Supergirl Review

I saw Supergirl, and I’m still sitting in the middle on this one. Unlike the shit cover song making my ears bleed all throughout the final battle. What the actual fuck, James Gunn?

This is one of those movies where I liked pieces of it, respected some of what it was trying to do, and still walked out thinking, “Were they using IKEA directions to make this? You had the parts. Why didn’t you build the damn thing right?”

So should you see it?

Yeah, probably — if you’re a DC fan, a Supergirl fan, or you want to see Milly Alcock prove the trolls wrong. If you like smaller comic book movies that aren’t trying to blow up the entire multiverse every twelve seconds, there’s enough here to make it worth your time.

But if you need a great story, a great villain, or a movie that fully sticks the landing on its own point, you may want to wait for streaming.

First off, I actually liked that this was a smaller comic book movie. Not every superhero movie needs to save all of creation. The sky doesn’t always need to open. A giant blue laser doesn’t always need to shoot into space. The fate of seventeen timelines doesn’t always need to hang in the balance while someone explains quantum grief through a glowing rock.

Sometimes you can just tell a dirty little revenge story with a broken hero, a weird world, and a pissed-off girl with a cape. That part worked for me.

I’m also usually a fan of Director Craig Gillespie, which made this one a little more frustrating. For reasons I still can’t fully explain, I hold his Fright Night in pretty high regard, even though I know damn well it doesn’t scratch the chin of the original. That ain’t up for debate. That’s also why I expected more from him here. On paper, this version of Supergirl should’ve been right in his wheelhouse.

And to be fair, you can tell Gillespie was trying to make something weirder and more personal than the usual superhero assembly-line crap. I respect that. I just don’t think the script gave him enough bullets for the gun.

Writer Ana Nogueira might need to go back to The CW for a little while, because if this is the best she can turn in for a major DC movie, she isn’t ready for the big time yet. Wonder Woman, I’m looking at you and your script…

And I don’t say that because I wanted to hate this. I wanted this to work. The problem is the script never gives the movie enough meat. The characters have potential, the world has potential, the setup has potential, but potential isn’t a story. At some point, you’ve got to stop circling the airport and land the damn plane. Simply put, the writer lost the plot.

Supergirl / Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) worked for me too.

And before I even get deeper into the movie, let me say this: the internet trolls going after Milly’s looks can get all the way off my lawn and keep walking. I think Milly Alcock is a beautiful girl and a very good up-and-coming actress. More importantly, she gave an actual performance here. She wasn’t just standing around posing in a cape. She had attitude, pain, humor, anger, and that little bit of damaged chaos that made this version of Supergirl feel different.

If your first instinct is to jump online and talk trash about the way a woman, girl, man, or child looks, then you don’t deserve to read my reviews, be on my website, or breathe the same digital air as people trying to talk about movies like adults. Criticize the movie. Criticize the writing. Criticize the costume, the pacing, the flying, the villain, whatever. But attacking the actor’s appearance? That’s weak troll behavior.

Back to the movie.

The biggest problem is the story. It’s thin. Really thin.

At its core, this is a revenge plot, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Revenge stories can be incredible. This one just never digs deep enough. It has the bones of something stronger, almost like a comic book version of True Grit, but the movie never fully earns the weight it’s reaching for.

A big part of that problem is Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley).

Ruthye is important to this story. She’s the match that lights the fuse. She’s the reason this whole thing starts moving. And Eve Ridley was good. I’ve got no problem with her performance at all. She did what she could with what she was given.

The problem is, she wasn’t given enough.

For most of the movie, Ruthye is just kind of following Supergirl around like a lost puppy while repeating her Inigo Montoya-style revenge line: “You killed my family. Prepare to die.” I understand what they were going for. I understand the trauma. I understand the anger. I understand why she’s there. But understanding a character’s function isn’t the same thing as feeling connected to them. She never fully caught on with me.

That matters because Ruthye should’ve been more than just the revenge engine. She should’ve been the heart of the movie. She should’ve been the character who forces Kara to look at herself and her own pain in a different way. Instead, she often feels like a plot device with boots.

