Sophomore albums are hard. Just ask Weezer (or whatever other example you want). The DCU only kicked off with Superman last year and its success was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it proved James Gunn could run a whole cinematic universe. A curse because it means anyone not named James Gunn making movies in that space would be unfairly compared to him. (We’ll see what happens with Lanterns on the TV side.) Craig Gillespie is the director in that first post-Superman slot with Supergirl. While the movie is perfectly enjoyable enough, it could have (and probably should have) been much more.
The movie directly adapts Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s fantastic graphic novel Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which gives it a strong narrative to work from. That it doesn’t have many aspirations beyond adapting that book leaves the movie feeling smaller than its intergalactic setting would lead you to believe. Ultimately, Supergirl hits highs of its own, even if it feels like a bit of a lesser outing.
When we first met Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, alias Supergirl, in last year’s Superman, she came across as a drunk party girl who didn’t train her dog. That vibe largely carries over to the beginning of her own movie. Despite her cousin Clark (David Corenswet) trying to make her feel at home on Earth, Kara spends a lot of her time in space, heading to systems with red suns so she can get drunk. She and Krypto bounce around the galaxy, basically doing nothing else.
Coincidentally, a young girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) happens into the same bar Kara’s in. She announces that she’s looking for a warrior to help her kill the vicious raider Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) who murdered her whole family. Though Kara really wants nothing to do with any of it, she ends up stepping in when a nasty alien guy attempts to steal from Ruthye. Badda bing, badda boom, Ruthye decides Kara is the warrior she’s looking for. While Kara wants nothing to do with her at first, a particular act of violence leads her to change her tune.
Kara becomes a reluctant protector figure for the girl but continually tells her not to kill Krem, but instead to bring him to justice. The trouble is, Krem and his band of baddies are also kidnapping the galaxy’s young girls for…nefarious purposes. This plot puts Kara and Ruthye in the path of boorish intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa). Lobo can only make things more chaotic, as is his way.
Amid this narrative, we get flashbacks to Kara’s origin. Her father Zor-El (David Krumholtz) attempted to save a portion of Krypton from destruction and that is where Kara was born. But fate would make it so she, too, would have to leave the same way her cousin Kal-El did. She has the memory of her dying culture when she lands on Earth, making it much more difficult to assimilate into Earth society.
Supergirl, unlike Superman, has no intention of introducing six billion new DC characters or furthering a cinematic universe. It’s refreshing to have a comic book movie defiantly against Easter eggs. It’s not a cameo fest. The movie is just a movie, telling a story about these characters. I think that’s both Supergirl‘s biggest strength and potentially its biggest downfall. It means the movie has nowhere to hide when the story and characters aren’t hitting a chord with viewers, it’s likely they’ll tune out.
Woman of Tomorrow is one of my favorite comics of the past 10 years, so my hopes and expectations for this were very high. The story is so compelling and having Supergirl as the main character works in a very specific way. The comic is entirely from Ruthye’s point of view, where she sees Kara as this mythic figure while we, the reader, know she’s definitely not her cousin. The movie, conversely, is told from Kara’s point of view. So rather than have Kara as this often quiet, almost Spaghetti Western-style laconic heroine, whose actions speak louder than her words, she’s a quippy pseudo-Star Lord.
This is my biggest issue with the film. Absent is the colorful space opera setting for a nigh-mythological adventure story. Instead we have loads of one-liners and exceedingly dreary space taverns while Kara, for some reason, listens to Earth music on a Walkman. It’s hard not to see Supergirl trying very hard to achieve that Guardians of the Galaxy tone without the vibrancy or, frankly, the level of character charisma. It should have felt like its own thing so much more than it does.
What we do get is perfectly fine. It’s enjoyable enough. The action is decent, the performances are all serviceable with Ridley as a bright spot. It follows the basic throughline of the comic very faithfully. But it’s not a great sign when the far and away best scenes in the movie are the few we have with Corenswet’s Superman. He’s just the most likeable person in the entire world and he really stands out opposite Alcock’s mix of mope and snark.
While I enjoyed the movie well enough and the third act was really well done, I can’t help but question why adapt such a singular and memorable comic if it was just going to end up watered down and homogenized. It’s nowhere near a bad movie, but I wanted Supergirl to bowl me over and it simply did not.
⭐ (3 of 5)
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
The post SUPERGIRL Doesn’t Quite Fly High Enough (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.
Source: Kiat Media
0 Comments