Immediately obvious in Supergirl is that it seems determined not to be seen as merely a sequel to, or a full spinoff of, James Gunn’s 2025 Superman, which is really unfortunate, since the best parts of it would be at home in exactly that version of the film. Contrasting Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El, an outer-space Gen-Z dirtbag, with her Kryptonian cousin, the ultimate immigrant Boy Scout, would make for a good time and offer an opportunity to explore the “human” side of these superhuman characters. Instead, Supergirl opts for a movie that basically appeals to nobody, landing as a middlebrow techno-fantasy cobbled together from other, better stuff and dosed with a generous sprinkling of “heart” and “girl power.” It’s incredibly frictionless and disappointingly generic.
We first meet up with Kara on her 23rd birthday. She’s hanging out on a planet orbiting a red sun, because that radiation suppresses her alien powers and allows her to get drunk. It’s sort of funny that she doesn’t smoke, since the deleterious effects of both substances would presumably be nullified by the yellow suns that make her powerful — but hey, what do us mortals know about anything? Anyway, she crosses paths with young Ruthie (Eve Ridley), whose family has just been murdered by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), the leader of a band of marauding intergalactic child traffickers (!). Ruthie wants revenge, and after watching Kara win a bar fight, she decides to hitch her wagon to Supergirl, who obliges because Krem has also poisoned her dog Krypton, and she needs to get the antidote from him.
It’s generally acknowledged that the specific comic entry that inspired this film, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, was itself a direct lift of True Grit, and that shows in Kara’s portrayal as a cranky drunk with a singular agenda who finds herself saddled with a mouthy, verbose, and single-minded tween. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll learn to move past their mutual traumas together. But quite conspicuous is that the film seems resolutely invested in not actually being a superhero movie at all, opting instead for the route of a drab outer space road movie. Kara and Ruthie bounce from planet to planet, arbitrarily losing and gaining Kara’s powers depending on the local star, just so that the narrative might extend itself to a runtime sufficient enough that we can arrive at an inevitable confrontation.
More padding still is introduced in the form of Lobo — allegedly a fanboy-favorite DC comics character — an intergalactic bounty hunter prone to smoking big stogies and calling everyone “Bastich.” Played by Jason Momoa, there’s nothing the actor can do to make this guy any less annoying or extraneous; it’s truly mind-boggling that this is a character anyone might want to see on screen. Nevertheless, he persists, in the kind of extended appearance that seems solely available in order to set up more appearances. That sort of dread is not the vibe we need here, people.
Director Craig Gillespie, who’s generally known for making smug docudramas and girl-power-ish comedies (Cruella, I, Tonya), takes the reins here, and seems entirely out of his depth, even as the traffic cop he almost certainly was on set. The entire movie looks awful, with location after location basically being one dry desert or grungy spaceship after another, everything realized as a big brown digital smear. Even the welcome sight of a lot of goofy aliens all over the place can’t pierce the aesthetic gloom or narrative inertia. Krem and his brigands, meanwhile, look like rejects from Game of Thrones, their stylistic design lazily cribbed from a hodgepodge of the past century’s zeitgeist waypoints, and Supergirl doesn’t even put on the costume until the film’s very end. It all amounts to what is truly one of the ugliest studio pictures in a good, long while.
For her part, Alcock at least acquits herself admirably enough, but the iteration of Supergirl is far too tame to really muster any juice. The conception of the character is content with merely introducing her bargain-basement rough edges (PTSD from Krypton exploding, plus the drinking), but instantaneously leavens them in the pursuit of relatability to a young audience. James Gunn’s Superman traded on optimism. Supergirl trades on unearned sentiment, recycled narrative beats, and non-subversions. The result is a super disappointment.
DIRECTOR: Craig Gillespie; CAST: Milly Alcock, Eve Ridley, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jason Momoa, David Krumholtz; DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros.; IN THEATERS: June 26; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 48 min.
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