In ‘Blue Beetle,’ a superhero movie expands Mexican American representation in Hollywood — finally

It’s difficult to explain why I was crying five minutes into watching the new superhero movie "Blue Beetle." It wasn’t a sad scene. On the contrary, it was a celebration of lead Jaime Reyes coming home after college to his loving Mexican American family, who had papered over their struggles and sacrificed much for the benefit of the kids. If nostalgia means the pain from an old wound, what do you call the pain from recognition? It’s not just that Reyes and I share a hometown in El Paso, Texas, (at least in the comics; in the movie he lives in the fictional Palmera City, a kind of Mexican Ameri...