The comic book movie genre has been in a fascinating struggle recently to regain the chokehold it once had on the public consciousness. What were once consistent must-see events for nearly every film, no matter what hero it starred, have now seemingly devolved into the same pot of mush, with only big IP swings or the big names like the new upcoming Spider-Man and Batman films being able to stand out. The new DC universe, under the eye of James Gunn, now sits in an interesting place amid the genre’s current aloofness. After Superman (2025) outgrossed every MCU film that released that year, it seemed that a Supergirl film would be a good place to go next, given the character’s introduction at the end of that film.
Supergirl marks the character’s first leading feature film in decades after the widely panned failure of the 1984 film, and Milly Alcock crushes the essence of Kara Zor-El in arguably one of the most ideal versions of the character across her various appearances. She’s the true anchor of the entire picture, so it’s a shame that every aspect of the film surrounding her is so mind-numbingly dull. From its weightless action, lack of any unique angle on its inspirations, bland villain, and muddy visuals, the most disappointing aspect of Supergirl is that, within its second feature, the DCU is already succumbing to the growing pains of modern Superhero movies.
We naturally start with Kara (Alcock) as she flies around the galaxy with her best buddy, Krypto the super dog, celebrating the week of her 23rd birthday. She’s been traveling to bar after bar in search of red suns to weaken her powers so that she can feel when she gets drunk. Between playing with Krypto, she gets a consistent video call from her cousin Clark, aka Superman (David Corenswet), asking her to come back to Earth. Let’s just say Kara views the world from an entirely different perspective from him, given their different relationships to Krypton and calling Earth a true home.
During her time at one bar, Kara meets the young but strong-willed Ruthye (Eve Ridley), who announces to the bar that she’s looking for vengeance against Krem of The Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), who killed her entire family within his plights of ravaging and trafficking girls. After Kara helps Ruthye out by beating up a creature who attempted to steal her family’s sword, Ruthye asks Kara to help her on the road to her revenge quest, to which Kara at first declines.
It isn’t until Krem poisons Krypto after the loyal dog attempts to stop Krem’s crew from hijacking Kara’s ship that Kara decides to go after Krem herself to get the antidote and save Krypto, who has only three days before he dies from the poison. Kara reluctantly brings Ruthye along in an intergalactic journey where our heroes will learn a thing or two about themselves as they venture to find a common enemy.
Simply put, it should be no surprise that Milly Alcock’s performance is one of the only highlights of Supergirl, given she plays the title character, but something is refreshing about seeing one of the most authentic versions of the character in a live-action plane. We get to see firsthand how different Kara’s experience on Krypton was from her cousin’s through informative flashbacks that fully realize a good portion of the character. From the moment you meet her, it’s clear that Kara is a far more brash, hardened, and unconventional hero, coming from a much more traumatic background, but she still has a kind heart amid all her messiness. The origin story and characterization of Kara are where the film is at its most engaging, but Alcock can’t completely save the clunkier writing on the page.
One of the primary concerns of the future movies of Gunn’s DCU was that they’d all feel similar to his style of work, and there would be no unique differentiation between the new creative voices behind each film. The good news is that director Craig Gillespie invokes at least a bit of other inspirations that are more akin to the character of Supergirl, as the film plays less like Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)-lite and more of a mash-up between Star Wars, the roots of the western genre, and a dash of Mad Max sprinkled on top. The bad news is, despite its clear inspirations, Supergirl never manages to carve out a distinct direction of its own, often coming across as painfully derivative of its comparisons rather than a fun mashup of them, making its CGI-centric action and edgy humor indistinguishable from your average superhero fare.
Every character in the film, besides Kara, either isn’t on screen enough to leave much of an impression or is just never as fully realized as the film needs them to be. Ruthye is basically Kara’s sidekick throughout their journey, and while her arc of learning that vengeance isn’t always the right way to go about things is an inherently compelling one, the movie plays it out so plainly that you’ll won’t be able to distinguish it from the countless other instances that have been better explored in other movies. There exist some interesting topics about gender targeted violence and self-discovery that simmer on the surface of the film’s story, but they all end up underbaked as if the film doesn’t really have time to touch on them.
Lobo (Jason Momoa) adds the occasional moment of fun to the character’s ever-present gruffness, but he isn’t present enough to be either a highlight or a supporting player or as annoying as the rest of the film’s comedy-based characters. Krem’s presence in the narrative perhaps has the biggest issues of them all; Schoenaerts attempts to add a silly-natured presence to the villain’s psychotic acts, but he is severely underdeveloped, and we basically learn nothing about why he does what he does. Sometimes, a character can work when they’re just evil to be evil. Still, when there is no presence of the antagonistic force on top of zero development, Krem is just there as an object that our heroes need to defeat. When a villain is this bland, it’s hard to truly buy into any danger our lead characters could possibly be in.
Supergirl’s visual palette does nothing to save itself from the consistent muddy look that has seemingly infested nearly every mainstream blockbuster over the past couple of years, but for whatever reason, the technical elements are even more off-putting here. The VFX work is shoddy enough across so many scenes that there is almost no tangibility to the movie’s action scenes. It’s occasionally cool to see Kara adapt to having her powers weakened within a few sequences, but most of the movie has the same mucky flavor to it; the third act, on many occasions, looks especially bad with a lot of choppy editing and greenscreen work that looks straight up unfinished. Nearly everything about the film’s climactic fight is so artificial that it fully cements the film’s lack of any aspect that makes it stand out from the crowd.
At the very least, it’s nice to know that we have a truly great version of Supergirl with Milly Alcock, who carries this entire film off on the emotional vulnerability surrounding Kara as a character. Unfortunately, the film’s issues end up being one too many for her to fully save. Supergirl is not able to stand out as much among most blockbusters and is painfully middling superhero fare at best. A shockingly ugly looking blockbuster at worst, and with even its most interesting ideas being fairly derivative of better Sci-Fi and space fare, the girl of steel’s long-awaited return to the big screen is a subpar disappointment.
Review Courtesy of Joshua Mbonu
Feature Image Credit to Warner Bros. Discovery