If last year’s Superman was playful pop-punk, this year’s Supergirl is pure grunge revival. Anchored by a stellar performance by Milly Alcock, it’s not afraid to get messy. If you’re in search of another light-hearted, goofy comic book romp, you may not be as enamored. But if you enjoy watching heroes learn to be heroes without world-ending stakes, Supergirl is for you.
Plenty are already comparing Supergirl to True Grit and Mad Max: Fury Road, both of which have had clear plot, tone, and visual style influences on Supergirl. I’d also add 2020’s Birds of Prey: a movie about a Certified Mess of a protagonist who reluctantly teams up with a precocious yet far-from-cozy teenage girl. How you feel about all of that will probably determine a lot about how you feel about this movie!
I appreciate the nascent DCU’s commitment to avoiding a visual “house style” so far. Supergirl looks and feels like its own thing, with a grimy space-Western vibe. Sometimes too grimy for my taste, if we’re honest. But there’s a grim humor in details like a gross interplanetary bus ride. Your mileage may vary on some Gunn-isms that pop up and feel incongruous with the existing tone (slo-mo fight scenes, needle drops, etc.).
With a shorter runtime (1 hour 47 minutes) than the bloated superhero fare we’re used to, it’s a tight, straightforward adventure with personal stakes, albeit one that actually could have benefited from a few extra minutes here and there. Jaded by the loss of her planet, her people, and her family, Kara Zor-El (Alcock) drinks and parties, hoping to dull the pain and trauma. Simultaneously, Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) loses her entire family in the blink of an eye at the hands of Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts). Kara and Ruthye’s paths cross when they’re both out to find Krem. Ruthye wants revenge, Kara to get the antidote for the poison with which Krem shot her beloved dog, Krypto.
Supergirl Shines in the Heart
Where the stakes of Superman (and a lot of superhero movies lately) were global or greater in scale, Supergirl keeps it intimate. Every character, with one exception, has deeply personal motivations. The movie quietly digs into the line between “personal” and “selfish.” Having a “teen sidekick” character can spell disaster, but Ruthye works because she feels like a real person. Ridley plays her as both naive and ruthless, with the trying-to-be-adult demeanor and youthful impulsiveness of every 13-year-old you’ve ever met (yes, you included).
Kara’s arc, meanwhile, is grounded by a well-deployed series of flashbacks to her life before Earth. While some may focus on the mythology-building, it’s — once again — the smaller details that shine. Alcock’s scenes with David Krumholtz as Kara’s father, Zor-El, are especially imbued with such heart and grief. If you’ve ever said a goodbye, knowing it’s the last one, you’ll feel it right in the gut.
On the flip side, Kara gets some familial support from her cousin Clark (David Corenswet, more earnest than ever). Their scenes are genuinely funny without being sitcommy and leave you wanting to see even more of their dynamic. There’s Krypto, necessarily sidelined for most of the plot, but still a very good (and bad!) boy! And then there’s Lobo (Jason Momoa), happily chewing the scenery (and stealing it) as an ally-for-the-moment who kicks serious butt and dispenses timely, thoroughly unsentimental advice.
The action scenes, however, are a mixed bag. I will always cheer for action choreography that feels like “real” fights in their specific settings, rather than one generic sci-fi blur after another. Supergirl, alas, has both.
Houston, We Have a Villain Problem
While Supergirl is a decent, even compelling adventure on its own, it suffers from a familiar problem: a mediocre villain. Krem and his gang murder innocents, leave a trail of destruction, and traffic young girls to be forced into “marriage” (read: childbearing). They do this for no reason other than sport; the script makes this clear. Schoenaerts is clearly having a ball playing an irredeemably, gleefully evil being. The problem is that’s all there is to him, and that leaves some opportunities on the table.
Given the way the plot unfolds, especially at the end, I suspect the film was trying to make a point with that flatness. What do you do about a villain with no sympathetic backstory, repentance, or redeeming qualities? Is it better or more moral to take the high road? Or is that just kicking the can down the road and allowing more future victims? Should a hero tarnish their own soul for the good of others? Unfortunately, those meaty philosophical questions don’t quite land 100% in execution. That’s compounded by coming on the heels of Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor last year. It’s an inevitable comparison that Krem (and this movie) was always going to lose.
Supergirl is, ultimately, an existential crisis coming-of-age movie that just happens to be about an alien super-being. It’s about shouldering enormous trauma when you’re ill-equipped for it and figuring out what to live for now. Like its central character, Supergirl is flawed. But it leaves me genuinely excited to see what comes next for Kara and for the DCU.
Supergirl is now playing in theaters.
First Featured Image Credit: ©DC Studios