Supergirl Should Be Ashamed of Itself - Reactor

On paper, Supergirl should have been an easy sell. It is the second film in the fledgling DCU film reboot, arriving on the heels of 2025’s Superman, which was largely praised by audiences and critics alike. Milly Alcock was introduced to audiences there via a cameo at the center of the film, Clark’s hard-drinking little cousin—she goes to red sun planets so she can get wasted—who is responsible for Krypto’s complete lack of canine training. Her namesake film was based on an excellent and recent run of comics by Tom King and Bilquis Evely (Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow), which provided everything the story needed to be an all-out win with audiences.

The trouble is, Hollywood doesn’t do so well with female-led superhero films. It took well over a decade for the MCU to even consider a Black Widow movie, despite the fact that she was the only woman in the OG Avengers lineup. Captain Marvel also took ages to burst onto the scene, and while her first film was decent fare, the studio put absolutely no effort into promoting its sequel. 2017’s Wonder Woman seemed poised to undo damage in this area, until its sequel went for a very awkward Big-style plot arc that left audiences baffled. (It also wasted Cheetah, which is frankly unforgivable.) Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey was a delight, but reportedly failed to break even at the box office, leaving droves of fans bereft that they might never see its like again. Black Panther Wakanda Forever focused entirely on its female cast—but that was only due to the death of its eponymous leading man, leading to an understandable but ungainly runtime and no small measure of confusion over the film’s focus.

All of which is to say, Supergirl had big boots to fill in more than one direction. But even taking that tall order into account doesn’t make up for what was done.

The premise of the film is simple enough: a 13-year-old alien girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) means to get revenge on Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) for killing her entire family when the brigand and his crew came to steal the life’s work of Ruthye’s father, a master swordmaker. Ruthye asks the locals for help in achieving this end, promising her father’s best sword to anyone who will aid her once she’s done. Kara Zor-El is partying on Ruthye’s homeworld for her 21st birthday, and categorically refuses to help the girl until Krem decides to steal Kara’s ship and shoots Krypto full of poison in the process. A local healer tells her that Krypto only has three days to live, and only Krem carries the antidote on his person (… uh-huh), so Kara means to hunt the guy down, but tells Ruthye to stay put while she does so. Thankfully, the kid is more interesting than anyone else in the movie, so she doesn’t listen.

It is important to know (comics spoiler ahead, apologies): Krypto’s impending death is a ruse in the comics run. It’s real here because blockbuster movies love a cheap ticking clock, and DCU maven James Gunn seemingly loves to write, direct and/or produce movies/television where we use animal torture as a relevant plot point. And I wish I could tell you that this is the only cheap move this film pulls, but it is the first in a lengthy grocery list of offenses.

While the script is penned by Ana Nogueira (known primarily for acting work, whose previous writing career is mostly plays and short films), it’s got Gunn’s preferences dripping from every digital pore. The worldbuilding is treated almost verbatim to Guardians of the Galaxy on the interplanetary front—everything is pretty much exactly the same as our world, but even dirtier. Rest stops contain the same blue slushies you can get at your local 7-Eleven. At a dive bar on the next world Kara and Ruthye travel to, the alien singer croons “Girl From Ipanema” for no discernible reason whatsoever. Language itself is deeply irritating in the film, as we’re led to believe that there’s some sort of galactic common tongue, but given no indication of how it’s learned or why people know it, particularly when they live on backwater planets that don’t get many visitors; the point is that people can always speak this common tongue as much or as little as needed for the plot to move or complicate.

We get a public bus trip that results in Supergirl getting a power up by a yellow sun, and a terrible action sequence on the crowded vehicle where we finally learn that the brigands—and yes, they’re simply called “The Brigands” throughout the film, as though there has only ever been one group of brigands that everyone on this side of the galaxy should know about—typically go to a specific planet to cull girls and young women to be their “brides” because their “society” is all male.

