Blue Beetle

In a remote frozen area, warrior Ignacio and chief scientist Jose are leading a private exploration party that is mining a huge spherical object. When the owner of Kord Industries Victoria Kord arrives, she’s very pleased because she can see that the legendary Scarab is inside the sphere. Meanwhile in Palmera City, Jaime Reyes has just graduated from Gotham City University and is returning to his hometown to reunite with his family: his father Alberto, his mother Rocio, his grandma Nana, his uncle Rudy, and his sister Milagros. After a warm welcome, Jaime is taken to lunch and learns some bad news: because Kord Industries is slowly taking over the city, the family has lost their auto shop, and the rent is so high that they’ll be losing the house soon too. To make matters worse, all this stress caused Alberto to have a heart attack. Jaime promises to get a good job with his college degree to help his family but as time passes, no one will hire him despite his credentials. Eventually Milagros gets him a job at the same place she’s at: Victoria’s mansion. Jaime isn’t happy to be a cleaner, but it’ll have to do for now. On his first day on the job, Jaime tries to say hi to Victoria to make a good impression, but he’s ignored. Victoria goes inside and discovers her niece Jennifer is there and obviously angry. As soon as she sees her aunt, she turns on the TV to play a video of the company’s latest product known as One Man Army Corps or simply OMAC. By creating a neural link with a fortified exoskeleton, the OMACs will allow their users to access and operate vast artillery and destructive powers, which can change the course of military warfare forever. Jennifer is furious because the company is supposed to be working to help people, not to make weapons, but Victoria reminds her that those were her dad’s wishes. After he disappeared, the company fell into Victoria’s hands, and now she can do whatever she wants. Since Jennifer refuses to give up his cause, Ignacio tries to stop her. This is seen by Jaime, who comes into Jennifer’s defense and causes Victoria to fire both him and Milagros on the spot. Jennifer feels bad about what happened and gives her number to Jaime, telling him to contact her later so she can get him a new job. Later that night, Jaime is too nervous to text Jennifer, but his father encourages him and reminds him to never give up. Jaime ends up sending the text and a meeting is arranged. The following day, while Jaime is waiting at the company lobby, Jennifer is sneaking inside the labs with the intent of sabotage. She’s shocked to discover they’ve found the Scarab and immediately steals it, hiding it inside a burger box to avoid suspicion. After she’s gone, Jose returns to his desk and notices the Scarab has disappeared, so he orders a complete lockdown of the facility. On her way out, Jennifer is approached by a desperate Jaime right before the alarm rings. Terrified of being caught, she entrusts him with the box, telling him his new job is to protect it but to never open it at any cost. Jaime rushes out of the building and then Jennifer walks along the guards to pretend helping them look for the thief. Later at his home, Jaime is bothered and pressured by his family until the box gets opened. They aren’t very impressed by the Scarab and start playing with it, but when Jaime takes it from them, it starts glowing on his hand. Suddenly the Scarab reveals legs and jumps out to latch right onto Jamie’s face, refusing to be removed and electrocuting anyone who tries, this strange power also destroys the electricity box. After lots of struggle, the Scarab sneaks under Jaime’s clothes and starts transforming, revealing bug legs that throw Jaime against the roof and create an exo-armor around his body that starts rather terrifying but ends up looking very cool. Before they can understand exactly what is going on, the suit’s AI system activates, although only Jaime can hear it. The AI wants to run a test of its programming, so it bursts Jaime right through the roof and propels him directly to space, which Jaime still can’t believe. Then the suit flies back down and takes Jaime around the city by revealing a pair of wings. When he comes face to face with a bus, the suit creates a special shield that cuts the vehicle in two and leaves Jaime without a single wound. After lots of flying around, the Scarab takes Jaime back to his home, where the suit retracts and Jaime passes out. Later in the evening, Jaime wakes up to discover the Scarab has inserted itself on its back. While he panics, the family considers calling the police but Rudy advises them against it, pointing out Jaime will be seen as the thief. Afterward, Jaime goes looking for Jennifer to demand answers, only to find her being chased by armed forces outside the Kord building. Jennifer gets in his car as they open fire on them, so Jaime drives fast enough to escape and takes Jennifer to his house, where she shares an explanation. The Scarab is an artifact of unknown origin that can be