‘Supergirl’ Already Feels Antiquated

The superhero boom of the 2010’s was a box office and cultural phenomenon where audiences could not get enough of comic book heroes. Whether it was Captain Marvel or Aquaman, these movies could get past $1 billion at the box office regardless of name recognition for their titular characters. But to be fair, most of these movies were at least pleasant distractions. The combination of CGI spectacle and light banter made for an easy time at the theaters. But the bubble popped as bubbles must, and now even Marvel is struggling to get people invested in their ongoing cinematic universe. When producers James Gunn and Peter Safran came on board to lead Warner Bros. and DC in 2022 and replicate what Marvel had done in the previous decade, the genre was already in decline. While last year’s Superman was a promising refresh that felt invested in the uniqueness of its character, Supergirl plays like the same kind of anonymous, VFX-packed blockbuster that failed to attract audiences to The Flash and Black Adam. Everything that’s unique about the character gets sanded down into its blandest form, and director Craig Gillespie can only echo far better blockbusters rather than give the Woman of Tomorrow a picture of her own.

Briefly glimpsed in Superman, Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) has her cousin’s superpowers, but little of his optimism. As someone who witnessed the decline of Krypton’s last community before coming to Earth, Kara is far more jaded and traumatized than Clark (David Corenswet) and spends most of her time either playing with her rambunctious dog Krypto or getting plastered on bars located near a red sun (red suns make Kryptonians normal, and yellow suns give them superpowers). When Ruthye (Eve Ridley), the young daughter of a local swordsmith, witnesses her family’s murder at the hands of the nefarious brigand Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), she goes looking for someone to help her get revenge. Kara initially refuses, but when Krem shoots Krypto with a lethal poison, Kara reluctantly joins up with Ruthye even though she’s more interested in the antidote Krem keeps on his person than the teenager’s quest for vengeance.

There’s an interesting idea at the core of Supergirl, which is that Kara is a refugee. The key distinction between her and Clark is that Clark never knew Krypton, never carried that sense of loss, and so, by virtue of being raised by wholesome Midwesterners since he was a baby, he grew up seeing the good in people. Kara’s life was marked by loss and knowing that her home is gone forever. Clark can idealize a Krypton he never knew, but Kara understands what it means to bury bodies. The film wisely accents this outsider status by having all the scenes on Krypton and its adjoining sanctuary feature the characters speaking Kryptonian. When she lands on Earth, she doesn’t know English (or the “common tongue” as it’s referred to as Kara converses with various alien species), and we gain a sense that survival isn’t simply escaping a doomed home. It also means carrying an outsider status and the culture of a lost civilization.

Unfortunately, Gillespie’s movie never builds on this beyond making Kara lonely and sad. The film sets out that her arc should be coming into her goodness; that to have such power and to survive such tragedy obligates her to be a hero. But the film is unwilling to make her as cynical and jaded as she needs to be in order to create that arc. The idea is that her bond with Ruthye will bring Kara out of her shell and forge a real connection, but because Ruthye and Kara are so thinly rendered, it feels like Ruthye may as well be a stand-in for Kyrpto; one loyal companion exchanged for another. Kara’s arc isn’t one of goodness but simply being less sad and withdrawn because she’s already a good person. She’s only “bad” in the sense that getting drunk is unladylike.

The surrounding picture matches the lack of vision. Perhaps Gunn and Safran felt that Gillespie was a strong choice given his prior experience on movies with morally gray female protagonists, I, Tonya and Cruella. But there’s clearly a gap here in the investment Gillespie feels for the character compared to how much care Gunn took with Superman. Consider how memorable it was when Superman went out of his way to save a squirrel during a big battle or how regular people would come to Superman’s aid. Each battle had its own texture and feel. In Supergirl, Kara comes across some space ruffians, they brawl, and she wins. That’s it. Every single set piece is the same, and there’s little interest in using these action scenes as a way to advance character or story.

That lack of care becomes blindingly apparent everywhere you look. Krem is a nothing villain, with Schoenaerts reportedly spending four hours in a makeup chair every day just so he and his fellow brigands can play like the Ravagers from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 with less personality. The movie tosses in the space biker Lobo (Jason Momoa) because comic fans have wanted to see him on screen for a while and, hey, maybe he’ll be so popular there will be a Lobo spinoff! ^[1] For a film where the color of the sun relates to plot points, it’s painfully clear that this film went nowhere near real sunlight. No one bothered to think of what this movie should feel like beyond space adventure, so it resembles the same kind of CG-slathered spectacle we’ve seen for well over a decade now.

When this project was announced in 2022, Gunn, Safran and later Gillespie should have all seen the writing on the wall for superhero movies, and they certainly should have seen it when The Flash limped to $271 million worldwide in June 2023. To continue on like they could keep making superhero movies as usual—empty set pieces, no distinctive visuals, forgettable score, teasing a big universe without laying the foundation of strong characters—is baffling, especially when Gunn clearly took care to make his Superman feel relevant to our modern era. Rather than giving Supergirl the same attention, she’s stuck in a movie that’s desperately trying to recapture the easy wins of eight years ago. But as Kara Zor-El knows all too well, you can’t go home again.

Supergirl opens in theaters on June 26th.