Supergirl (2026) – Blue Towel Productions

I’ve been looking forward to Supergirl in a pretty big way.

I like comic books, superheroes and the blending of the two in general, so of course Supergirl was going to be on my watch list. But I really like DC Comics, the whole world of Superman, the specific comic book that this new film is based on, and the 2025 James Gunn Superman film, so my hopes for this film were high.

Not high as in “I think it’s very likely that this film is going to be good,”–indeed, I try to have pretty tempered expectations. But more like high as in, “If this film is good, or even decent, I’m going to enjoy it to a disproportionate degree.

And that’s pretty much what happened.

Supergirl, directed by Craig Gillespie, is by no means a great movie. Even if you are like me and you loved the recent Superman movie, you are going to recognise some of the clunks in Supergirl‘s storytelling. But it wasn’t terrible. It’s certainly not the failure that some of the online chatter would have you believing (regardless of any financial performance analysis, or questions of “What does this mean for the future of the newly minted James Gunn-led DCU?”)

Many of the film’s weaknesses centre, as they so often do, around the issues of story. But in this case we also extend some of the blame to ways this interacts with how the character of Supergirl is handled.

But before I go there I just want to say upfront that none of these issues are to do with the film’s casting, and specifically with the casting of Milly Alcock as Supergirl. I’m not familiar with Milly Alcock at all outside of this role (although I’m always happy to see Australians making it big), but she a great job with the material she is given, and is one of the movie’s strengths. This version of Kara Zor-El is disaffected and aimless, but with an almost unwilling streak of virtue. The movie does a good job unpacking where all that comes from, and Alcock is solid in bringing that character to life.

(Incidentally, when you contrast this movie’s presentations of Kara’s parents with Superman’s depiction of Jor-El and Lara, you get some interesting dynamics. One part of the family is kind of sacrificial, the other is just out of their minds. Just like real families a lot of the time. But which one is closer to the “regular” Kryptonian mindset?)

No, my main issues with “the way Supergirl is handled” come down to two points. One is the way the movie has to constantly find ways to depower or limit her power, in order to make the various action scenes work.

Throughout the film Kara finds herself under a depowering red sun, under a deadly green sun, paralysed by debilitating poison, and shot with kryptonite arrows. Some of this is fine, of course (especially the red sun at the beginning, which Kara has gone to on purpose so she can get drunk), but it’s astonishing to me that nobody along the way said, “Hey, we are doing this a lot. Can’t we find another way to make the opposition she is facing more compelling?”

The worst has got to be Kara dying under the green sun. It makes sense dramatically (the villains take her there for this exact purpose), but in terms of the story all that it means is that she lies around conveniently unconscious for a big chunk of the film (convenient so the other characters can do something). This might have been justified if in the end Kara had done something to get out of this mess–shown some signs of clever thinking or determination or something. But it’s all resolved when the sun sets and that handy yellow sun comes up. It’s a nice looking sequence but completely divorced to anything akin to characterization. Basically, it’s just time for Supergirl to get back into the story so the movie gives her a no-effort way out of her dilemma.

The second problem with the character is thematic, and to do with what I guess is meant to amount to a big moment at the end of the movie. After spending the entire story telling her sidekick Ruthye that taking revenge against Krem, the movie’s villain, will cost her her soul, Supergirl goes ahead and does it for her. I have issues with this, but it’s not related to the fact that Supergirl kills here, even though classically that’s something the comic book character would never do. It’s the fact that the never explores why she would do this, beyond the pedestrian implication that of course Krem is awful and deserves to die.

It doesn’t seem to be a wrestle for Kara to make this choice, it doesn’t seem to have any weight to it, it’s just something she does. But because of all the discussion about it previously, it’s a moment that demands to have some sort of meaning. This could have been unpacked after the fact, of course (ie Kara wrestles with her choice or something) but there’s no effort there either. The act is most notable only for how nonchalant it’s treated.

