Josh Reviews Supergirl
Supergirl, written by Ana Nogueira and directed by Craig Gillespie, carries forward the new DCU continuity kicked off in last summer’s Superman, which was written & directed by James Gunn. When we meet this version of Supergirl — Kara Zor-El — played by Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon), she’s trying to bury the trauma of the death of her Kryptonian parents (and everyone else she knew, before arriving on Earth) by traveling around to different red sun planets, where she doesn’t have superpowers and so can get drunk. At one of those seedy alien bars, Kara encounters Ruthye, a 13 year-old girl whose family were murdered by the villainous Krem. Ruthye wants Kara’s help to hunt down and kill Krem, but Kara at first refuses. She doesn’t want to get drawn into this little girl’s quest for vengeance. When Krem poisons Krypto, though, Kara must track him down in order to obtain the antidote needed to save Krypto’s life, and Ruthye joins her, still intent on killing the man who killed her family.
Supergirl is loosely adapted from Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, written by Tom King & illustrated by Bilquis Evely (who has a planet named after her in the film!). (That’s an incredible graphic novel — and superior to the film, even though I liked the film — and well worth reading!)
For the most part, I enjoyed Supergirl! It’s great to get a new film in this new DC universe so soon after last summer’s Superman, and there’s a lot that I like about this new version of this character. I’d really enjoyed Sasha Calle as Supergirl in 2023’s The Flash, and I’m sorry she wasn’t given the chance to do more with the character, but Milly Alcock is absolutely terrific in the role. I love this more rough-and-tumble version of the character of Kara Zor-El. Ms. Alcock does a great job in allowing Kara’s trauma and grief to feel like a constant presence, always bubbling right under the surface. At the same time, she’s able to bring a strong comedic timing to the role, keeping the character light and fun for much of the film — and then really landing the drama in the key moments. Ms. Alcock instantly feels just “right” as Supergirl. I hope we get to see her continue to play this role for years to come.
The film gets off to a very strong start. While there were some moments in which I felt the film was painfully trying to be James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, I was pretty quickly taken in, both by Ms. Alcock’s version of Kara and by this depiction of a grimy, greasy, wild DC universe, filled with aliens and creatures. We get a lot of wonderful alien creatures in the first half of the film, many of which look like they were brought to life with practical effects, and this made me very happy. I liked the tone of the movie: a story with characters with real emotions (in Kara and Ruthye, at least) that was also a zippy, fun outer space adventure. We got a few fun fight sequences: Kara’s drunken fight outside the bar, and then the whole sequence in which the pirates attack the space-bus in which Kara and Ruthye are traveling.
Things are wobblier in the second half, unfortunately, and although the film is only 108 minutes, it felt too long to me by the end. The movie starts to go wrong during an epically bad mid-movie fight scene. Kara has been poisoned on an alien planet, when suddenly Krem and his band of Brigands attack. This should have been a cool sequence (and one that I’m sure was supposed to pack an emotional wallop, because Kara fails to save some innocents, and I’m sure the emotion of that was supposed to propel her into the third act). Instead, it’s a brown, muddy mess — ugly visually, and so poorly edited that it’s nearly impossible to tell what’s going on. The bad guys seem to drop in and out of the city on some sort of lines from their space-ship overhead, but we never get to see that clearly to understand what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. Then someone or something starts to cut the lines — I think it was supposed to be Jason Momoa’s character, Lobo, but the movie leaves that totally vague. The editing is choppy, and it’s very hard to tell what’s going on during the fight. The visual effects — which I thought had been pretty good to that point — also seem to take a hit, and, for instance, Kara’s flying suddenly looks like awkward, obvious wire-rig work. (Which it is, of course, but it should have been better disguised.) The movie ends in another big battle with the Brigands that unfortunately has many of the same problems. It’s dull visually and choppily edited. Ruthye at one point seems to be hanging off the side of the ship for FOREVER, and the sequence is edited so that it seems that Kara either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care, neither of which is good. At one point it turns out there’s a bunch of innocent girls imprisoned in the ship who Kara has to rescue, but the movie hadn’t done anything to establish their presence beforehand. I could go on.
Jason Momoa’s Lobo is a mixed bag. Mr. Momoa (who previously played Aquaman in the “Snyderverse” continuity of DC movies) has been talking in public for years about wanting to play Lobo, and physically it’s as if he was born to play this role. So it’s fun to see this “dream casting” finally happen in reality. As a long-time comic book reader, it’s a hoot to see Lobo (created by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen, and so memorably illustrated by Simon Bisley in the nineties) on screen, and Mr. Momoa is fun to watch. But I never felt like I quite “got” this version of the character, or understood why he was in this story. Lobo wasn’t in the original Woman of Tomorrow comic book series, and the way he was shoehorned into this story felt awkward to me. How would this movie be different if Lobo wasn’t in it? (Answer: it wouldn’t, and that’s a problem.) Why isn’t Lobo also hunting Krem, like Kara and Ruthye are?? (Strangely, Lobo is after some other unnamed member of Krem’s gang.) Lobo’s story isn’t helped by more examples of janky editing in the movie. I had a hard time understanding or following his actions in the mid-movie fight, and then later in the movie somehow he’s been captured by the Brigands? How and when did that happen? (In some sort of cut scene, I assume.) Then at the end, when Lobo is watching Kara and Ruthye’s final confrontation with Krem, it seems painfully obvious that Mr. Momoa wasn’t with them on set. It reminded me of how awkwardly Hawkeye was edited into the first Thor movie. Not a good look. There’s a hint, at the end of the movie, of how Lobo could have played an interesting role in the story as a counterbalance to Kara’s influence on Ruthye. Kara doesn’t want Ruthye to kill Krem, but Lobo is all for it. That could have been an interesting dynamic had they explored that more deeply.
