Aging is inevitable, but personal growth is not. And as we sour on life, many of us retreat from the discomfort that forges wisdom, compassion, and curiosity. Supergirl, directed by Craig Gillespie, is a coming-of-age story about healing, accountability, and struggling to fit in. Beneath this gritty and offbeat space romp that wears its sci-fi influences on its sleeve, the film asks what happens when someone stops trying to grow.
Kara (Milly Alcock), aka Supergirl, has all the strength and abilities of her cousin Clark/Superman (David Corenswet). But instead of fighting for truth and justice, she spends her days gallivanting across the galaxy in a boozy haze.
Clark crashed on Earth as a baby with his whole life ahead of him and was raised by two loving parents. Kara grew up on Krypton before a cataclysm forced her to flee. She arrived on earth as a traumatized teenager and never adapted to her new life.
It’s not that Kara doesn’t fit in — she doesn’t even try.
When the film begins, she’s on an interplanetary pub crawl, celebrating her 23rd birthday. Kara and her pooch, Krypto, travel to planets with red suns where her superpowers switch off so she can get hammered off cheap whiskey. In reality, it’s less a birthday blow-out and more of an excuse to keep numbing herself from pain and loneliness.
While on a late-night bender, Kara crosses paths with Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a young girl whose family was slaughtered by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), leader of a band of space marauders called brigands. Kara has no interest in accepting the angry little orphan’s offer to avenge her family until Krem shoots Krypto with a poison dart, leaving him with just three days to live. With time ticking away, she reluctantly teams with Ruthye on an intergalactic revenge mission to stop the brigands and track down the only antidote that can save Krypto, Kara’s last connection to her old life.
Last year, James Gunn’s Superman arrived in theatres with impossible expectations. It had to establish the world, tone, and stakes of a new cinematic universe, anchored by the world’s most recognizable superhero. And that film mostly delivered, feeling overstuffed with action, characters, and new ideas. So it’s head-scratching that the next entry in the DC rebrand would feel so underbaked.
Supergirl borrows heavily from a host of influences without establishing its own distinct voice. The threadbare revenge plot is PG-13 John Wick — they poison the cute dog instead of killing it. And the villains seem plucked from the set of Mad Max: Fury Road — the subplot even revolves around rescuing trafficked brides. These are all cool concepts on paper, but in execution, they amount to watered-down pastiche.
The film has flashes of wit, charm, and personality that echo the highs of great comic book adventures, but they’re too few and far between. Supergirl isn’t wanting for action and adventure, but it often comes across as flat and lacks those wow moments that make viewers want to return to a film again and again.
Many of the action sequences are intense, but ultimately hard to follow. The camerawork grows overzealous at times in its attempts to capture Kara’s raw speed and power. Kara kicking brigand asses looks like those old cartoon dustups where two cats fight in a cloud, punctuated by fists, feet, and stars. In this case, replace the stars with laser blasts.
The film’s main issue is that the characters and their relationships fall flat. Krem may be the most forgettable villain to grace a major comic book movie. Even the Joker’s henchmen Bob in Tim Burton’s Batman exudes more brooding charisma. As Lobo, Jason Momoa somehow feels miscast in the role he was born to play. Fans have waited decades to see this character appear on screen, but he still feels shoehorned into the story. Lobo comes across more like an SNL impersonation than a fleshed-out big-screen character. More often than not, “The Main Man” was giving off Beetlejuice vibes.
Most egregiously, the story fails to properly establish the relationship between Kara and Ruthye. The pair share a lot of screentime, yet their emotional journey feels inevitable rather than earned.
One area where the film knocks it out of the park is its worldbuilding and creature effects. The effects team go all in on making Kara’s journey look like a live-action Rick and Morty adventure. Tiny humanoids sling quips while boarding space buses, and actors in unwieldy rubber suits populate neon-lit alien jazz bars. The film’s creature effects and production design are ambitious and immersive and deliver some of the wildest sci-fi worldbuilding since Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
For all its over-the-top characters and catchy needle drops, Supergirl offers a scrappy and often dour return to the DC universe. It’s never dull, but Kara’s adventures feel more like a sidequest than the epic main event the character deserves. Supergirl often substitutes commotion for meaning, and much like Kara, never settles down long enough to figure out what it wants to be.
Supergirl opens in theatres June 26.
