Supergirl: Galaxy Globe-trotting Fun That's Unable to Reach the Heights of its Hero
James Gunn returns with the second entry in his reboot of the DCU with a film that might look like it was directed by him, but is actually directed by Craig Gillespie. A soft continuation of 2025’s Superman, Supergirl follows Clark Kent’s cousin Kara and her trusty sidekick puppy, Krypto, as they travel around the universe fighting evil enemies and getting hammered in the process. The basis of the film comes from one of the best Supergirl comic runs, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, so it has a lot to live up to.
Truth be told there’s a lot to like here, but unfortunately the movie kinda whiffs a lot more. Let’s get the good out the way first: Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El or Supergirl. If you liked her brief appearance in Superman, chances are you’ll like her here. It’s an expanded version of the character, who is going on an intergalactic bar crawl to escape the grief she’s feeling from the destruction of her home planet, Krypton. When her and Krypto land on a planet to get absolutely blasted, she stumbles into a revenge plot that leaves Krypto incapacitated with three days to live. She sets out on a mission to obtain the antidote to save Krypto from the Brigand leader Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), reluctantly taking in a girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley), recently orphaned and seeking revenge for killing her family. Alcock is trying her best here to be a good embodiment of Supergirl, someone who has a different code than Superman, and is still learning what it means to be “human.” From this angle, the movie does a good job of showing another side of an all-powerful being. One who runs to planets with red suns capable of taking her life, if only to try to feel something after her world was ripped from her. When she finally decides to don the cape, it feels earnest and true to where the character is. As she stumbles across the galaxy trying to find Krem, she has moments where she feels like she is confronting deep-seated emotions for the first time, and it really is a joy to watch onscreen.
Supergirl does something that, I’ll admit, bothered me in James Gunn’s Superman. It drops you right into the universe – these things have existed, you know who these characters are. I appreciated the flashback moments coming fairly late into the film rather than telling it like a traditional origin story. We know about the fall of Krypton, but getting to see its effect on someone who grew up on Krypton was a refreshing change. The fact that this iteration felt like a photonegative of the last time we saw this event in Man of Steel was also a nice touch just to further establish the tone of what Gunn’s version of the DC Universe is: the bones are still the same but the world is a bit more optimistic on the surface.
Krem, the movie’s villain, suffers from the lack of being anything but a generic villain. Which isn’t a bad thing; the movie gives you everything to make you dislike him – but that’s about it. Similarly, Schoenaerts doesn’t get a whole lot to do besides the basic version of what you think a space pirate is. It does pay off to a big sequence that owes some influence to Mad Max: Fury Road, which was entertaining to watch. Lobo (Jason Momoa), however, is there with all of the energy you would want from Lobo. Really cool to see Momoa transfer that frantic energy from his Aquaman films in a way that was fitting to the character but still showcased his slickness (especially the way he totes around that huge jagged hook). But there really isn't much room for him in the movie, or at least the movie doesn’t make a lot of room. He pops up here and there with some goofy lines and helps out in a few instances, but other than that there's not much he can contribute here.
I guess that’s where the movie’s biggest issue lies; it doesn't give anyone extra space to breathe and add some extra sauce to Alcock’s performance. They’re all just cannon fodder to push everything along, not real characters. The world that Gillespie is trying to craft here is a fun one, but could have been so much more than that. There are fun galaxy-trotting moments that happen here, and I wish the movie met those highs more consistently.
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Blake Williams has a B.A. in Film and Television Production from Ball State University. He aspires to one day be a director, but until that day comes you can find him at a showing of whatever's playing that day or at home alphabetizing a shelf of movies and games and muttering about how he should "slow down on spending."