You might be asking yourself, who the heck is Angel Manuel Soto, and why would he do something so stupid as shoot himself in the balls? Well. Angel Manuel Soto is the director of the upcoming Blue Beetle movie, and the ball shooting is purely figurative.
Okay. So. Long, long ago, and not really all that far away, ten year old Eric was part of a very poor family. He couldn't afford many video games, books, movies, or comics, but he did have a shining library card of justice, a library 3 miles from his house, and a bike. It was there that he discovered the awe-inspiring wonder or comic omnibuses. He couldn't afford to buy comics, but he didn't have to, because one of the librarians at his library was a huge comic book geek and ordered all of the omnibuses that she could. Marvel. DC. Dark Horse. IDW. Image wasn't really a thing yet, but once it was, she was all kinds of on top of that too. Yes, that's right, I predate Image Comics by over a decade.
Anyway, it was there that I discovered such heroes as The Uncanny X-men, Ironman, Green Lantern, The Flash, The Avengers, etc. I was already aware of the big ones, like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, etc because of TV series and cartoons, but that was where I found all of the other heroes, and the intricate universes in which they lived. One such hero was the Blue Beetle. He was kind of a D list hero, and he was killed off right at the beginning of Crisis on Infinite Earths just to show that the big event was serious, but he was a cool enough guy. I didn't have any huge love for him, but I didn't hate him either.
But, here's the thing. I am not like the majority of people out there. The "normies" if you will. Most people don't read comics, and never have, They go to see superhero movies like the MCU because they've made comic book heroes accessible and cool, without having to nerd out and read comics. Because of the MCU even normies can experience the heroes that I grew up with. (they also seem to think they're experts on them just because they've seen a few movies, but that's another story entirely)
Anyway, here we are in 2023 and comic book movies are in serious decline. Have been for years. And lo and behold a new trailer. The Blue Beetle is making his big screen debut. Ah. Hmmm. It's the Jaime Reyes version, not Dan Garret, or even Ted Kord. The race swapped replacement for Ted Kord that even the people who know about the Blue Beetle don't like. He is like the Ironheart to Tony Stark's Ironman. Some stupid kid trying to take over the legacy of a character he has no business taking over. Siiiiiiiiiiigh. But hey, it's got the kid from Cobra Kai, and I like Cobra Kai, so maybe it won't be too... bad... WHAT THE HELL DID THEY JUST SAY ABOUT BATMAN!?!?!?!
All right. SO. The makers of this movie already have an uphill battle getting people to come see it. It's about a hero that none of the normies have EVER heard of. It looks very low budget. It looks like a Japanese Super Sentai movie, which are laughed at by American audiences at the best of times. And it looks like a race swapped ripoff of Ironman. My parents didn't even realize it wasn't part of the MCU. They thought he was going to be the new Ironman. And didn't really care all that much. On top of that, they're doing a version of the Blue Beetle that even people who have actually heard of him, don't really like. And then, they proudly proclaim in their first trailer, "Batman is a fascist!"
Hoo boy. Where do I even start? All right. Let me explain this like I would to a particularly stupid child. People LOVE Batman. People LOOOOOOOOOOVE Batman. Even people who hate Super Heroes, LOVE Batman. Batman is one of the supporting pillars of all of DC, in comics, animation, and film. In fact, Batman is currently the only thing keeping the head of DC comics above water. It is the only comic that they have that is still consistently selling. PEOPLE. LOVE. BATMAN. NOBODY. CARES. ABOUT. BLUE. BEETLE. So, what do they do when introducing the normies to a new hero they've never heard of before, and want very badly to have them spend money on their new movie? They insult a hero that EVERYONE LOVES.
Pistol put to ballsack. Trigger pulled.
AND THEN!!!
OH, AND THEN!!!
What does Angel Manuel Soto do? Come on. Guess.
If you guessed that he went straight to Twitter when an overwhelming tide of lifelong Batman fans started screaming for his blood, and shot his mouth off like the absolute idiot that he is, you would be correct. Because that is exactly what EVERY Hollywood asshole does these days when faced with backlash over substandard, preachy garbage they're trying to pass off as entertainment. And worse, he roped the kid from Cobra Kai into doing it as well, poor, impressionable, little dumbass that he is.
Okay. So. People are getting sick of being lectured to by Hollywood millionaires without even a passing familiarity with reality in the guise of entertainment. I think that's pretty safe to say. Looking at the response from the general populace to a lot of the agenda driven crap that's come out of Hollywood for the last few years, falling box office numbers, cratering streaming service subscriptions, etc, people are getting pretty sick of it. So, when you have a brand new super hero movie that most people have never heard of, and then you then insult a super hero that LITERALLY EVERYONE KNOWS AND LOVES in the trailer, THEN you shoot your mouth off about how racist everyone is for not agreeing that Batman is a fascist, how do you think people are going to react?
Not favorably. Like. At all.
The Blue Beetle Movie is projected to have the lowest theatrical opening of any DC movie in the history of DC movies, INCLUDING the 1966 Adam West Batman movie, WITHOUT adjusting for inflation. And frankly, they deserve it. All they had to do, was not insult Batman, and thereby his hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. All they had to do, was not put that line in the movie, much less the first trailer. But Angel Manuel Soto lives in the Hollywood bubble, where it's just accepted that Batman is a fascist because he's rich and white, and doesn't understand that the vast and overwhelming majority of people do not agree. He put that line in the trailer because he thought people were going to stand up and cheer it in the theaters. He thought he was going to be hailed as a hero for virtue signaling where no one has virtue signaled before. And he was wholly and completely up his own ass, because he does not live in reality, like many other people in Hollywood. People are just sick of this crap. Remember when we could go watch a superhero movie and it was about superheroes being heroic and awesome? Remember when mindless action movies didn't try to preach to you? Yeah. Me too. A lot of people do. That's why so many movies that are obviously preachy are failing these days. Barbie seems to be the exception to that, but it's doing well for reasons completely outside of the preachiness.
There's a reason that people have looked at the writer and actor strikes going on right now, and pointed and laughed at it. It's because we're sick of the garbage. We're sick of being preached at. We just want an effing entertaining movie to take our minds off reality for a few hours, not have it shoved up our noses so far it'll be dripping out of our sinuses for weeks. And this utter asshat, Angel Manuel Soto, is just completely incapable of reading the room.
Well. Guess what. He deserves to fail. And he has no one to blame for that but himself. I hope he's happy with himself, because he just completely ended his own career. I hope it was worth it to get that dig in at Batman.
