WILD BROWN YONDER: Milly Alcock shines in murky Supergirl. (Warner Bros.)
Review by Curt Holman
In 2023, James Gunn, named creative honcho of the new DCU slate of movies, announced an ambitious lineup. After his own Superman reboot, one of the big-screen entries would adapt the acclaimed miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, written by Tom King and drawn by Bilquis Evely.
This was great news for its fans—Kevin and I even devoted our Best of 2022 episode of The Comics Canon to the book. The eight-issue miniseries offers a spectacular but deeply emotional riff on True Grit in outer space, as Krypton’s Kara Zor-El embarks on an interplanetary mission to protect a young girl out for revenge. The premise mines the darker implications of Supergirl’s origins to give her more edgy complexities without being gratuitously gritty.
The book also has visual splendors, with Evely’s art style evoking the likes of Moebius and Maxfield Parrish, capturing the cosmic exploits with surprising delicacy. Colorist Mattheus Lopes may be the book’s secret weapon, rendering soft, vivid hues that practically glow from the panels.
Seeing the Supergirl film, it’s unfortunately easy to imagine director Craig Gillespie looking at the book and telling his team “Slop it up, boys!” Supergirl begins with promise, but its trek through the stars takes one wrong turn after another.
One of the film’s saving graces is Milly Alcock as the title character, who builds on the book’s conception of Kara as a hard-drinking hero haunted by Krypton’s destruction. While Superman (David Corenswet, in short but impactful scenes) never knew his home planet and grew up in the American heartland, Kara is effectively a refugee from Argo City, a fragment of Krypton that escaped into space. Flashbacks show Kara raised by loving parents (David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham), only to see Argo’s population slowly die of Kryptonite poisoning before her father sends her Earth (and her little dog, too).
In contrast to her cousin’s optimism, Kara carries cynicism and trauma, which she attempts to drown in alcohol, going so far as to booze it up on planets with red suns, where she has no superpowers and gets more drunk. Even more than in the comic, Alcock nails the character’s party-girl pugnaciousness while letting both Kara’s sorrow and goodness peek around the edges.
It’s on one of these planets that Kara meets Ruthye, a girl whose family has just been pointlessly slain by Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). Ruthye has vowed to kill Krem with the family sword, and when Kara’s beloved dog Krypto gets in the murderer’s way, Supergirl finds herself reluctantly partnering with the girl.
In the book, Krem’s closer to True Grit’s original killer, a blustery loser who got lucky once. Here, Krem has superpowers and leads a brutal band of child-trafficking brigands. But narratively, he’s like a henchman trying to fill the shoes of a lead villain without the writing to flesh him out. Schoenaerts has nothing to play but the sadism.
Granted, Supergirl’s first act engagingly blends comedy and sci-fi thrills, offering an amusing set piece on a spacefaring bus filled with outlandish aliens (some designed straight from the source material). Then Kara and Ruthye track Krem to Bilquis, a planet presumably named in homage to the artist that, ironically, only offers a series of dark, drab and ugly locations.
The book’s bridal-kidnapping subplot moves to the fore, but Supergirl isn’t equipped to wrestle with such dark material. The film has the usual Hollywood hypocrisy about revenge stories, paying lip service to the idea that vengeance is bad while clearly not believing it. Supergirl maintains a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do attitude and the film seems unsure whether she wants to empower Ruthye or protect and infantilize her.
But what about Lobo? Jason Momoa plays the film’s other major role, a bounty-hunting space biker in KISS makeup who shows up for some macho preening and a few action scenes. Momoa certainly looks the part of the cult favorite character (honestly, his take on Aquaman was arguably more like Lobo in the first place), but the role feels like an extended cameo strategically included to appease the kind of male nerds who reflexively oppose women-led movies.
The baffling thing is how little influence Lobo has on the story when he could have been a perfect thematic counterpoint to our two protagonists. Just have him argue the case in favor of revenge and against personal attachments, so Ruthye and Kara can reject his worldview later! He’s right there, in the movie!
When Gunn chose Gillespie to helm Supergirl, he may have been impressed by the performances in the director’s female-fronted works like Cruella and I, Tonya. But it’s a bad look that Supergirl’s finished product so resembles a pale reflection of Gunn’s own Guardians of the Galaxy films.
Supergirl’s big finale includes a slowed-down pop needle-drop so miscalculated that the audience leaves on the worst possible note and unlikely to appreciate the film’s bright spots. It’s a real setback for the DCU and, even worse, makes a lovely book look worse by association. Maybe it was a sign that such a derivative movie dropped the subtitle “Woman of Tomorrow.”
Supergirl. Grade: C. Stars Milly Alcock, Eve Ridley. Directed by Craig Gillespie. Rated PG-13.