In an interview with IndieWire last week, “Supergirl” director Craig Gillespie said that the tone of his film will be very different from James Gunn’s “Superman” – the first film in Warner Bros. relaunch of the new DC Universe. Gillespie said audiences could expect less “Guardians of the Galaxy” and more Mad Max – “The Road Warrior,” to be specific.
But “Supergirl” is less “Road Warrior” than it is “Fury Road” – and less of an homage to that aesthetic than it is a total cribbing.
Despite a committed effort from star Milly Alcock, “Supergirl” (screenplay by Ana Nogueira) is immensely derivative of other, better films in a way that’s impossible to ignore – not least of all because the movie insists on calling attention to that fact. But “Supergirl” also runs into issues that plague any superhero movie trying to aspire to harsh, complicated themes while still attempting to stay palatable enough to garner a PG-13 rating. It’s an unenviable task, and “Supergirl” certainly has moments where it gets close to walking the line in a way that works. But a poorly balanced narrative and the inevitable comparisons the movie invites drag it down.
We briefly met Kara (Alcock) – AKA, Supergirl, Superman’s (David Corenswet) equally powerful cousin – in 2025’s “Superman,” but the beginning of “Supergirl” catches us up on all we need to know. As Clark Kent is a bit of a square, Kara is a bit of a mess. As the film opens, an indie pop song plays while Kara rolls through an endless cycle of drinks and hangovers. She’s a bit of a problem child and would rather hang out with her dog Krypto and shoot back whiskeys than even think about saving the world.
But, maybe she’s a little more like Clark than she’d care to admit. When a group of thugs gang up on Rutheye (Eve Ridley), a 13-year-old girl looking for revenge on Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), the brigand who murdered her family, Kara immediately steps in to help. She draws the line, however, at accompanying Rutheye on her revenge trip – until, that is, Krem takes a shot at Krypto. An attack on her dog is something Kara cannot abide.
Part of what makes “Supergirl” a frustrating watch is that the idea of the type of superhero that Kara represents is one ripe for exploration, particularly in the way that Alcock captures the character’s rage – a far cry from Corenswet’s twinkling Midwestern charm in “Superman.” “Supergirl” is not particularly funny (although it tries to be), but Alcock shines when she’s diving into Kara’s ever-deepening anger.
The flashbacks that show us why Kara is so angry (Krypton destroyed, whole family gone – you know the drill), are ill-paced, dragging out a film that already feels longer than its hour-and-48-minute runtime. But Alcock pushes through that slog, her face taut with the effort of not exploding into a fit of rage when she loses someone she promised to protect, every laugh or moment of levity ringing falser than the last. She originally doesn’t want to go with Rutheye not because she doesn’t want to help her, but because she doesn’t want Rutheye to enact her revenge and feel forever changed by it – so, she ends up taking on the darker aspects of the journey on Rutheye’s behalf. Unlike Superman, she is not a beacon of goodness. She exists to protect others by taking on their pain so they don’t have to feel it.
This is a fascinating and dark concept for a superhero, particularly a female superhero as opposed to her male counterpart. But beyond one meaningful moment at the film’s end, “Supergirl” often pulls its punches, and its poorly-wrought structure makes it unclear what experience Kara has with revenge in the first place. She is trying desperately to stop Rutheye from giving into her anger, constantly warning about the dangers of letting a desire for vengeance overtake you. But, as far as we know, her planet Krypton was destroyed by accident and her family died in the aftermath. What does Kara know about the perils of revenge? Certainly nothing that the movie cares to show us.
This plays into larger issues that plague superhero movies in general, and speaks to what happens when you build an ecosystem around wanting to make these movies feel adult and serious while still having to reckon with the fact that they are aimed at a younger audience. “True Grit” is also invoked by Gillespie in that IndieWire article – another film about a curmudgeonly drunk reluctantly helping a young girl find the man who killed her father.
But part of the reason “True Grit” hits the heights of emotion that it does by its end is because Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is one mean son of a bitch. But “Supergirl” would rather tell us that Kara has an underlying darkness to her rather than show us that underlying darkness. Part of it is a structural problem – the moment when Kara finally puts on the super suit falls incredibly flat, with the film devoid of any growth up until that point. But part of it also comes down to the fact that Kara can say the word “shit,” but she has to say “freaking” because the movie is PG-13, not R. Because of those constraints, she sometimes feels like a little kid playing at darkness rather than someone who has actually lived through it.
The attempt to walk that PG-13 line robs the movie of any teeth it might have had. Which, if you’re going to blatantly rip off a movie like “Mad Max: Fury Road” – maybe one of the toothiest action movies in recent memory – is a real problem. The third act of “Supergirl” descends into derivative nonsense, from the plot (Kara and Rutheye have to rescue a group of kidnapped brides), to the design of the characters, to the fact that the big climax involves a bunch of motorcycles and armored vehicles in a desert. But there is nowhere near the amount of character development, nowhere near the amount of sheer beauty in each visual moment (even if not all of “Supergirl” was shot in front of a screen, it sure looks like it was), to make the homage worth the trouble.
