Everyone, please get over yourselves.
I’ve said this many times over the years, but it’s possible I never actually wrote it down until now. Like life, the world of film criticism exists primarily in shades of gray. Probably 90 percent of what I see in a given year exists somewhere between “one of the best movies of the year” or “one of the worst.” Even in some truly terrible movies, I can find some elements to applaud; conversely, in some of my favorite films of any given year, I’ll see something about them that bugs me. If you read a critic who tells you everything they see only exists at the extremities of this “greatest/worst” scale, congratulations: you’re reading/listening to a lazy critic.
Which brings us to this week’s Supergirl, the latest from the relaunch of films based on DC Comics characters and based specifically on the 2021-22 comic book miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely. We briefly met Supergirl at the end of last year’s Superman. Played by Milly Alcock, she was drunk, rude, and the proud owner of Krypto, a dog with severe behavioral issues—and that’s pretty much the person we meet in the new movie as well.
Real name Kara Zor-El, Supergirl’s origin story is quite different and ultimately far more tragic than her cousin Clark’s. Like him, she was born on Krypton, but rather than send her to Earth as a baby, Kara’s parents (David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham) are able to escape Krypton’s destruction by carving out a sizable chunk of the planet (a city called Argo), doming it, and sending it out into space where the inhabitants live comfortably for decades. That is, until they realize that the very interstellar process that turns pieces of the planet into the deadly element Krypton is turning the entire piece of land that they live on into pure poison. Sometime in her 20s, Kara’s father manages to get a fully grown Kara off-world by sending her to Earth to live with her cousin (David Corenswet appears as Clark Kent sporadicly throughout the film), where he attempts to teach her the ways of her new home.
What’s unique about Supergirl, compared to many other superhero films, is that writer Ana Nogueira and director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, I, Tonya, Cruella) don’t pack Kara’s origin story at one end of the film; instead, they allow her to flashback to various points to her life before Earth throughout the movie, and the more we see, the more we fully understand that she was traumatized when she was younger and she feels like a woman on her own. Even Clark can’t help her because he was essentially raised a human earthling, but all of the Kryptonian like her are gone forever. And having this information parsed out over the film’s running time helps us better understand her self-destruction behavior, which continues to include drinking to excess on planets with red suns (as opposed to Earth’s yellow sun, which not only gives her her powers but also keeps her from getting drunk).
Most of Supergirl involves Kara killing two birds with one stone: she’s searching for the notorious space pirate Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), both to get the antidote for the poison that is killing Krypto, and to seek revenge on behalf of a young girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), whose entire family was wiped out by Krem as his Brigands. Kara doesn’t believe in killing, but she seems cool with causing her enemies a tremendous amount of pain. Ruthye is out for blood and justice, on the other hand, and part of the film involves Kara trying to teach this girl that killing won’t bring any satisfaction but will likely lead to a lifetime of regret.
The Australian-born Alcock is the real draw here, and although this is hardly her first acting role (many know her from series like House of the Dragon and Sirens), she presents Kara as woman without a home, a people or anyone to connect with who might empathize with her plight. And while many were eagerly anticipating the live-action introduction of the alien mercenary Lobo (Jason Momoa), even that moment is overshadowed by Alcock’s portrayal of a reluctant hero. role model, and warrior for vengeance. As much as I almost always love watching Schoenaerts in just about anything, his one-dimensional, generically evil portrait of Krem is little more than him grimacing into the character under piles of facial piercings.
Still, when Kara is allowed to be her most powerful self—both in terms of powers and attitude—Supergirl can be a solid, B-level superhero film. Fully derivative of much that came before, the movie borrows most heavily from the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, which is not surprising given that those films’ director, James Gunn, is the current overseer of the DC universe of films. And while I happen to really like that particular trilogy a great deal, a lot of what happens in Supergirl feels like a faded copy rather than something inspired by one of the better examples in the same genre.
Still, Alcock’s emotionally driven work as Kara does feel like something new, meant to be the antithesis of her more optimistic cousin. She’s still a hero, but strictly on her own terms, and whether or not she chooses to return to Earth and take on the mantle of Hero will add something unique to this group of superhuman characters.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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