As has already been noted by many: This is just the plot to Mad Max: Fury Road, a thing that never needs to be reduxed for fun family entertainment. It is also important to know that this angle has been added wholesale to the story for the purposes of the film, so there are no adaptation excuses to be made. Somehow it was decided that a movie aimed at young women really needed a sex slavery angle to make it work. And no, it’s not a single aside that’s never brought up again until the film’s ending—it is the entire premise of the film. Kara and Ruthye are immediately sold out on the next planet by a family desperate to get their daughter back from the brigands by exchanging them. (Does this make the plot of Krem simply stealing Kara’s ship nonsensical if he’s constantly looking for young women to abduct? It does! But who can be bothered to care about that?) Oh, and that entire family is slaughtered by our bad guy to make a point to the audience.

What point? Aside from Krem being an awful guy—we got it, thanks—the moral at the core of the film is that Ruthye shouldn’t be trying to get revenge against this guy because killing him will “change her.” Kara insists this over and over again, that she herself is a lost cause, but Ruthye can still be saved from this fate. And there are several problems with this conceit, starting with the fact that Kara hasn’t been killing people either, yet she’s acting like a cold-blooded murderer who has Seen It All. The reason underneath it is all tied up in Kara’s terrible Krypton backstory, rendered in the paint-by-numbers flashback we find later in the film, but it still doesn’t stand up to scrutiny; Kara’s family and world died from hubris, not from murder. But more to the point, claiming that a 13-year-old girl could and should feel permanently tarnished, spiritually, mentally, or emotionally, for killing a man who mass murdered her family and plans to use her as a breeding sex slave is absurd.

In fact, it’s not just absurd, it’s grotesquely irresponsible to give young women that message today. What Tom King and Bilquis Evely created in the comics was a wholly different story where a young woman got to effectively be Inigo Montoya, taking a full (and lengthy) journey where she questions what revenge means to her. Woman of Tomorrow is based loosely on True Grit, and written far more like the original novel by Charles Portis that the westerns were based upon—with Ruthye serving as the narrator of the story and treating it like a personal epic, learning from Supergirl’s example as they travel together. Instead, this film lets a young, grieving alcoholic (who has possibly never had to contend with the threat of molestation or rape due to her superpowers) tell a child that wanting to end the life of the man who views her as subhuman will harm her irreparably.

But Kara’s allowed to hurt him because of her dog.

We’re probably supposed to forgive all this due to Jason Momoa’s turn as Lobo, a fan favorite who has never made his way into the film realm until now. And sure, I love a morally gray character who only helps our heroes because they’ve got an agenda of their own. You know what I don’t love? That they also used this character for his blithe ability to refer to the hero of our film, Supergirl, by the nickname “Tits.” Tits! Because, you know, she’s got those! But you know what, I’m done, they can have it. I’ll just let it slide—

—provided Harley Quinn shows up in the next movie and calls Superman the “Big Blue Schlong” the whole way through. Every time he’s on screen. Loud enough for him to hear it and get a reaction.

(Note: My colleague heard “ditz” in the theater, but my movie buddy also heard “tits,” which means that more than one person in the decision-making chain made bad choices. Regardless, that feels like a pretty egregious word similarity that many folks are liable to mishear by design: one word intended for the adults that demeans women and one for the kids that demeans girls the world over, as boys are never called ditzes.)

This is probably where I should taper off, despite the many deep-running flaws I haven’t even gotten around to yet, like the fact that green suns can work in comics (kinda) but just look silly on screen, or that it makes no sense for the heroic characters to use the language of the villains when referring to trafficked women, or the fact that films really need to come up with another look for “grungy bad guys” in blockbusters that isn’t cribbed from punks with extensive body modifications. But I’m out. Even David Corenswet’s meager appearances as Superman do nothing to elevate the mood. (Get a freaking couch, Clark, you’re over 30.)

I’m not saying that Supergirl bodes ill for the DCU as a whole, but… no, I lied, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Save your money, or go see Backrooms again.