The film’s other major problem is the villain, Krem. I found him to be dull and uninteresting. We needed a much more dramatic and dangerous character, someone who really felt like a threat to our heroes. This space-biker in S&M garb (he reminded me of Scorpius from Farscape, which again is not a good look) didn’t do it for me at all.
Back on the plus side, I thought Eve Ridley was terrific as Ruthye! She beautifully inhabited this traumatized young girl. I loved her chemistry with Ms. Alcock’s Kara. The film worked for me whenever these two were on screen together.
I quite liked the flashbacks to Kara’s origin. There have been a LOT of different versions of Supergirl’s origin in the DC comics over the decades (and in the 1984 Supergirl movie). They did a good job here of capturing some of the key elements of the best-known versions of her origin, and simplifying it in a way that worked. So I loved that we got to see the floating Kryptonian city of Argo, while still keeping Kara’s story connected to the central tragedy of the destruction of Krypton. I liked the way they worked Kryptonite into the story of what happened to Argo; that was suitably sad. David Krumholtz was terrific as Kara’s father Zor-El (brother to Superman’s dad Jor-El). They made a strange/bold choice to play all of the flashback scenes with the actors speaking the made-up language of Krypton, but somehow Mr. Krumholtz didn’t let that stop him from bringing beautiful drama into his every moment on-screen. (Emily Beecham was also good as Kara’s mother, Alura, though she didn’t get much to do in the movie.)
I was very happy to see David Corenswet back as Clark/Superman. I thought we got just the right amount of Superman in the film. We saw enough of him that it felt substantial, helping this film feel truly connected to last year’s Superman movie. (Just a mention of Superman, or a 10-second cameo, wouldn’t have felt as pleasantly well-integrated to me.) At the same time, we don’t get so much of him that he overshadows Kara’s story or that we’re wondering why he’s not there helping Kara when she is having problems on her adventure.
And, of course, I was delighted to see lots more of Krypto, the breakout star of Superman! Krypto was always a key part of the start of this story in the original comics, so that was a strong piece of connectivity and flows nicely from the end of last summer’s Superman.
The film has one more large flaw, and that has to do with the ending. I cannot get into this without wading into SPOILER territory, so beware moving forward!!
SPOILERS!!
I am beyond mystified by the choice to have Kara spend the entire movie trying to convince Ruthye not to darken her soul by committing murder, only to have her casually execute Krem in cold blood at the end. Krem is defeated and lying on the ground, and Kara just stabs him and kills him, like it’s nothing. This is a crazy choice. At least when Superman murdered Zod back in the Snyderverse (in Man of Steel), even though I didn’t like that choice, it was to save people. I don’t understand the moral message this movie is saying by having Kara kill Krem! It doesn’t seem, from the final few minutes of the movie that come after that, that the movie is at all interested in exploring the repercussions of that awful act. So what was the point? I don’t understand why Kara the character takes that action in the context of the film, nor do I understand narratively why the creative team made this choice for Kara. It’s very strange and an off-putting way to end the movie.
Other thoughts:
- In a movie that is clearly chasing after Guardians of the Galaxy vibes, it’s a very curious choice to have Kara obsessed with listening to music on a walkman, just like Peter Quill. And not just any walkman — one with orange headphones that looks a LOT like Peter Quill’s!! I wish they’d been a bit more original here.
- I quite enjoyed Seth Rogen’s voice-work as the small alien on the space-bus. He was great! And I liked the look and animation of that character.
- The whole space-bus sequence was terrific. One of the highlights of the movie for me. That was a great, fun action sequence, with a ton of delightfully weird-looking aliens. That action sequence felt unique to this story, too, which I liked.
- I wonder why all the fancy swords that Krem stole from Ruthye’s sword-making father didn’t play into the climax of the story at all?
- Wow, did I roll my eyes at the idea of a green sun giving Kara Kryptonite poison. Kara and Clark aren’t allergic to the color green!!! Kryptonite is supposed to be a radioactive material from the planet Krypton, which orbited a red sun. So I don’t understand the whole green sun idea at all. It felt like a cheat to me.
- I quite liked the design of Kara’s small space-ship — both the interior and the exterior. (Though wouldn’t the interior have been wrecked after Krem and his goons hijacked it?? It’s weird the film skips over that. Yet another strange narrative/editing choice. I’d love to learn more about what went on behind the scenes and how much this film was reworked in the editing/reshooting process.)
I do have a number of complaints about this film, particularly in the second half. Nevertheless, there’s a lot that I enjoyed, and this is definitely worth seeing. Milly Alcock was wonderful, and I hope she’s given many more opportunities to play this character. This film underperformed at the box office, so do I need to be worried already about the longevity of James Gunn & Peter Safran’s new DCU continuity?? Coming up we have the Lanterns TV show, the low-budget Clayface movie, and then Mr. Gunn’s Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow next year. I hope all those projects are good! I’d like to see a lot more of this DC universe in the years ahead.
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