This past weekend, I was able to take the wifey out and about to catch a flick at the cinemaplexatorium. We chose to check out Supergirl. Having absolutely adored James Gunn’s Superman, I personally walked in with expectations of a fun romp with a good dose of heart. I knew the film itself was heavily inspired by “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, but alas, I’ve never read it. My knowledge of Kara Zor-El honestly was best pulled from the DC Animated Universe — which I know means not much in context. So, I’d like to say I sat down and plunked on my 3D glasses with as open a mind as you could get before the requisite ten minutes of commercials and ten minutes of trailers I’ve likely already seen on YouTube. 

I’m going to go ahead now and make clear: this will be as SPOILER-FREE a review as I can make… so long as you saw the end of Superman, and the trailer to this movie.

Supergirl effectively picks up where we left off at the end of her cousin’s flick. She’s picked up Krypto, and has headed off for a week(ish) of red-sun-dampening debauchery in celebration of her 23rd birthday. Hilarity, life lessons, and action sequences ensue. 

It’s time for a compliment sandwich, kiddos. Hope you’re hungry.

Overall? Supergirl is a fun romp. Milly Alcock is infinitely watchable as Kara Zor-El. Be it a drunken stupor, heroic posturing, or whatever comes between, Alcock’s cock-sure take on the character is purposefully diametrically opposed to ole’ cousin Kal. Because of this, we get a hefty dose of whatever the polar opposite of dork is for all 90-some minutes of the flick. Same as Superman, all other casting choices that the house that Gunn built are all scene-chewingly glorious choices. From Matthias Schoenaerts’ evil(ist) big bad Krem to, yes, Jason Mamoa’s Lobo… everyone plays their parts perfectly — no matter the heavy makeup, prosthetics, or both. Equally impressive is the downright dreary landscapes and sets of the movie, keeping in mind how bright and shiny Superman happened to be. If Gunn gave us a truly gleaming Metropolis first, this movie certainly makes bold choices to show us every grimy cesspool the galaxy has to offer on Kara’s sobriety-free solstice. If I can double back to Lobo though? Credit where it’s due. This was a part Mamoa clearly was born to play — so much so that even a line in, any fleeting memory of his Arthur Curry is fragged like a bastich, I tells ya. While Lobo never appeared in the original source material… it’s practically a given in James Gunn’s DCU (thus far), the Easter eggs and fan-service are always abound. 

All that being said… Supergirl also follows her cousin’s footsteps (cape-flutters?) a bit too close when it comes to the overall simplicity of the story told. Sadly, for the former? It was a boon — given the Synderverse’s maudlin attempts to capture Big Blue removed the joy out of one of the most joyful characters in all of comics. All Gunn had to do was reverse course for the easy win. In Supergirl though, the initial hints gleaned from the trailer seemed to promise something a bit more nuanced and complex. This, of course, would be a proper meal to Superman’s amuse-bouche, in terms of the story to tell. But that nuance and depth never really comes. Kara’s story remains nearly as straight-forward as Kal-El’s was. And while the movie tells a tidy story in the hour and forty-eight minute run-time, it’s hard not to have wanted ten to twenty more minutes to flesh out a few truncated beats the movie glosses over. Or, dare I suggest (to no one, the movie is out, and I’m not an editor): predictable time spent rehashing Supergirl’s origin — something specifically truncated magnificently in Superman — eats up time when it’s wholly unnecessary. And while Milly Alcock’s performance is picture perfect throughout (and the digitally enhanced sets, and Kryptonian-only dialogue is well lived-in) Gunn’s previous promise kept as to stepping past the predictable here was ignored. Boo. 

I stumbled across an Instagram reel while doing a little research on the movie for this article, and in ninety seconds or so, the creator gushed about the quality and expanse of the comic book source material. So much so, I called my local comic shop to snag me the series to read through in the coming week. Keeping on the same wavelength… some of the aesthetic choices made in the costuming also lessened the flick for me. Krem, the big bad, in the comic is a terran — a fiery red-head with piercing eyes and a badass beard. In the movie (per the trailer, in case you’re still unspoiled), he’s a manic, bald, pierced-to-Swiss-cheese space-punk. To be fair? I was half waiting for Guardians of the Galaxy’s Taserface to make a cameo as his BFF. Why this choice? No clue. But I’ll go ahead and say it: the movie’s depiction lessens the character. He looks beatable from beat one. And sans any deep background offered (none in the trailer, and neither the rest of the flick), he really is a WYSIWYG derelict. 

But let’s place that last piece of complimentary bread on this sangwich, shall we? Supergirl gets a passing grade from me, without pause. While my gripes are real, my love of what the creative team did for the movie surpasses it something fierce. Especially in light of the snoozefest Marvel delivered with too many of their female-led properties… Supergirl not only passes the Bechdel test, it does it without ever needing to hang a hat on it. I loved that for nearly two hours we got a fierce, independent young woman enjoying an adventure without ever needing to make that adventure be about the fact that she was female. The thought honestly never even crossed my mind — given how much “girl power forward” Captain Marvel and her kin seemed to need to force down our collective gullet. Here, we’re afforded a space adventure with a good, not nice protagonist who fights as much for her right to party as she does the good of terran-kind. Combine that with solid effects, and an adaptation of The Main Man™ just begging for an eventual brush up against Guy Garnder at some point (Gunn, I beseech thee), and the end result more than makes up for any less-thans with any of the errant parts. 

Catch it before it winds up on streaming… because theaters could use all the help they can get.