Link to the audio version of this post is HERE
Readers, I have once again braved the harshest of elements (it was raining lightly, but it was quite humid) and this time on opening weekend to head to the theaters to see a movie that I’ve been waiting for since the utter surprise that was 2025’s Superman. So it’s time for another spoiler-free look at a movie that’s in theaters in the next installment of my “Lone Wolf and Stub” series, where I go to the movies by myself and then tell you about it with nearly no details. Let’s talk about Supergirl.
I’m sitting here just about half an hour since the credits rolled on my IMAX showing and I have so many thoughts that I need to share with you that they might not be the most well organized. First things first, I have to speak briefly about the online reaction to this movie and its critical reception. Now, you know that I am generally fairly snobby when it comes to movies and my tastes are usually more in line with critics. There are counterexamples, of course, and Supergirl is going to be one of them. At the time of writing, Supergirl is sitting at a 57% RT score with 76% audience score. Now, I can’t speak to what problem the critics had with it is, I haven’t read every review. I can’t tell you what I saw and they didn’t or what they didn’t see and I did, but I walked into Supergirl with an open mind and enjoyed every second of it.
As for the misogynistic online backlash, I don’t think I need to tell you that I hold nothing but disdain for people who jump on bandwagon hate because something doesn’t represent them or whatever silly notion they have as to what they’re entitled to. It’s of course okay that something isn’t made for you because you’re not the only person on the planet. But also, just because the protagonist doesn’t look like you doesn’t mean you can’t identify with them. I mean, I grew up watching white guy after white guy save the day and I like Batman just as much as anyone else, even if he does have the face of a colonizer. So if you’re mad that there’s a superhero movie starring a woman then you simply need to grow up. I’ve been on that cesspool-formerly-known-as-Twitter and seen people talking about how horrible the movie is, how it should have starred Sydney Sweeney, and how it’s man-hating trash not only before the movie hit theaters, but even before the critics got a chance to see it. It’s time to grow up. The movie is not horrible, not even close. No, it really should not have starred Sydney Sweeney. And it’s not man-hating at all. It’s not man-hating for a woman to exist and have stories centered around her. It’s not man-hating for a woman protagonist to go against all male antagonists (which isn’t even the case here). It’s not man-hating to hold those who hurt women and girls accountable. And I really have to stress that this should not have starred Sydney Sweeney. If you want to see Sydney Sweeney in a superhero movie, go watch Madame Web with the twelve other people who have seen it. I watched this movie sitting next to a father and with his two young sons. They didn’t see online discourse; they saw a hero doing the right thing and kicking ass in the process. So maybe everything online isn’t always so real.
Now that’s out of the way, I can focus on the movie. Just very quickly, Supergirl is Superman’s cousin, Kara Zor-el, and much like Clark, she’s got some pretty significant powers when she’s under the yellow sun. Of course, Kara doesn’t really spend much time in that particular brand sunlight, opting instead for the red sun that allows her to get drunk. I don’t blame her. Then some stuff happens and Kara has to make some decisions and maybe do some stuff. I can’t get any more specific than that, but I can tell you that the movie digs deep into the well of heroic tropes, but does so in a really effective way. It worked in Logan, it worked in The Mandalorian, it even worked in The Punisher season two. Give a reluctant would-be hero something to protect and see if they are the hero we want them to be or not. Hell, it’s the trope that this series of blog posts is named after. And I can’t get enough of it. Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon, Upright) is excellent as Supergirl; she presents as a party girl, drinking her way through the galaxy like an undergrad student on a pub crawl, but there’s so much more to her character. Kara has so much depth to her, so much capacity to elicit emotion and be relatable that I can’t imagine a better choice for her than Milly Alcock. She teeters on the knife edge of likability as a character because Kara wants you to hate her as much she hates everything that’s happened to her. I could go on about her performance, but that would get into spoiler territory and we don’t want to be there. Suffice it to say that Milly doesn’t just walk the knife edge, she dances on it with aplomb.
Some have likened the story to that of a Guardians of the Galaxy movie and even if that were accurate, I don’t see the problem. In case everyone forgot, the Guardians movies were great. The second did take a dip in quality and Chris Pratt has long overstayed his welcome, but as a trilogy, Vol. 3 was so good that it made me forget all the peccadillos of Vol. 2. Yes, there are some similarities both visually and in setting and world building as the Guardians movies, but that’s kind of the point of having a cohesive cinematic universe. Guardians may be a Marvel property, but James Gunn isn’t and he’s the one in charge of the Gunnmosphere, so it stands to reason that there are going to be similarities. And yet, it still feels fully in the universe of Superman. I do see influences from other movies though, as nothing is created in a vacuum. I see some Logan, I see some Mad Max: Fury Road, I see some True Grit in it as well. And if you know me, two of those movies I mentioned are ones I didn’t like, but it all comes together in something that I truly adored.
It’s not all perfect, of course. There are a couple of lines I could have done without because they have the effect of inviting undue bad faith soundbite criticism and some of the action, while appropriately disjointed and unpolished (Kara isn’t exactly the kind of person who has a meticulous plan of action), can be hard to follow at times. Jason Momoa plays Jason Momoa as Lobo [Jason Momoa’s Version] and while he’s perfectly suited for Lobo, it is largely the same character he always plays. It almost feels nitpicky to complain about it because it is really perfect casting. I mean, I do think he’s at his best playing a Pauly Shore-like villain in Fast X. Momoa is a very likable figure so that does paper over some cracks, but there are no surprises. He simply is what it says on the tin. And that’s kind of the list of my complaints. Maybe more will come to me when I do a full post, but for now that’s what I’ve got. The movie felt great to watch, I was engaged from moment one, and thanks to the extremely sensible 1 hour, 47 minute runtime (with no after credits scene!), it was paced well too. Which I can’t say about every superhero movie that benchmarks two and a half hours as a minimum, whether or not there’s story to justify the column inches, so to speak. It’s fun, it’s funny, and it packs a narrative punch as well. Supergirl is PG-13 and in theaters now and it gets my wholehearted recommendation.
