Sean P. Means started his review by saying, “If you
like your superheroes surly, then director Craig Gillespie’s “Supergirl” is
right up your alley — though you may wish, as I did, for more for the young
woman of steel to do in the second movie of James Gunn’s DC cinematic era.”
What you may know about Supergirl – either from her first
comic book in 1959, the 1984 film with Helen Slater, Melissa Benoist starring
in the CW show from 2015 to 2021, or Sasha Calle’s brief cameo in the 2023 “The
Flash” movie – is that she’s Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin and the second
survivor of the explosion of the planet Krypton. Unlike Kal-El or Clark Kent or
Superman, Kara lived in Argo City before arriving on Earth.
In this movie, that life – seen in flashbacks, with
David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham playing her parents – have made Kara, played
by Milly Alcock, more tired about the universe. At one part of the movie, Kara
says Clark “sees the good in everyone, and I see the truth.”
Kara spends a lot of time planet hopping, usually
looking for planets with red suns like Krypton – because on those planets, she
can drink alcohol and not have superpowers. Means describes, “She rides around
in a junker spacecraft that looks like an RV on the inside, with her sole
companion her dog, Krypto, who stole Gunn’s “Superman” out from under David
Corenswet in his blue tights.”
New screenwriter Ana Nogueira’s story starts with a
vicious scavenger race, the Brigands, who murder a family, played by Ferdinand
Kingsley, Emily Piggford, and Bruce Lennox, in the middle of nowhere. The Brigands
leave a teen girl, Ruthye, played by Eve Ridley, alive, who swears vengeance on
their leader, Krem, played by Matthias Schoenaerts.
Ruthye’s father (Kingsley) managed to destroy the
Brigands’ ship before he was killed, so the group finds a new one to steal:
Kara’s. When she fights them, Krem hits Krypto with a poison dart – and a
healer, played by Keeley Forsyth, tells Kara, through Ruthye, that she has
three days to find Krem to get the antidote.
Kara searches for the Brigands, and Ruthye goes with
her, despite the two strongly disagreeing on what will happen when they find
Krem. Ruthye wants to kill him, but Kara needs him alive to get the antidote to
save Krypto.
Means described, “What follows are a series of fight
scenes, some of them in dive bars that make the Mos Eisley cantina look like a
Best Western. In one bar, Kara and Ruthye encounter Lobo (Jason Momoa), a bored
immortal who works as a bounty hunter. Lobo is a DC Comics fan favorite, I’m
told, and Momoa brings the same comical menace to the role that he did to “Fast
X” and “A Minecraft Movie.””
Means continued, “Gillespie’s action sequences are
serviceable, if overly reliant on CGI and whiplash-inducing camera moves, in a
narrative that borrows a little too much from Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy”
movies.”
The best part of “Supergirl” is Kara herself, and the way
Alcock finds the center between the self-righteous hero and the angry, hopeless
survivor. Hopefully James Gunn and his team will bring her back in a movie that
has her use that bad girl attitude.
Overall, I wasn’t disappointed like so many other people
have been. Alcock does a great job playing Kara and there are good elements of
the movie. Gillespie does not know how to film action scenes, when they show
Kara thinking back to what Clark tells her the meaning of the outfit was
forced, and there are writing problems, but I’m still glad I saw it. This is “so”
much better than the last time they did a Supergirl movie, if you remember my
thoughts on that failed attempt. You should still see this in the theaters because
it’s not a waste of money. Check it out and judge it based on your own opinion.
Thank you for joining in on this review today. Stay
tuned next month to see what I will review next.
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