MOVIE REVIEW: Supergirl

Photos by Parisa Taghizadeh and courtesy of DC Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures.

SUPERGIRL— 3 STARS

LESSON #1: PREPARE FOR A NEW AND DIFFERENT ATTITUDE— Last summer’s Superman took enormous effort to calibrate the attitude of David Corenswet’s Man of Steel to be more positive and prudent than the previous DCEU incarnation before the stewardship of James Gunn. His open-hearted, climactic monologue to Lex Luthor said everything about their take on the character. In her surprise cameo, Kara-El’s Supergirl, played by House of the Dragon star Milly Alcock, stumbles into the Fortress of Solitude to make her buzzed first impression with an entirely different demeanor. Their encounter over Krypto, who is her dog and not Clark Kent’s, planted seeds of a chummy dichotomy existing between Kara and her wholesome cousin. 

After that, we knew her own film was coming, but the question became whether that kind of attitude could win people over or rub folks the wrong way. After all, the equally wholesome Melissa Benoist had six seasons and 126 episodes—and won a pile of Teen Choice and Saturn Awards from 2015 to 2021—to be the most established personification of the Supergirl character ever produced. Could people transition to something contrasting? In just under two hours of a movie, Milly Alcock makes Supergirl uniquely hers.

The opening reel of Supergirl reintroduces our cameo character partying it up on other worlds to celebrate her 23rd birthday. Traipsing around on a ship that looks like a trashed version of Winnebago, Eagle 5 from Spaceballs, filled with snack trash, discarded trinkets, and disorganized personal effects, from one red sun nightspot to another with loyal Krypto by her side, Kara-El lives up to the lyrics of “Ramblin’ Man” by The Allman Brothers Band:

Tryin' to make a livin' and doin' the best I can.

And when it's time for leavin',

I hope you'll understand,

That I was born a ramblin' man 

LESSON #2: A HEAVY HEART TO KNOW SORROW— Gender-swap “man” for “woman” or “girl” if you must, but the song fits as a match to the attitude being presented by Alcock’s characterization and the script from playwright/actress/screenwriter Ana Nogueira, adapting the celebrated Tom King and Bilquis Evely comic miniseries, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. Unlike Clark Kent (Corenswet, returning for his own cameos to keep things chipper), who cherishes the ideals of home and sees the good in people, Kara-El chooses to see the truth. Seen in key flashbacks throughout the film, she was old enough to witness the destruction of Krypton and her parents’ (the caring gravitas of David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham) desperate evacuation on the force field-protected city of Argos, and her own exile to Earth. As said in the film, Kara has a “heavy heart to know sorrow,” and that trait tints the character’s optimism.

In her galactic gallivanting, Supergirl meets another heavy heart in the form of Ruthye Marye Knoll (voice actress Eve Ridley), a young girl trying to recruit help at a local Mos Eisley-like cantina. She is looking to avenge her swordmaker father’s (Ferdinand Kingsley of Dracula Untold) death at the hands of Krem of the Yellow Hills, played by the dynamic and overqualified Belgian actor, Matthias Shoenaerts of Rust and Bone and Far from the Madding Crowd. Ruthye finds a disinterested, yet minorly honorable Kara. Seeing much of herself at the same age, consumed by revenge, Kara makes sure the kid gets pointed in the right direction.

After his very Inglourious Basterds-esque domestic invasion introduction, massacring the Knoll family, Krem is the leader of the Brigands, an all-male gang of space mongers kidnapping different alien women to use as brides to further their genetic family trees. Kara’s first confrontation with Krem leaves Krypto gravely poisoned. She has three days to secure the antidote, held by Krem, to save her pup’s life, setting off the countdown and instigating her partnership to help Ruthye.

Chasing Krem and provoking the involvement of Jason Momoa’s fan favorite Lobo, the cigar-chomping, motorcycle-riding, and hook-wielding bounty hunter from the planet Czarna, Supergirl highlights the dingy underbelly of what the DC Universe beyond Earth has to offer. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story production designer Neil Lamont, Black Panther visual effects supervisor, the busy hair and makeup teams of The Lord of the Ring Oscar winner, Peter Swords King, forge that richly detailed ugliness out of immense London sets, rustic Iceland shooting locations, and a cornucopia of alien variations. Civil War and Mission: Impossible - Fallout cinematographer Rob Hardy absorbs all of the dust and muck and allows our titular hero to pose and shine when she must, like a flashlight scaring away the cockroaches.

LESSON #3: BEING GOOD DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO BE NICE— Directed by Craig Gillespie, a filmmaker who has come to champion morally flexible female protagonists in I, Tonya and Cruella, Supergirl takes this messy narrative and runs with the growing kinship between Kara and Ruthye. Like any true comic book tale, Kara-El has her own “With great power comes great responsibility” wellspring axiom. Spoken by her late mother, hers is “Just be good, and that does not mean you have to be nice.” That great line from Nogueira nails it and is followed by the advice of “trust to know what is right,” echoing Kara’s core of truth mentioned earlier. All of this is preached for the sake of helping Ruthye and the still-grieving Kara to overcome their festering anger. 

Altogether, Gillespie’s Supergirl, with its character-building personal quest, is better than a formulaic origin story. For better or worse in this very gray and beige movie, Lobo is more the mascot of the movie than the bedridden Krypto. Still, give Jason Momoa a solo movie already and let him cook. Milly Alcock, thanks to all that posing working in her favor and the patience to hold putting the cape and big red “S” on her until the finale, builds to the kind of awe and presence the character needs. When we see her next, likely alongside Superman in 2027’s Man of Tomorrow, she’ll be in a different place and mindset from this adventure, and that promise counts as positive mojo—attitude and all.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1406)