A new Blue Beetle promo just dropped that offers a previously-unseen look at Jamie Reyes' suit in the upcoming DC Universe blockbuster.The promotional image first surfaced on Twitter. It features a three-quarter view of Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) from the waist up. The teenaged superhero is wearing his Blue Beetle armor, with several of the armor's hard-to-spot details clearly visible. These include the intricate seams running across the armor's surface, as well as the organic design of its breastplate and torso segments.
The promo is the latest in a string of photos and videos of Maridueña's crime-fighting outfit that have appeared online throughout Blue Beetle's production cycle. The first of these unofficial sneak peeks emerged in May 2022 and was met with widespread praise from the DCU fanbase. Fans were especially enamored with how faithfully Blue Beetle's big screen costume mirrors its comic book counterpart. Other photos and footage of the costume circulated since then have earned similar kudos for spotlighting the armor's impressive flexibility, despite it being fabricated with ostensibly rigid materials.
Blue Beetle Soft Launches the New DCU
This ease of movement will come in handy when Reyes faces off against Blue Beetle's villains, including Susan Sarandon's Victoria Kord. Created specifically for the film, Victoria Kord was recently introduced into DC Comics continuity in the limited series Blue Beetle: Graduation Day, which establishes her as the sister of Reyes' superhero predecessor, Ted Kord. Whether the same is true in DCU canon remains "to be seen, although Sarandon previously indicated that her incarnation of Victoria is also the Kord Industries CEO, as in the comics. "I'm the white military-industrial complex," she said. "So, I had a fabulous time because there's nothing better than being bad."
Blue Beetle isn't just shaking up DC Comics' continuity, either. According to DC Studios co-chair and co-CEO James Gunn, the movie will also serve as a soft reboot of the wider DCU, along with The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. "[The Flash is] a fantastic movie that I really love that resets the entire DC Universe," he said. "Then [we] move into Blue Beetle, a fantastic film about a kid who's a marvelous part of the DCU and then into Aquaman 2, which leads directly into our next few projects." Gunn then outlined the initial slate of movies, TV shows and video games that will usher in the vision he and fellow DC Studios head Peter Safran have for the DCU's future.
Blue Beetle arrives in cinemas on Aug. 18, 2023.
Source: Twitter