‘Supergirl’ Review – Is It a Misunderstood Solar Baby?
Going in, I was fully prepared to hate Supergirl and maybe gather up some ammo for jokes. I’ll admit right now that much of what everybody is screaming about online is true. But sitting there in the theater, watching it unfold, I found some entertainment value in it. Despite glaring flaws, I could roll with its punches and came away thinking the online hate is a little bit extreme. Fear not, though, I was nearly as confused as the rest of you by the story.
It follows Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) in space, celebrating her birthday and drowning her sorrows a bit too hard. She is shadowed by a young alien girl with a sword named Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), who begs Kara to go on a road trip of revenge to find the intergalactic pirate Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). He murdered Ruthye’s family over blades and a pie (I’m being serious) and later stole Kara’s ship while also shooting Krypto with a poison dart.
Their journeys intertwine in an untidy, fateful fashion – and Lobo (Jason Momoa) is there too! It all sounds familiar, I know. The fingerprints of DC studio boss James Gunn are all over this, as is his habit of recycling his best stuff. I’m not just talking themes and concepts; I’d argue he reused costumes and entire sets on loan from Marvel. Visually, Supergirl looks like it could fit neatly into the same corner of the MCU as Guardians of the Galaxy.
Moreover, with all the washed-out colors, bizarre aliens, and dive bars in space, it often feels like a better-looking Lobo movie than a Supergirl film. Given Jason Momoa’s presence and how perfectly he fits that grimy sci-fi vibe, it honestly might have made more sense for Supergirl to be the cameo in that Lobo movie rather than the other way around.
The more I think about the plot, the more questions pile up. The script by Ana Nogueira has some deeply illogical gaps, particularly when it comes to Krem. For a guy supposedly driven to carry on the legacy of his people, I was left wondering why he doesn’t just use genetic engineering to do it in a universe where that technology exists – on Earth, no less, as Superman established.
Instead, Nogueira, director Craig Gillespie, and Gunn go in a direction less interesting than the potential twists they leave on the table. It would have been a far more compelling plot twist if Krem tried to take Supergirl as his bride. If he’s already out here collecting girls, why not target this Kryptonian warrior princess?
She is the last survivor of her people and proves herself more than capable in battle, even if she is a hot mess. Instead, Krem makes bizarre narrative choices – like letting Ruthye go in the first place – that just don’t hold up to scrutiny.
I can say the same for the way Kara is handled. The script frequently forces her to act recklessly and inexperience purely because the plot demands it, even though she has the exact same power set that Clark does. By this point in her life, she should know how to use them. Yet, she constantly fails to put them to good use, holding back at the absolute wrong times.
There are moments where people die, and you’re left sitting in the theater doing the math for her. Even if Krem’s victims are trapped in a lead-lined alley her X-ray vision can’t pierce, she still has super-hearing. She should be able to hear their heartbeats and screams from miles away. Instead, the movie artificially nerfs her abilities so she can stumble into situations – making her look passive or complicit in letting people die – without ever offering a solid explanation.
She wasn’t under a red sun all the time, and she was able to vomit up poison that somehow affected her. These narrative gaps leak directly into her personality, degrading her from a hero into a partying punk defined by a jarring single-mindedness and a bizarre alcohol dependency.
Watching her pick bar fights under red solar rays and cope through drinking feels like a desperate attempt to give her a modern edge, but the filmmakers never satisfyingly explain their way out of it. They leave those dark choices hanging there, though they try giving the audience a moment where Kara truly reckons with her trauma when she lies dying in a cave under a green sun.
And yet, despite a script that doesn’t always know how to handle its own darker elements, her arc isn’t entirely unearned. Milly Alcock beautifully captures the damaged, restless energy of someone who watched what’s left of her planet and family breathe their strained, bated last. Supergirl might not be doing well, but its failures shouldn’t hold Alcock back from going places in the future.
The film is an undeniably messy and flawed piece of sci-fi, but beneath the recycled aesthetics and the script’s logical leaps, there is an entertaining character study trying to break through. She might look like a hot mess now, but this solar baby could wind up earning more understanding than the Interwebs are currently giving her.
Supergirl
PROS
- Momoa's part as Lobo amounts to a cameo, but is still fun
- Alcock has her moments
- Corenswet is still a decent Superman for this universe when he get to play the Man of Steel as a goofy nice guy
CONS
- Krem is a cartoon villain with wasted potential
- Ruthye is supposed to be vital to the plot, but it didn't feel like it
- Mad Max comparisons are misleading; the film imitates George Miller rather superficially and negligibly
- Those script issues
