Supergirl: A Good Movie with Some Bad Stuff
Trucker Man Watches
Unlike most 40+ men sharing an opinion online about this movie, I’ve actually seen it. I’m a big fan of Superman and his surrounding lore, so I was naturally inclined to check this out after last summer’s good showing, and I wasn’t disappointed.
That said, I’m not going to glaze it either, and I do have some complaints, which are valid—because once again, I’ve actually seen it. I’m going to keep hammering this point. Most haters online are very high school about this stuff. “Oh but my favorite alcoholic YouTuber said he saw it so I didn’t have to!” How does it feel to outsource your thinking? I wouldn’t know. I’m capable of figuring out what I like on my own.
Anyways, here’s the rundown!
The Good
Story
Kara Zor-El is at a low spot in life after the deaths of her family and her homeworld. We learn through flashbacks that Krypton died a slow death, but part of the planet was preserved by her scientist father who wrapped a remnant of it in a force field. Nevertheless, the breakup of the core filled the atmosphere with kryptonite dust and people started dying of space cancer, including her parents.
Her father, Zor-El, built a copy of Superman’s spaceship and used it to send Kara and her dog Krypto to Earth. Unlike Clark, Kara wasn’t raised in a midwestern farming community; she’s jaded and likes to spend her time on planets with red suns so that she can get drunk. (We saw this at the end of Superman last year.)
Despite Clark’s attempts to reach out to her and make her feel at home, she’s still mourning and flying around the galaxy, living out of her car (spaceship) with her dog, the only thing she loves. While she’s camped out on one random planet, a local band of raiders called Brigands kill a swordsmith’s family, leaving only their daughter as a survivor. The daughter, Ruthye, goes on a revenge quest to kill the Brigands’ leader Krem. When Krem steals Kara’s ship and poisons Krypto, Kara is forced to team up with Ruthye so she can get the antidote from Krem.
As they journey together, predictable beats happen: Kara comes out of her alcoholic shell, Ruthye grapples with her desire for vengeance, and the clock is ticking on Krypto. By the end, they’ve both changed and grown and become friends, and Kara decides to permanently settle in on Earth with Clark, as it’s now her home.
Characters
Kara’s a good protagonist. She’s in a crap spot and engages in self-destructive behavior, but you can understand why, and it’s not portrayed glamorously. Through her forced interactions with Ruthye and the need to save her dog, Kara gets over the personal hurdles she has, and she plays the character charmingly. There are some pieces of dialogue that don’t land all that great here and there but I liked her in the role, Milly Alcock is a good actress.
David Corenswet reprises his role as Superman in sort of a bit-part, and I really like him here too. I hope he gets several more movies in the suit. He knows what he’s doing.
The only other role people had any questions about was Jason Momoa as Lobo. What’s he like? He’s like Lobo, and also like Jason Momoa. He’s fun and he pops up two or three times overall.
Other than those three, the roster is pretty thin. The villain was good, and whoever played him really leaned into the “crazy hobo space gangster” elements of his character, so that was nice. No cheesy monologues, just a powerful bottom-rung thug who makes everyone around him miserable. He’s also a human trafficker. You really want this dude to die.
I wasn’t crazy about the actress who played Ruthye. Her character was, again, understandably upset, but the actress tried too hard to convey that.
Oh and David Krumholz was Zor-El in the flashback. He’s good too. His entire role was performed in Kryptonian with English subs (there were a lot of those in the movie and I liked it).
Visuals
It’s somewhere between Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy in terms of its grit, grunge, and color palate. The ships looked cool and practical and lived-in, and while other elements were recognizable (chairs and tables and condiment trays in a space bar) they weren’t just one-offs from Walmart. There was effort put into the set pieces and that showed.
The fight scenes were also excellent. Marvel are really bad about that in those movies, the directors really heavily on cuts between movements and the result is often disjointed or clunky. In Supergirl we get a lot of long, rotating one-shots that are all coherent and visually satisfying. Very well done.
Fidelity
Twenty years ago Smallville did this take on Clark and Kara, where he was the idealist and she was the “realist,” whose background was harder than his and so she was a little rougher to deal with. I think this was a good elaboration on that dynamic between the two of them.
Music
In short, I liked it, and I’ll look up the tracks. The only one I thought was weird was a slow female cover of “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, played during the climax. Odd choice.
The Bad
Superman Lore
I will say that my biggest complaint from James Gunn’s Superman was the idea that Jor-El sent Clark to conquer Earth and start a harem. I thought that was a fakeout that Lex Luthor published to turn people against Superman, but Gunn doubled down on it in interviews after the film came out. I can’t agree with that decision, and Gunn really needs to stop putting weird sex ideas in his superhero movies.
While Supergirl didn’t have a reference to the harem stuff, Zor-El and his wife did see Clark’s ship flying off as Krypton collapsed, and they mentioned that Jor-El’s son was off to conquer Earth. Again, that’s an idea that Smallville played with but they passed it off as Clark mistranslating a message from his father. That’s the right approach.
Novelty
Gritty and grungy superheroes are cool when they’re like…five percent of the stories you get. By now it’s a saturated trope and I’d like to see it well and truly disappear. That said, the total arc of the story is one where Kara gives up her attitude and figures out how to move on with her life, even as she helps someone she had no interest in.
That ending felt like a novelty, or at least a lesser-trod path. The revenge elements of the story were kind of bland and overdone. It got us where we needed to go with the story, I just had to accept that the character really wanted that because I didn’t feel it.
Pacing
The movie only clocks in at about an hour and forty but it feels longer than that. Some of the scenes could have moved a little better. The “muddy middle” is real.
Bodily Fluids
My biggest issue here. The movie opens up with Krypto peeing on the floor. Kara goes and gets drunk and she vomits. She talks to Clark on a video chat while she’s brushing her teeth. Ruthye comes to talk to her when she’s hungover and she needs to use the bathroom. Later you get other aliens vomiting or drooling or otherwise leaving ejecta all over the place…Ruthye even has to raid a Brigand armory while one dude is randomly taking a leak in a chamber pot. It was constant and disgusting. WTF.
The Future
“Graham, the movie lost eleventy jillion dollars!” I’m sorry that you lost eleventy jillion dollars—oh, wait, the movie lost that? So you didn’t lose anything? You didn’t pay the eleventy jillion dollars, right? You’re not on the board at Warner Bros? Okay cool then, I don’t care about the money. It cost me thirteen bucks ‘cause I took my wife for a Wednesday matinee. I got my thirteen bucks’ worth.
As far as the box office, I saw snippets online that the CEO was disappointed with the weekend receipts but that they were going to continue on with their plans for more DC movies. Cool. I like DC characters and I especially like Superman. I’m a fan so this excites me.
Box office discussions are cool if you want something to succeed and I guess also cool if you want something to fail, but let me just say that I’ve been there and it’s a dumb place to be. “I hope this movie loses money!” On some level I get it but on a bigger, sexier level, it’s a dumb thing to care about. I like comics and superheroes. I want better superhero movies. The ones we’ve gotten in the last two years are better than the ones we had in a few years before that. Box office doesn’t measure that. It doesn’t equal good movie or not. The Rocketeer wasn’t a box office success. That right there should tell you the box office is a dumb thing to follow.
Unless they’re burning your eleventy jillion dollars, I don’t really care, Margaret. This was a good superhero movie and I like seeing good movies. You should too.
Anyway, go read HEARTLANDERS.