Supergirl Review: Hero With a Hangover

In Supergirl, the latest addition to James Gunn’s quasi-revamp of the DC cinematic universe, everyone has a purpose. Embittered teen Ruthye (Eve Ridley) seeks revenge against the interstellar brigands who killed her family. Brigand leader Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts, Bullhead, A Hidden Life) wants a life of murder and chaos. Interstellar bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa) just wants to pop up, cause chaos, and disappear, cackling.

Everyone has a purpose. Everyone, that is, except for Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock, House of the Dragon), the last daughter of Krypton and a highly reluctant superhero. She’d rather hang out on planets with red suns, where her superpowers are nullified, and get hammered in dive bars that make the Star Wars cantina look like the Ritz-Carlton. At least she’s got her dog, Krypto – until Krem poisons him for no good reason, and now she joins the highly motivated club as she seeks the antidote and Krem’s head.

Ever since his breakout with Lars and the Real Girl, director Craig Gillespie has seemed drawn to morally conflicted women characters, whether it’s trying to elicit sympathy for a real-life ice-skating pariah in I, Tonya or turning one of Disney’s most despicable villains into an antihero in Cruella. Kara poses a different kind of challenge: She’s similarly powered to her cousin, Superman (the returning David Corenswet, but that’s where the similarities to the Big Blue Boy Scout end. Originally written as just as goody-two-shoes as her cousin, the 2021 comic miniseries Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King reenvisioned her as bucking against the idea that she had to be a hero, and that’s the version we get here.

Alcock got a few moments in Superman to show Kara’s cocky and carefree side, but here she can explore the bitterness and survivor’s guilt that leads to her rejecting the cornfed optimism that her straitlaced cousin espouses. She doesn’t even wear the iconic costume for most of the film, a fairly obvious visual metaphor for where she stands. But clad in a cloak or not, Alcock strikes a suitably heroic pose, if with a sly smile and a jaundiced attitude. 

If this Supergirl is drifting into a life rejecting heroism, ahead of her in the shadows is Lobo, the most Nineties comic character ever created. Originally intended to be a key part of the Woman of Tomorrow comic, by adding him to the film, writer Ana Nogueira gets to restore King’s original vision. Momoa also fulfills some of the most frantic fan casting in comic history as the most degenerate of DC “heroes.” For those that thought he was woefully miscast as Aquaman in the old DCEU, here he gets to go hog wild as the bike-riding intergalactic bounty hunter in permanent black metal corpse paint. The only complaint is that he does a little too much popping up, causing chaos, and disappearing. The script treats him as a cameoing deus ex machina, just as much as it relies on convenient plot devices to depower Kara for a scene or two. Yet Momoa looks so much like artist Simon Bisley’s definitive version of Lobo, a cigar-chomping psychopath with a mad grin and chains wrapped around his arm, that he earns his inevitable spin-off.

The overall tone clearly owes a huge debt to Gunn’s quirky aesthetic, even if Gillespie doesn’t quite get the overblown giddiness that makes Gunn’s films work (if they wanted to avoid the Guardians of the Galaxy comparisons, they probably shouldn’t have given Kara a ship that looks quite so much like Star-Lord’s Milano). In short, he’s just not metal enough. The fight sequences are a little too speedy and grimy to be visually coherent, while a subplot about Krem’s brigands kidnapping girls as sex slaves seems unnecessarily grimdark: Like that ol’ rated-R bastich Lobo, it chafes against the PG-13 rating. But with Alcock really making you believe a drunk can fly, Supergirl is still a fine addition to this new legion of superheroes.

Supergirl

2026, PG-13, 110 min. Directed by Craig Gillespie. Starring Milly Alcock, Jason Momoa, Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley, David Corenswet.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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