'Supergirl' Should Be Titled, "Ruthye! Guest Starring Supergirl"
At last, we get a Supergirl movie that’s not directly forgotten. Or will it be? From personal recollection, Supergirl only succeeded as a WB show, never as a movie. Leave it up to the overweight incels to attack star Milly Alcock for not looking hot enough to be the gal in blue. Little do they understand that Supergirl isn’t meant to be a supermodel, but a superhero. However, is the movie super? Meh. It’s merely, just okay. Nothing discernible from the typical Marvel assembly line, although this is DC. It could be worse; Zack Snyder could have had Supergirl inadvertently cause a catastrophe even worse than 9/11.
The biggest problem with Supergirl isn’t Supergirl. It’s the lack of her being the star of her own movie. Yes, Supergirl is the star, but her arc gets pushed to the side for another aid quest. Where the picture should start with Kara Zor-El leaving a crumbling Krypton, instead opens with a character we don’t know. The scene is intense, her family gets killed, yet the actress playing the young Ruthye observes her parents being butchered like she’s watching a PBS documentary. Who hired that actress? Who looks that bored during the most horrific event imaginable? Is she Nick Reiner, where it’s just another Tuesday? After her parents’ death, an adult Ruthye (Eve Ridley) spends the rest of her life hunting down Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts) and his merry band of Brigands.
It’s understandable why Ruthye is in the movie. It gives Supergirl a reason to discover her heroism. But why is her backstory not revealed until more than halfway through the picture? Instead of making a movie about Supergirl learning how she can be a hero, we spend most of the time with this sword girl that I couldn't care less about. Ruthye doesn’t need to be cut from the movie. Still, she doesn’t have to so prominently hog the spotlight from the star while providing little to no personality for the audience to get behind.
There are elements of a much better movie hidden behind the crystallized Kryptonian walls of an overly conventional comic book film. It doesn’t matter how ruthless the Brigands are. If it doesn’t directly connect to Supergirl herself, or if Ruthye is a boring character, then you get a boring movie. The picture works best when the film focuses on who’s supposed to be the protagonist. The picture starts like a teen comedy. Supergirl is sleeping within the confines of a trashed trailer, while uppity pop music plays as the opening credits roll. Instead of seeing how Supergirl wound up living in squalor, we cut to that other character as her arc continually hurdles the story into mundanity.
Why is Supergirl an alcoholic? Why does her dog, Krypto, mean so much to her? Those questions are answered, but not enough. The best parts of the movie are the ones featuring Superman (David Corenswet). In fact, Corenswet makes a better Superman in the few minutes he’s in this movie than he did in James Gunn’s Superman. Probably because he isn’t ignoring alien invasions outside of his apartment window and screaming like a WWE fighter this time around. David shows the Superman that Gunn cast him as, and he’s the most charming one since Christopher Reeve. Milly Alcock adds a layer to her character. Unlike Clark Kent, she’s not a Girl Scout. She’s a grieving, drunk, but has a heart. She was taught the correct values and didn’t use her powers to become a Homelander. Yet something is missing from her character because the film is more preoccupied with set pieces and dull side characters hunting down the villain of the week than with something more meaningful.
The picture has potential. It has great cinematography, with more vibrant colors than Marvel’s typical grayscale, non-color-corrected look. It also focuses its narrative beyond Earth, giving it a Guardians of the Galaxy atmosphere and separating it from Superman’s Earthbound Metropolis. Also, the production design for Krypton is stupendous. It actually looks like an alien Metropolis that’s been lived in. Not a stale set full of plastic crystals, or whatever weird dinosaur planet that was in Man of Steel.
If not for major structural issues and a been-there-done-that comic book movie burnout, Supergirl could be a much better flick. What’s a bigger reminder that you’re watching the same thing as a million times before than when you have Jason Momoa leave the ocean as Aquaman to join the surface in this movie as Lobo, a character who could have been cut from the movie, and you wouldn’t have lost anything.
There’s an inherently episodic nature in Supergirl that prevents it from soaring. It’s the villain of the week problem. Some character has their family killed, they want revenge, they get it, the movie ends. Rince, wash, and repeat. A movie isn’t meant to be a TV show. Filler should never be in its vocabulary. Sadly, that’s exactly what Supergirl feels like. A placeholder for the audience to tide them over until Man of Tomorrow comes out. And who knows, maybe that movie could be filler too. God help me for writing this, for as terrible as the Zack Snyder DCU flicks were, at least each film brought the story to very big places. They weren’t smart or good decisions, but at least they were bold ones. Supergirl is more of a plate of same salad. For as pretty as it is, you can take your kids to see far more worthy flicks than this one. Perhaps it’s time for these heroes to hang up their capes.
