It is weird that every bad thing in Supergirl, a movie with only bad things, feels palpably connected to someone who didn’t write, direct, or star in it. The James Gunn-ification of the DC cinematic universe is officially here, and it is repellant and insufferable.
The titular hero listens to a kitschy “look at how cool my taste in music is” playlist on a literal iPod using wired headphones (for no discernible excuse given) with the shuffle speed set to ADHD. Every creature and intergalactic world seems ripped from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 4: We Do Even Worse Stuff to Cute Animals This Time. Oh, and bad stuff happens to cute animals. Every Gunn trademark this side of an appearance by one of his family members rears its distracting, simplistic, overdone head.
Maybe these were truly decisions made by director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Ana Nogueira. If so, they should probably check their DC-issued iPods for a secret hypnosis track labeled “Gunn to My Head.”
Based on the excellent comic series Woman of Tomorrow, by Bilquis Evely and Tom King, Supergirl ditches the source material’s cleverly nihilistic Space Western tone in favor of…nothing. This may be the first tone-free movie ever made. It’s not funny. It’s not epic. It’s not family friendly. It is what I imagine the color ecru would be if adapted into a full-length feature film.
Kara (Milly Alcock) is turning 23 and is depressed that her planet and people were obliterated. Which, you know, fair. Her only kin is Kal-El (David Corenswet), aka Superman, who is written here like he spent the time between films being savagely dropped on his head. They are clearly aiming for “aw shucks” wholesome and innocent with him but landed on “Oh, his costume looks like that because he couldn’t figure out the underwear went on the inside.”
Also, sorry, but having just rewatched Superman the other day… It is very odd that Supergirl completely ignores the previous film’s “twist” about Kal-El’s parents being like “Son, we beseech you to start a super-harem, repopulate the earth with your seed, and then take it over.” Kara’s dad gives the opposite message while constantly referencing his brother (Kal-El’s dad) being a pretty cool guy. This isn’t like holding slightly different political views here. This is one family sending a child to take over the planet and the other being like “Tell your cousin we said hi and be nice and stuff.”
Anyway, Kara is at a space bar and meets Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a young girl whose family was murdered by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), Professional Bad Guy. If that wasn’t enough to make Krem unlikeable, he leads a gang that kidnaps children for breeding and poisons Kara’s dog, Krypto. There is a line of dialogue that specifies that the poison dart slowly paralyzing Krypto is doing so in an incredibly painful way. I hope that every time the person responsible for that line staying in this movie bites into an apple, they find half a worm. And not the half with the butt. The rest of the movie is Kara and Ruthiye chasing down Krem so they can get the antidote and revenge.
As is the case with seemingly every movie in the Superman universe, there is an endless cycle of depowering the hero so that the fights can be more interesting. It is shocking that “invent a bad person as powerful as the good person” remains just out of narrative reach. Oh, also, Jason Momoa shows up as Lobo, a character that is essentially everything bad about 1990s comic books. He is (A) completely irrelevant to the plot here, (B) unfunny to the point of being wildly infuriating, and (C) looks just so so so stupid.
Lots of things look stupid here. This is a shockingly ugly movie. The action sequences are held together by thoughts and prayers. The alien character designs were seemingly crafted by whoever first drew the Cybertruck. It isn’t that I hated everything so much as I liked nothing. Absolutely nothing. Wild! It has been ages since I have seen a film where I truly liked not one single thing.
When people rail against the superhero genre, the nerd in me who spent hours talking to my only friend in middle school about what a Spider-Man movie might possibly one day look like gets his hackles up. This is the first time I was like “Oh, okay. They need to pull back. This has run its course.” Nice work, James!
Grade = F
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Manohla Dargis at The New York Times says “Like Supergirl — who goes by Kara and is played by the winning Milly Alcock — faithful moviegoers have been caught up in a seemingly interminable cycle of indulgent excess and morning-after regret. That’s at least one way to describe what it’s been like to have watched the numbingly similar superhero stories that have flooded cinemas for decades.”
Leila Latif at Empire says “The result isn’t disastrous by any means, just blandly safe. You just wish Gillespie would let these freak flags truly fly. There are good ingredients here: a witty, hard-partying, badass antihero, a moving backstory, an odd-couple dynamic between Alcock and Corenswet worth building on — but the fledgling DCU still has yet to prove itself.”
Jeanine T. Abraham says “The bad guys are ugly, brutish, gross, disgusting, and willing to do whatever their power allows them to do without a second thought. Everyone on the planets where they land bends the knee and just gives them what they want to preserve their lives. But Supergirl reflects the fact that safety is not guaranteed when you look the other way or bend the knee to an authoritarian bully. That’s the kind of Superhero film I need to see this summer.”