With last summer’s Superman, it seemed like the Marvel Cinematic Universe might actually have to contend with the Distinguished Competition. After years of having a pretty haphazard collection of movies (with some hits), the slate was wiped clean with James Gunn’s new version of the Man of Steel and the start of the new DCU. Among the characters that were tee’d up in that film was Milly Alcock as his cousin, Kara Zor-El, Supergirl, who clearly has a personality at odds with Clark’s optimism.
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Here we are now, about a year later, and the story of Alcock’s Kryptonian hero is finally being told in her own solo movie, the second effort from the DCU. The good news for her as a performer is that her work as the character is amazing, and shows how two superheroes with the exact same power set can actually stand apart from each other in this new universe. The bad news is that the movie meant to act as her real launching point into the entire franchise is one that ends up being quite dull. Though there are fleeting moments of brilliance, Supergirl repeats too many mistakes of past superhero films to really soar.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Milly Alcock delivers a great performance | Frustrating, inconsistent narrative |
| Cool practical effects | Terrible villain |
| Good soundtrack | Indecipherable action scenes |
Supergirl‘s Story Is Mostly Interesting, Mostly
The new Supergirl movie starts in a place that wastes no time showing you how different Kara is from Clark. She’s not only a loner, wandering her way through the cosmos, but she makes some bad choices, like deliberately visiting planets with red suns that will render her powerless (so she can get drunk). Inspired by the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic series by Bilquis Evely and Tom King, the film quickly introduces the key players from that narrative and puts them in front of Kara, with young Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) seeking revenge against Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) for the death of her family.
The result of this is Kara and Ruthye making their way across the cosmos, with pitstops along the way where they encounter nefarious aliens that largely annihilate the subtext of men preying on women. Despite these scenes resulting in moments with very cool practical alien effects, it makes for pretty tedious storytelling, even with the ticking clock angle of Krem poisoning Kara’s dog Krypto (who not only remains innocent, but is one of the DCU’s best characters, full stop). At a certain point even the movie knows that it’s almost over and simply leaves behind the notion of Kara checking her watch to see how much time she has left.
One of the things that’s so interesting about the way the new Supergirl movie is written (with a script by Ana Nogueira) is how often the film finds ways to keep Kara down and make sure she’s never quite at her most powerful. It has thematic resonance across the movie, of course, since it all leans into her self-destructive behaviors, but, from a pure writing craft standpoint, it’s interesting how many different ways the film can find to put Kara’s back against the wall and force her to find her way out of it.
The trouble with these is how the action itself is filmed, with director Craig Gillespie’s style often cutting frequently and never really allowing you to see what’s going on. Two of the best action scenes in the film are where the camera doesn’t move, one where you can’t really see what’s going on, and have to experience Kara taking down a bar full of ne’er-do-wells as Eve Ridley’s Ruthye does her best to stay calm, putting Kara’s powers into perspective for a normal person. The second is in the big finale, which largely follows the same pattern of Ruthye experiencing Kara at her most powerful, showing us the action in slow motion. Two out of eight action scenes being compelling, though, is a bad ratio.
Supergirl Repeats Comic Book Movie Mistakes, Including Jason Momoa’s Lobo
Perhaps the biggest problem with Supergirl is how quickly it leans on the negative tropes of superhero movies that have preceded it to its own detriment. The most egregious of these is the villain of the film, who is one twirly mustache away from being Dick Dastardly. A bad guy who is bad simply because he is bad and likes to do bad things is not compelling in the slightest, and though Schoenaerts has a distinct look in the film, the character is a total nothing burger. When compared to Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor from last summer, Krem of the Yellow Hills is a cardboard cutout and completely unmemorable.
A boring and uninspired villain is one bad mistake Supergirl makes in repeating the history of dull superhero movies; the other is using the film as a springboard for other characters that have no real place. Enter Jason Momoa’s Lobo, a character not present in the Woman of Tomorrow comic but added into the film because Momoa has apparently wanted to play him for a long time (and is also pals with James Gunn). To his credit, yes, Momoa is clearly having fun, and the character does pop on the screen by having a full presence, but at the end of the movie, Lobo has no real bearing on the story and could be plucked out of it with minimal alterations to the narrative.
On the flipside, however, David Corenswet’s return as Superman in the film is (as expected) a beam of sunshine. Even though he occupies only a few scenes in the film, he steps back into the character effortlessly and shows how he and Kara will continue to bounce off each other across the future of the DCU. Supergirl also makes sure to finally show us the DCU’s version of the destruction of Krypton, with flashbacks to Kara’s life growing up in Argo City (all of which is spoken in Kryptonian). Though these scenes allow for Kara’s journey to feel well-rounded, they feel like an afterthought to the entire film, whose brisk pace forces them to be succinct to their detriment.
Supergirl Has Bouts of Entertainment, But Isn’t Anything New
It’s worth highlighting specifically, though, how good Alcock is as Supergirl. She carries herself with a confidence that not every actor playing an all-powerful hero has managed to capture on screen. Alcock holds the full weight of Kara’s journey in every moment, which often means that the quieter instances of reflection and dialogue end up feeling more interesting than the times when she flies up to a building or punches a faceless bad guy into the clouds.
The really annoying thing, though, is that for every great moment Alcock has as a performer, there are others where Supergirl stoops to the lowest common denominator of joke, with more than a handful of “So, that happened” style gags that are irritating and unfunny. Cutting these entirely would not only make the moments that precede them more interesting, but also cut off the fat on a movie that is already briskly paced.
There are so many shades of other movies that have come before Supergirl that the influences become tiresome, too. Beyond the True Grit framework that the comic itself leans on quite heavily, Supergirl finds ways to pull in elements of Mad Max, Guardians of the Galaxy, Logan, and John Wick. In short, you’ve seen a lot of this before. The real irony, of course, is that you can’t even really see a lot of the movie because it so frequently has dust and dirt flying up to obscure the screen that the action is indecipherable.
Supergirl is a film that was clearly made in the wake of every superhero movie that came before it. In fact, it’s a film at war with itself. Though it has a clear framework from the comic it’s pulling its narrative from, it cannot help but be influenced by countless other titles that have come before it, including bad ones. It’s a shame, too, because Milly Alcock is a terrific performer who adds a lot of shades to a character that could have easily been “Superman but a girl this time.” At the end of the day, it’s a disappointment that largely falls flat.
Supergirl opens in theaters on Friday, June 26.