wielded as a weapon of mass destruction, which is why her aunt wants to use it to power her OMAC project. It seems it has chosen Jaime as its host and she doesn’t know why, but she thinks she can get some answers by accessing a certain ‘key’ from Kord Tower. Uncle Rudy drives Jaime and Jennifer to Kord Tower and uses a jamming device to mess with the security cameras. While the guards are distracted, the duo sneaks inside and steals the key, which turns out to be a modified watch that used to belong to Jennifer’s dad. Then the duo tries to exit the building only to be stopped by Ignacio, so the Scarab immediately enters suit mode to fight him. In return, Ignacio uses his incomplete OMAC to attack back and a fight ensues during which the AI reveals the great variety of weapons that come with the suit. As Ignacio doesn’t hesitate to cause explosions and throw cars, Jaime’s AI gets more violent by the second with its weapon development. When it’s about to kill Ignacio, Jaime stops it, saying that he won’t take any lives. Suddenly Rudy and Jennifer show up in the truck and Ignacio shoots the vehicle, causing Jaime to run to check on them. This distraction gives Ignacio the chance to retaliate and overpower Jaime, but before he can kill him, Rudy hits him with the jamming device and the trio gets to escape. In the morning they arrive at Jennifer’s old mansion, where she accesses a secret lair using the watch. It’s revealed that her dad used to be the city’s superhero known as Blue Beetle, and he used his family fortune to create lots of gadgets and technology to fight crime. The Scarab has chosen Jaime the same way it chose the original Blue Beetle years ago, and that original hero became a mentor for Jennifer’s dad. Unfortunately the Scabar never chose Jennifer’s father, but he still spent his lifetime learning more about it and accepted the name Blue Beetle on his own merits until he disappeared. While Rudy looks for a solution to Jaime’s dilemma in the old computer, Jaime goes to the bathroom and notices a wound glowing blue, meaning the Scarab is slowly fusing itself with Jaime’s body by altering his physiology from the inside but at least the wound heals quickly. Then Jaime tries his best to comfort Jennifer, who is feeling down with grief and loneliness for having returned to her father’s house. The duo is about to kiss but they’re interrupted by Rudy, who announces he has new information. The Scarab can never be detached from Jaime’s body as long as he’s alive because it has formed a neural bond with him and will seek to protect its ‘host’ at any cost. Jaime isn’t happy with this news and feels like’s been shoved into an awful situation, but Rudy comforts him by suggesting that he was chosen by the Scarab for a reason they still haven’t understood. Meanwhile Victoria learns about Jaime having the Scarab and sends her private militia to the Reyes household to capture him. At that moment, Jaime, Jennifer, and Rudy notice Victoria’s helicopter moving towards Jaime’s house, so he tries to use the powers of the suit to no avail. Remembering that the Scarab will always protect him, Jaime jumps off and the suit finally activates to take him home. At the Reyes house, the militia surrounds the area and violently drags the family outside, knocking off a candle in the process. The family is rounded up at gunpoint, but Jaime arrives just in time to knock down a few soldiers and make them shoot him instead. Victoria wants to see the power of the suit and makes her men target the family, so Jaime activates his shield and stops all the bullets. Then he asks the AI for non-lethal weapons and starts taking down the soldiers while his family escapes. However as they run away, Milagros falls and Alberto stops to help her, causing him to get badly hurt by a soldier and triggering a cardiac arrest as he collapses on the ground. Jaime has Victoria and Ignacio exactly where he wants them, but before he can shoot, he hears his father in pain and rushes to his side. This allows Ignacio and Victoria to taze and capture him, so as Jaime is dragged away, the family must watch Alberto die and the house burn down. In the morning, Nana tries to stay strong and tells her family that instead of crying, they should try to rescue Jaime. Jennifer shows up and offers her help, feeling responsible for everything. She takes the family to the Blue Beetle lair and reveals her father’s modified aircraft called ‘Bug’, which flies everyone away at great speed. It also provides them with a bunch of gadgets to fight: Milagros picks a glove with various options, but Nana and Rocio opt for ranged weapons. Then they make a plan to attack. At a fortress in Paco Island, Victoria connects Jaime to a machine in order to extract the Scarab’s coding and put it into her OMAC armor’s functioning database, which will kill Jaime in the process. Ignacio and his body armor are also connected to the machine, and he’ll receive the code to turn him into the first OMAC exo-armor host. The extraction process begins and Jaime