The same issue rears its head earlier in the story, after an extended sequence where Supergirl fails to stop Krem from killing a young woman (and her family) who had been kidnapped and trafficked to be a sex slave to his band of pirates. I was disappointed to see this mini-goal end so tragically, but the real issue is that it’s perfunctory, without any meaningful attempt to unpack it emotionally. Ruthye delivers a line about how it wouldn’t have happened if Supergirl had let her kill Krem in the first place, but it feels like a token afterthought.

It all smacks of an effort to develop some sort of theme through the story, but it just never comes together.

(The ending of the comic that all this is based on, Supergirl: The Woman of Tomorrow, is more complex. In that one they don’t kill Krem, and instead stick in the Phantom Zone for a long time. When he comes out, he’s repentant, but an elderly Ruthye still clocks him with her walking stick. All of this is delivered alongside an unreliable narration which indicates that the public version of the whole story, via Ruthye’s book, is that Krem was executed. So there’s a lot of layers going on there

I haven’t read it in a while but my memory is that it was more interesting and more satisfying than the movie, thanks to the talents of creators Tom King and Bilquis Evely).

But all that aside, I still had a lot of fun with Supergirl. The alien design work is certainly over-the-top at times, but it also has that same unabashed comic book quality that I loved about Superman: the universe is a crazy place, but within that the characters feel real. I especially enjoyed how the movie basically gave Kara the same origin that she had in the silver age of comics (she survives Krypton’s destruction thanks to Argo City remaining intact, but then Kryptonite poisoning eventually kills these survivors, but Kara is sent to earth before everyone dies) but gave it the emotional depth we want in the modern age of storytelling.

Milly Alcock is easily my favorite live-action version of the title character (well, Helen Slater was great, but her movie wasn’t), and she particularly does a good job carrying the blend of cynicism and heroism that they are going for with this version of Kara.

The movie does a great job showing us why her relationship with Krypto is so important to her, which allows us to believe her determination to go after a cure for the poison that’s killing him (without that the whole movie wouldn’t make sense). The character problems I was mentioning don’t rear their head until halfway through the film, so up until that point she is fully compelling, and even afterwards she’s still fun.

Eve Ridley is also good as Ruthye, providing an effective vehicle for us to get to know Kara. Jason Momoa of course shows up here as Lobo, a character he might have been born to play but also a character I have never been interested in, so his presence here is fine–he doesn’t add a lot to the movie in my opinion, but he doesn’t detract from it either. And it’s nice to see David Corenswet reprising his role as Superman, in a role that’s nicely a bit meatier than just a cameo.

There are some good action scenes when Kara is allowed to cut loose, but I wish there had been more of them.

I wish in general that Kara had been allowed to cut loose more often, rather than continually find ways to nerf her. And of course I wish they had avoided some of the other of the movie’s weaknesses. And most of all I wish the movie had been more successful, simply because in general I am liking the current iteration of cinematic takes on DC characters, and I want more of them.

But even if it all falls apart, as many of our favorite things inevitably do (recent Doctor Who, Star Wars movies and the MCU all come to mind) I plan on enjoying while it lasts.

Incidentally, Supergirl doesn’t have a post-credit scene, a move which I applaud. What was once a treat has frequently become tiresome. Apparently, the scene at the end where Kara catches up with Clark on earth and tells him she is ready to make earth her home was originally intended to be a post-credit scene before the creators realized that it made more sense to just end the movie with that moment–an excellent choice.

But I still stayed around for most of the movie’s credits because there’s something else that has become part of the comic book movie end title crawl that I have particularly enjoyed, and that is the acknowledgment of some of the key comic book creators for their work inspiring the film. Of course it all goes by too fast for me to remember everyone that is listed, but in this case the first two names, displayed prominently on their own line, were Supergirl’s creators, Otto Binder and Al Plastino.

They are two of the most significant names in that era of Superman-adjacent comics (they also created the Legion of Super-Heroes, for instance), and it gives me a little joy to see them get their moment in the cinematic sun, even if that moment is incredibly brief.