be in her father's vault, but they will need a digital key stored at Kord Industries. Rudy takes them and sets off a homemade jamming device to block the cameras while Jaime and Jenny enter to steal the key, a smartwatch. Jenny explains that Victoria was Ted's older sister, but their father left the company to Ted. Victoria became bitter, and has been obsessed with progress and profit ever since. The jamming device gives out, and the group is attacked by Carapax in a prototype OMAC suit. The Scarab activates Jaime's suit, and he fights a losing battle with the bodyguard. The Scarab offers to take full control of Jaime's body, and demonstrates the suits capability of creating any weapon at will. However, Jaime stops the Scarab from killing Ignacio, which allows him to defeat the younger man and nearly kill him, but Rudy and Jenny ram Carapax with the jamming device and evacuate the injured Jaime. On the way, Jaime reveals the Scarab is named Khaji-Da, learning so after it took over his body and he temporarily merged with it's consciousness. They go to Jenny's dad's old mansion, and using the key, she takes them into a secret basement lair where Ted operated as the superhero Blue Beetle. He had the Scarab, which he deduced to be some kind of alien super-weapon, but it chose not to bond with him, so Ted created his own gadgets and suit from scratch. Rudy starts to hack Ted's computer while Jaime and Jenny head upstairs. The Scarab heals Jaime's wounds, and he and Jenny talk. Jenny's mother was the one that inspired her father to take up hero work and turn the company around, but after her death he became removed and obsessed. One day he disappeared, never to return. She admires Jaime's close family relationships, and they nearly kiss before Rudy tells them he has broken into the computer.Rudy finds out that the Scarab once fused with someone else, who was analyzed to create the prototype OMAC suit, but the project with shut down before it could be completed. Once the Scarab chooses a host, it merges with them on a cellular level, and does its best to protect the bearer. Unfortunately, the only way to remove the Scarab is to kill the host. Jaime is disheartened, and Rudy talks with him outside, encouraging him that maybe the Scarab is a gift instead of a curse. They see Victoria's helicopter headed towards the Reyes home, and Jaime races back. Victoria's army of enforcers storm the Reyes house and round up the family, demanding to know where their son is and setting fire to the house. Jaime arrives and the suit withstands their attacks, so they start targeting his family. Jaime defeats most of the soldiers, but Alberto and Milagro are pinned down by a soldier as Victoria and Carapax prepare a special weapon. Jaime and Khaji-Da take out the soldier, but Alberto begins suffering a heart attack, distracting Jaime long enough for Carapax to catch him in an electrified claw that incapacitates him. Carapax abducts Jaime as his father dies before the ambulance can arrive. In the morning, Rocio, Milagro, and Rudy are rallied by Nana to put their grief aside for the time being and save Jaime. Jenny offers to help, and takes them back to her childhood home. She brings them into Ted/Blue Beetle's Bugship, an armored airship, and head out to plan a rescue.Jaime is held prisoner inside an old island fortress near Cuba, where the OMAC is being developed. Victoria plans to download the Scarab's code into the OMAC neural systems, and duplicate it to create thousands of super-soldiers, unconcerned that the process will likely kill Jaime. Her lead scientist argues that they could learn more from the Scarab if they keep the host alive, but Victoria orders him to start extracting the Scarab's code into Carapax. Meanwhile, Jenny leads the Reyes family to the island, where Nana formulates a plan to storm the base using Kord's old tech. They land the ship amidst heavy fire, converting it into a walking tank-like vehicle, and blaze through the enforcers' ranks. Milagro heads into the labyrinthine tunnels with Jenny to find her brother. They duck into a side room to avoid the guards, and find that Victoria has already constructed thousands of OMAC units waiting for hosts, which are being powered up by the Scarab. In the lab, Jaime is put through excruciating pain from download, and his organs start to shut down. As he passes out, he sees a vision of Alberto, who encourages him to embrace his destiny and accept the Scarab instead of fighting against it. Jaime says goodbye to his dad, and reaches out to Khaji-Da while Jenny and Milagro place explosives on the generator. Jaime fully merges with the Scarab as the explosives go off, shutting down the extraction, but not before Carapax's OMAC suit is fully powered and operational. Jaime escapes his restraints, but the Scarab needs time to reboot. He is helped by the scientist, who is killed by Carapax in his newly transformed suit. Jaime runs, but is cornered by soldiers. Nana arrives and eliminates the enforcers, expertly operating a machine gun, and revealing she used to be a revolutionary in her youth. They make it back to the ship, but Milagro and Jenny have not returned, so Jaime goes back in to find them, along with Rudy. The explosion has separated the two girls, and Jenny is captured by Victoria and her guards. Milagro is pinned down, but Jaime finds her just in time. Now completely symbiotic with the Scarab, he easily takes down the soldiers and saves his sister, but is found and engaged by Carapax. A fierce fight ensues, Jaime eventually being beaten down by the bigger, stronger warrior. Rudy emerges and Carapax sends a rocket after him, seemingly killing him. Enraged, Jaime gains the upper hand, and prepares to take revenge for his father and uncle and kill Carapax, but is forcibly stopped by the Scarab. Now understanding compassion since merging with Jaime, it tells him what it saw upon being briefly downloaded into Ignacio's own mind, showing that he was conscripted as a child soldier as a young boy, how Victoria found him and took him to be her guinea pig for the OMAC project, and how his mother was killed by a random and senseless bomb attack, turning him into the cold hearted man he became. Jaime takes pity on him, and spares his life. Meanwhile, Victoria attempts to escape in a helicopter with Jenny in tow, showing her that even though if she loses the island facility, she has the Scarab's code in a portable device, and can start over. Jenny uses a protective foam gadget her dad left her to take out the pilots and throw herself and Victoria out of the helicopter to the ground safely. Jenny destroys the duplicated Scarab code, and Victoria orders Carapax to kill them. However, Carapax turns on her as the others escape, reuniting with a very much alive Rudy. Carapax overloads his suit, taking Victoria, the fortress, and all of the OMAC units with him as it explodes.The Reyes family grieve for Alberto, and the community rallies around them for support. Jenny takes over as CEO of Kord Industries, and promises to uphold her father's legacy. She gives Rudy a new truck, and tells them she will have her company rebuild the Rayes' home. Jenny says she is heading to her father's mansion, and Jaime offers to fly her there, and they share a kiss.Deep within the Blue Beetle's lair, a garbled transmission from Ted Kord desperately tells his daughter that he is still alive.

Storyline

• Jaime Reyes suddenly finds himself in possession of an ancient relic of alien biotechnology called the Scarab. When the Scarab chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, he's bestowed with an incredible suit of armor that's capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero Blue Beetle. — Official synopsis