She’s there to keep the mission moving, but she doesn’t get enough actual life outside of that mission. And that’s frustrating because there’s a stronger version of this movie where Ruthye and Supergirl’s relationship is the whole damn point. Two damaged people, both angry, both hurt, both convinced violence is the answer, slowly discovering whether revenge actually fixes anything or just turns you into another broken thing crawling through the universe.

That movie’s in here somewhere. This movie just doesn’t fully pull it out.

Supergirl herself is messy in a way I mostly liked. I liked that she wasn’t treated like some perfect floating symbol of hope with salon hair and a motivational poster stapled to her face. She felt angry. She felt reckless. She felt like someone who’d been through hell and didn’t come out of it clean. Milly gave her a wounded edge, and that was probably the best actual character work in the movie.

But then the movie starts trying to make a point about revenge, mercy, pain, and what kind of person Kara is going to become — and that’s where it started to lose me. Without getting into spoilers, the ending undercuts the lesson the movie spends so much time building toward. It’s like the movie wants Supergirl to learn something, but then gets nervous and refuses to let her fully stand beside that lesson. That’s frustrating.

The villain doesn’t help either. Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) is weak. I don’t need every villain to have a 45-minute tragic backstory where he was sad because his planet didn’t hug him enough, but give me something. Give me a reason. Give me a worldview. Give me a wound. Give me anything besides “this guy sucks because the movie needs someone who sucks.”

A hero is only as good as their villain, and this villain did Supergirl no favors.

That’s one of the biggest reasons the movie never fully lands. If Kara’s going to be pushed to her limits, then the thing pushing her needs to matter. It needs to feel personal, dangerous, complicated, or at least memorable. Krem just felt one-note. He was there. He was bad. I waited for more. More never showed up.

And when your story is built on revenge, the villain can’t just be a cardboard bastard. He has to cast a shadow. He has to make the revenge feel dangerous not just physically, but morally. He has to make the hero and the audience question what justice even looks like. Krem never gets there.

Visually, I thought the movie looked pretty good for what it was. You can tell they weren’t trying to make the biggest comic book movie ever, and I actually respect that. Some of the worlds looked cool. Some of the action had real comic book energy. It actually looks like someone made choices, which is more than I can say for a lot of modern superhero sludge.

But I still don’t think anyone’s fully figured out how to make a Kryptonian flying straight at the camera look right. It still has that slightly weird screensaver quality to it. Better than some. Still not there.

Now let’s talk about Lobo (Jason Momoa).

Lobo was the biggest “fuck yeah” part of the movie, and it wasn’t close. Every second he was on screen, the movie got better. He came in like someone kicked the door open on a better, louder, dirtier movie, and I immediately wanted to follow him instead.

That’s not a knock on Milly, because she was good. Lobo just had that kind of screen presence where the whole movie wakes up when he shows up. He felt dangerous, funny, disgusting, and alive. He understood the assignment and then took a dump on its lap. I wanted more of him immediately.

Also, Seth Rogen popping up in a fun little voiceover cameo was hilarious. Didn’t expect it, and I laughed.

There’s also a weird amount of piss in this movie. I don’t know who made that decision, but apparently someone really wanted the audience to know everybody pees, including Supergirl. Message received. Thank you, cinema.

At the end of the day, Supergirl is a mixed bag for me. Milly Alcock is good. Lobo is awesome. Ruthye had potential. The smaller scale was refreshing. The movie has personality, and I’ll always give points for that.

But the story is weak. Ruthye is underwritten. The villain is weaker. The ending steps on its own point. And when your hero’s emotional journey is the thing holding the movie together, you can’t afford to fumble that at the goal line.

My beautiful wife cried, so I’m giving it an extra half nunchuck for that.

Final score: 6.5 nunchucks out of 10.

See it if you like Supergirl, Milly Alcock, Lobo, or smaller comic book movies with some personality.

Wait for streaming if you need a strong villain, a tight script, or a story that actually lands the plane.