SUPERGRRRL’s Krypto-currency: Volatile, messy, of questionable value…
Kara Zor-El survived the destruction of Krypton but grew up in the city of Argo, before it too succumbed to the ravages of kryptonite. Sent by her well-meaning father to the same world, Earth, that the infant Kal-El had been directed, she’s not been able to feel as comfortable as her cousin.
Happier to be off-world where a red sun deprives her, for a while, of her powers and sense of responsibility, Kara is about to find herself in the middle of a feud that could cost her dearly. A brigand named Krem takes the life of a local swordsmith and his family – but leaves the daughter – Ruthye – alive… now she has sworn vengeance. When Krypto, Kara’s dog, is critically injured by Krem, the only way to save the beloved canine is to hunt down his attacker and retrieve an antidote.
If Kara can survive her latest hangover, will she have what it takes to save her dog, the day and live up to the mantle of… ‘Supergirl’?
Not all heroes have to be spotless white-hatted cowboys and cleaner-than-clean in their mission statements. It’s not difficult to find characters (Wolverine, Deadpool etc that defy the traditional mould. But mere seconds into Supergirl, it’s clear that director Craig Gillespie and producer James Gunn are going to go out of the way to make sure we’re not in role-model territory. Hey people…. this is NOT SUPERMAN!
It’s a statement of undisguised intent when we immediately see Krypto peeing on a newspaper featuring the Man of Steel’s image and it’s not long before Kara is knocking back shots, vomiting outside bars and being pictured on the toilet. Subtlety and subtext are not going to be the words of the day. It’s so artificially rebellious, that it almost feels as if DC doesn’t want to make a Supergirl movie at all, or that the overt, clean tone of Superman (David Cornswet here seen briefly as little more than a naive, golly-gee boy scout) has led the production to swing wide in the opposite direction and fully embrace dirt and anarchy.
The result has been… critically-mixed. Some will point to the endless argument that ‘female superhero movies don’t play well…‘- a ridiculous statement only given credence by the number of uneven efforts thus far – and which had far less to do with gender and more to do with basic quality of the material on offer.
The trouble is, amid the sometimes look-at-me OTT grubbiness of it all, there’s a decent story to be told of how Kara’s perspective differs from Kal-El/Clark. The latter arrived on Earth as a baby and grows up with mid-west values and nothing but fractured, second-hand (and somewhat askew) memories of his home-world. On the other hand, Kara survived the end of Krypton and had to watch her friends and family succumb to a much slower death in the Kryptonite-infused city of Argo. Unlike Clark’s ‘adoption’, Earth is like the foster-world she’s been forced to live on – she doesn’t really consider it a place where she innately belongs… and therefore takes every chance to get off-world when she can – to the extent she seeks out places where her powers don’t work under a red sun and she can ‘feel’ again (until the alcohol dulls the pain). So NOT SUPERMAN!
Game of Thrones‘ Milly Alcock got some negative attention from fans when she got the Supergirl role – apparently some quarters feeling she just wasn’t pretty enough – but she’s perfectly okay here as a pouty rebellious young woman deciding her priorities, prepared to do the right thing but in the least-advised ways possible. Alcock handles the action easily enough but is better when the flashbacks give her a little more to do. Any failing of the wider film should not be placed on her shoulders.
Ruthye, the young girl she must steer away from the path of vengeance, is played well enough by young British actor Eve Ridley (3 Body Problem, The Witcher, Casualty) though we’ve seen plenty of characters like this before.
The CGI Krypto is a shameless plot device, decently rendered as a terrier-Schnauzer version of a live-action Scooby Doo. Normally he’s the light-relief, but here he’s here merely to provide Kara with a John Wick mission or revenge when a baddie takes aim in his direction (albeit with a *obvious spoiler?* a better eventual outcome).
The villains of the piece are mostly generic Mad Max rejects with blood-lust and piercings, the kind of scum of the universe that comes from Central Casting. If it wasn’t for Kara’s in/convenient fluctuating powers under an alien sun, they’re the kind of reprobates that could be disposed of in seconds (and eventually are). Matthias Schoenaerts is main villain Krem, but there’s little to distinguish him from his pierced and pirating cohorts. Yes, Jason Momoa was likely born to play Lobo, the cosmic bounty hunter and cigar-chewing killer who makes his big-screen debut in Supergirl… and yet there’s really no need for him to be there – you could take out every scene and it wouldn’t affect the plot in any real way. It’s such a caricature that the scenes feel forced and silly and perhaps only there to say ‘Well, Kara’s not that far gone yet…‘ (By the end, though, that’s not necessarily true and certain climactic events somewhat undermine the whole ‘grow up and be the better person’ motif that the film seemed to be leaning into). See people… she’s still NOT SUPERMAN.
There’s plenty of pretty VFX on show and a few nice creative flourishes, but some are undermined by internal logic. Comic-book physics have long been fluid and surreal when compared to ‘real’ dynamics, and one shouldn’t go into a superhero movie expecting complete adherence to reality, but films do need to decide how much leeway they need and stick to it. A moment where we see (rather than hear) Kara rise above the planet’s atmosphere – so she can silently scream her frustrations into the void – is true about how the vacuum of space works, but would work better if we didn’t have several scenes in which the reverse is true. Equally, in comic-book form, physics fail to exist and the film seems happy to have inertia solve some cosmic problems and yet cease to be a factor in others.
Gunn’s films (as director or producer) tend to favour underdogs, outliers and a general sense of anarchy but Supergirl, under Craig Gillespie’s direction, merely finds an excuse to play in the dirt. Gillespie’s previous efforts promised more. Cruella and I, Tonya and The Finest Hours got on several reviewers’ radar, but this feels like style over content.
Supergirl, as a character, spends most of the time staggering around in a Blondie t-shirt, but the film ultimately has the emotional depth of Avril Lavinge’s Sk8er Boi lyrics: (‘She had a pretty face, but her head was up in space. She needed to come back down to earth...’). It wants to be an edgy coming-of-age, morality play, but by the time the credits roll, it’s just sk8ting by and ultimately fumbles both.
6/10
Supergirl is now available on HBO Max and for purchase / to stream on various subscriber platforms…