directed by Craig Gillespie
written by Ana Noguiera
based on "Woman of Tomorrow" by Tom King and Bilquis Evely
This movie was already on my radar from the time the trailer dropped last year, but for some reason, I found myself even more interested in watching it when a particularly toxic section of fandom decided that it was a terrible movie before it even came out, clinging on to every tidbit of negative news that came out about the movie and gleefully prognosticating its failure at the box office. What really sealed the deal, though, was when I picked up the collected edition of the "Woman of Tomorrow" miniseries, or the first ever Supergirl comic I had aver actually read. I knew I had to check this movie out.
Having seen it, I can say while I definitely enjoyed it, there was actually more to the criticism than misogyny and rage-bait.
Like the story it adapts, the film tells the story of Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) aka Supergirl, traveling to a solar system with a red sun in order to cancel out her super powers so that she can get drunk, something she can't do in Earth's solar system with its yellow sun. Kara is both celebrating her birthday and continuing to mourn the loss of her planet, Krypton, and just wants to drown her sorrows in alcohol with her faithful dog, Krypto, by her side. Unfortunately, her quest to get drunk gets disrupted when a young woman named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) approaches her, asking her to avenge her family against the brigand Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). Kara refuses at first, but in a whirlwind of events, Krem steals Kara's ship (which she needs for space travel when she's depowered), and shoots Krypto with a deadly poison, with Krem carrying the antidote on his person. Kara then finds herself joining Ruthye on her quest to find Krem, albeit for different reasons altogether. Will she be able to save Krypto? Will Ruthye get her revenge, or will Krem and his fearsome brigands prove to be too much, even for Supergirl?
As someone who likes to end my reviews on a high note, though, I'll delve into the negatives first.
It's honestly such a cliche by now to deride "Marvel humor" as a storytelling negative. When done well, it can help give life to excellent films like the first Iron Man film and the Guardians of the Galaxy films. It just requires the filmmaker to balance the humor and the seriousness of the film, and unfortunately, in this case, director Craig Gillespie and writer Ann Noguiera just don't quite strike that balance.
Supergirl actually tackles some pretty heady themes, like the pain of loss and grief, and could in the hands of better storytellers, served up a pretty powerful narrative, but the human drama is frequently undercut by humor that borders on bathos at times, and even though Milly Alcock gives a sterling performance as Kara and Eve Ridley is a bit of a revelation as Ruthye, most of the rest of the cast just seems to phone it in, especially Schoenaerts as Krem, who, despite his character having a much more striking visual design than the comic-book villain on which he was based, feels like one of those generic space goons that Rocket Racoon would have shot dead in a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Visually, the film has a western aesthetic, but it really didn't come close to capturing the beauty of Bilquis Evely's artwork.
Then, unfortunately, there's utterly gratuitous and quite frankly superfluous cameo by popular DC character Lobo, played here by Jason Momoa who appears to have made the jump from the Snyderverse to the Gunn-verse. He wasn't in the original "Woman of Tomorrow" series and it's painfully obvious that his presence here is nothing more than poorly-executed fan service.
All that said, I still enjoyed this movie thanks to Alcock's and Ridley's performances, and some glimpses at the world-building going on here, specially Kara's flashbacks to Krypton. Again, I appreciate that Gunn's DC Universe has actually developed a Kryptonian language, and I quite like David Krumholtz as Zor-El, Kara's father, who is basically the benevolent Kryptonian patriach that previous incarnations of Superman's father Jor-El used to be. Even speaking in a completely made-up language, Krumholtz is still able to convey the kind of compassion that would inspire his daughter to take up a life of heroism, no matter how difficult it might be. Those scenes, to my mind, gave me a glimpse of how much better this movie could have been, so it's hard to dismiss it altogether.
There's a better movie that could have been made from the ingredients that went into this one, but unfortunately, this was what we got. Still, I managed to enjoy it.
7/10
