Deservedly or not, superhero fatigue is real. Once an overreaction driven by online, clickbait-chasing commentators (among others), superhero fatigue can’t be considered an abstract idea based solely on cultural backlash. There’s no clearer evidence of that new objective reality than dwindling box-office returns or streaming numbers for the latest Marvel or DC effort. All that, of course, can change at the drop of a mask: Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives in movie theaters in just a few short weeks, while Avengers: Doomsday promises event blockbuster returns. That’s the hope held by Disney/Marvel executives who greenlit both entries.
But that’s Marvel Studios and Warner Bros.’ superhero division, DC Studios, co-led by writer-director-producer James Gunn (the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy) and Peter Safran, enters the blockbuster fray with Supergirl, a spinoff of last summer’s Superman reboot. Starring House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock as the title character, Supergirl (aka Kara Zor-El), the Last Daughter of Argo City, a floating, now extinct, remnant of Superman’s home planet, Krypton, the uneven spinoff centers Kara Zor-El on an off-world, science-fiction adventure based on the celebrated 2021-2022 Eisner-nominated miniseries, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, scripted by Tom King (Mister Miracle, Batman/Detective Comics, Strange Adventures) and illustrated by Bilquis Evely (Helen of Wyndhorn).
We first met Alcock’s punkish, rebellious Kara in the final moments of last year’s Superman. Off-world partying — Earth’s yellow sun gives Superman and his cousin extraordinary powers, but also limits their ability to enjoy mind- and mood-altering experiences (alcohol, other substances, legal and, presumably, otherwise) — Supergirl returned to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to retrieve Krypto from her cousin’s care. Despite decades of comic-book lore, Krypto didn’t belong to Superman, but to Kara. And for Kara, Krypto represented the last living link to Argo City and her family.
Fast forward a year in real time, and Kara’s either inebriated or hungover, planet-hopping solar systems with red suns, to celebrate her 23rd birthday. It’s not much of a celebration: Kara, still acutely affected by trauma with a capital “T,” can’t accept life on Earth as either a super-powered alien passing as human or as a superhero in a bright red-and-blue costume modeled on her more famous cousin.
Adapting King and Evely’s True Grit-in-space-inspired miniseries, screenwriter Ana Noguera ruthlessly streamlines, compresses, and condenses the source material into a sub-two-hour running time. By necessity, that means jettisoning characters, subplots, and ideas, but to her credit, Noguera retains the central throughline, Kara’s character arc from dissolute, reluctant antihero to committed, unselfish superhero. It’s not exactly a redemption arc, instead heavily, not to mention all too obviously, borrowing tropes typically associated with the classic hero’s journey popularized by any number of screenwriting gurus over the last four or five decades.
While on one of her alcohol-fueled binges on a semi-industrialized, backwater planet, Kara inadvertently becomes involved with Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), a sword-wielding thirteen-year-old on a journey of her own, revenge for the death of her family at the hands of Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), the sadistic, if all too generic, leader of Mad Max-inspired, human-trafficking, space-faring Brigands. Kara wants no part in Ruthye’s seemingly foolhardy pursuit of Krem, but once Krem steals Kara’s ship and grievously injures Krypto, Ruthye and Kara form a temporary, often frayed, alliance.
With a depowered Kara forced to rely on her ingenuity and/or luck to escape one scrape after another, an unwanted Ruthye usually hovering nearby, Supergirl takes a loose, sometimes meandering road to the inevitable confrontation between Supergirl and Ruthye on one side and Krem and his interchangeable crew on the other. An intergalactic, cigar-chomping bounty-hunter, Lobo (Jason Momoa), also pops up as a narrative wildcard, leaving varying levels of CGI-augmented chaos behind whenever he appears. He’s not interested in Kara, Ruthye, vengeance, or justice, just whatever reward he can obtain from collecting a brigand’s head.
Despite strong, sympathetic turns by Alcock as Kara and Ridley as Kara’s naively stoic ally, their growing attachment and respect, and Kara’s arc, Supergirl repeatedly founders, less due to any intrinsic flaws than the utter predictability of both its story and emotional beats. Kara’s reluctance to wear the Supergirl costume and embrace her destiny as a superhero won’t last. Devoid of any backstory, Krem’s willful sadism, psychopathic lack of rationale, or overreliance on violence and intimidation make him one of the most forgettable villains in any iteration of the DC universe (comics, TV, or film).
Too often, unfortunately, Supergirl hitting so many painfully familiar beats leads to an entirely understandable reaction: indifference, indifference to Kara and Ruthye’s individual and collective plights, indifference to the resolution of their conflicts, internal and external, and indifference to the ultimately perfunctory, bloodless throwdown between Kara, Ruthye, and Krem. That indifference extends to a script that over-relies on tone-shifting, bland, colorless humor, a pop-music-filled soundtrack that doubles as ironic commentary on whatever’s happening onscreen (a Gunn specialty well past its sell-by date), and Gillespie’s competent, if surprisingly anonymous, direction, including a clutch of weightless set pieces notable only for the quality of their CGI/live-action integration and nothing else.
Supergirl opens theatrically on Friday, June 26th, via Warner Bros. Visit their official site for locations and showtimes.
