DC’s Blue Beetle movie adaptation hits theatres worldwide today. Ahead of all that awesome, the director of the movie Angel Manuel Soto spent some time talking about the various fight scenes that viewers will get to feast their eyeballs on in the movie.
Angel Manuel Soto explained that the action movie The Raid and the video game, Injustice 2 inspired many fight scenes.
In Soto’s own words:
“I wanted the action and violence to be a little more visceral. Although I do love the fantastic and magical side of things, this is the beginning of Jaime Reye’s heroic journey and he doesn’t know everything he can do yet.
So, one of the things we wanted was for this movie to feature a little bit more hand-to-hand combat. We used a lot of references like The Raid movies and Gangs of London for the hand-to-hand combat, which Jon Valera, our stunt coordinator, drives very well.
We managed to make something that represented that kind of flesh-to-flesh intimacy that can exist in violence. But, at the same time, we play with different alternatives that are fantastic and the wish-fulfillment of a young man.
For example, a lot of the combos in Injustice 2, we used them as a reference during fights and with the manifestations of the weapons. Blue Beetle’s blaster was even inspired by Mega Man!
There’s a scene where Jaime says, ‘Khaji, show me something,’ and he pulls out a gun that we chose to look like the ZF-1 gun from The Fifth Element.
Then we play with that again towards the end when Jaime goes ‘Anything I want? Okay!’ and he busts out Cloud’s sword from Final Fantasy VII Why? Because we’re gamers! We were asking ourselves, ‘Wow, what would I want to create?’ I always wanted to have a buster sword like they do in Final Fantasy.
To be able to play with those nods, including some from Dragon Ball Z. Play with a lot of other references that I’m not going to spoil – it was super good fun. I felt like I was twelve again!”
For those who don’t already know, Blue Beetle follows Jaime Reyes, the Blue Beetle’s alter ego, a vigilante with a scarab grafted onto his spine that gives him tremendous powers and the ability to emit blue energy.
It’s not every day that you get to see a comic book to movie adaptation that’s not just created by comic lovers but by gamers as well. We don’t know about you, but we’re excited to see how that all comes together.
What are your thoughts on Blue Beetle? Let us know in the comments below.