screams in excruciating pain. The neural overload almost ends his life, but instead he enters a comatose state. Here he has a vision of the afterlife and is visited by Alberto, who assures Jaime that his greater purpose in life of taking up the Blue Beetle mantle. As Jaime accepts the Scarab as his symbiotic protector, they finally finish synchronizing with each other perfectly. Unfortunately, the code transfer still gets completed and Ignacio gets a more powerful and enhanced version of OMAC armor. Meanwhile Rudy crashlands the Bug on the fortress, causing the guards to open fire on them. However the Bug is too strong to be damaged and just keeps walking, hitting soldiers with its legs on the way. Rudy finds a special button and presses it to make the Bug release a blue smoke that quickly puts the guards to sleep. Then Milagros and Jennifer enter the building and come across a large set of OMAC suits that are getting powered by Scarab’s energy. They destroy them using some explosive gadgets, but the resulting explosion collapses part of the fortress and the debris separates the duo. At the lab, Jaime finally wakes up but can’t use the suit yet because it is going through a system reboot. At that moment, Jose finally snaps because he’s tired of Victoria’s racist and belittling jabs, so he unlocks the door for Jaime to escape. Right after the door closes, Ignacio kills Jose and the lab explodes, but Victoria is alive thanks to Ignacio’s protection and leaves to capture Jennifer. As he rushes to find his family, Jaime comes across a bunch of soldiers and thinks it’s over, but to his surprise, Nana comes to his rescue and defeats them all in seconds. Then they go to the Bug and Jaime reunites with his mother, but when he realizes Milagros and Jennifer are missing, Jaime decides to go back to save them. In the fortress, Milagros is defending herself from the soldiers using her glove, which creates a giant fist but also a shield. Soon she’s surrounded, but at that moment Jaime shows up and his suit is finally ready to go. Thanks to the absolute synchronisation, he’s now capable of using the Scarab’s armor control perfectly with just his command, so it’s easy for Jaime to beat them all up in a matter of minutes. Suddenly Jaime is pushed through the wall and saves himself with the wings to notice Ignacio is here to fight. They battle in the sky with outstanding control of their powers, but soon they’re falling back on the ground, where they make all kinds of weapons and plasma blasts to attack each other. In the meantime, Victoria takes Jennifer captive and prepares to depart the island, but Jennifer uses her dad’s special gum bomb to fill the helicopter with foam, causing it to crash. Jennifer and Victoria are the only survivors, and Jennifer destroys Victoria’s device containing the data on Scarab so there won’t be any more attempts to revive the OMAC project ever again. Back to Jaime, he starts by gaining the upper hand in the fight by displaying brilliant control of the power that allows him to conjure weapons using his imagination, but soon Ignacio manages to pin him down using his superior warfare experience. Suddenly Rudy throws rocks at Ignacio to distract him, causing him to fire at him instead. Rudy dodges it, but Jaime doesn’t want to lose another family and gets infuriated, so he starts dropping vicious blows on Ignacio. He’s so desperate for revenge that Jaime almost kills Ignacio but the AI stops him, reminding him of his policy not to take lives. The AI also shows him Ignacio’s past memories, which it was able to access during the procedure, revealing that Ignacio was a victim just like Jaime and his family. When Ignacio was a child, a bombing sent by Kord destroyed his home and killed his mother, all part of the USA’s militaristic occupation of South America. Then Victoria kidnapped Ignacio to keep him as his guinea pig for her project. Jaime decides to spare Ignacio’s life, and this act of kindness triggers a realization in Ignacio’s mind: he now has the power to ignore Victoria’s commands. Ignacio overcharges himself and jumps on Victoria, causing an explosion that kills them both and destroys the entire island. Rudy arrives just in time with the Bug and manages to rescue Jaime and Jennifer. With the whole family reunited, they finally have a moment to grieve for Alberto. Sometime later, Jennifer takes over Kord Industries and in a press release she announces they’re abandoning every kind of military project for good. The Reyes return to their destroyed home and as they wonder what to do, the entire neighborhood comes out to welcome and comfort them. Jennifer pays a visit to let the family know that she wants a skilled inventor like Rudy working for Kord Industry and that she will pay for the family home as well. Jaime gathers the courage to ask Jennifer out, and as they share a kiss, the suit flies them away. Meanwhile in the Blue Beetle lair, the computer turns on their own as a voice recording from Jennifer’s dad reveals that he’s still alive somewhere.