The rebooted DC universe, launched with last year’s wonderfully silly, absurdist and surprisingly moving Superman, has already hit its first roadblock. Superman’s cousin Supergirl is one hell of a character, played here by House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock with the curlicue smile of a big heart muffled by layer upon layer of defensive punk-rock spite. But despite DC’s co-chair James Gunn – writer and director of Superman – handing the Supergirl reins to director Craig Gillespie and writer Ana Nogueira, the mandate here appears to be to keep things as distinctly Gunn-esque as possible. In return, Superman’s moodier, more cynical relative has been robbed of the chance to speak with her own voice. It’s the superhero equivalent of a Vegas impersonator.
Having rocked up in a cameo at the end of Superman to pick up her pet dog Krypto, Alcock’s Kara Zor-El has swiftly returned to her usual “intergalactic club girl” routine – it’s her way to avoid processing the loss of her parents, her people, and her home on the planet Krypton. Kal-El, aka Superman, was at least able to enjoy a blissful childhood on Earth, adopted by earnest farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent when Krypton was destroyed. He had a relatively normal adolescence before learning the hard truths about his origins. Kara, as she points out, wasn’t so lucky, forced by circumstance to see the gnarly truth in people versus Kal only being able to see the good.
She’s an ideal counterpoint, then, to David Corenswet’s golden retriever take on the character, and the few scenes they do share here pop in a way that remains completely unmatched by the rest of her solo venture. The character’s strong. It’s only a shame her surroundings are so listless.
While Nogueira’s script adapts Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s 2021 comic miniseries Woman of Tomorrow, Gillespie doesn’t carry over any of its striking and beautiful cosmic imagery – instead, we’re stuck in a colourless, utilitarian version of Gunn’s own Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. It’s cramped and dingy, with only an occasional bit of fun puppet or prosthetic alien work to break up the monotony.
There’s a good gag involving a defecating slug. But Supergirl would have needed to commit to about a hundred more defecating slugs – and, more crucially, surround Kara with other highly traumatised weirdos – to properly sell the Gunn angle. But DC as a franchise is doomed if its only aim is to copy and paste its head honcho’s style.
Instead, Supergirl is in dire need of a distinct point of view. I couldn’t help but think back to Cathy Yan’s brilliant, glitter-cannon work on 2020’s Birds of Prey – the Harley Quinn solo vehicle led by Margot Robbie – and how much better an act of pop culture feminism it felt in contrast to Supergirl, with its scattershot riot grrl and noise-pop soundtrack (think Sleigh Bells and Kathleen Hanna) and a cutaway that gave me chilling flashbacks to Avengers: Endgame’s ghastly “girl power” sequence, in which completely unrelated female superheroes came together for a single shot of performative strutting.
Gillespie is somewhat associated with films about “difficult” women – namely I, Tonya (2017), which bagged Robbie an Oscar nomination, and Disney’s 101 Dalmatians origin story Cruella (2021) – but there’s no trace of the same style here, or the way he let his previous protagonists address and challenge the audience directly.
Instead, Supergirl feels more eager to be DC’s take on Marvel’s Black Widow, as Kara reluctantly helps a young girl, Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), take vengeance on the man who killed her family – a pirate named Krem of the Yellow Hills and played by Matthias Schoenaerts. Unlike his comic book counterpart, here he’s involved in the trafficking of girls. The film fails completely to square that level of darkness with its humour elsewhere.
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Its tone also isn’t serious enough to make Krem feel like a genuine threat, and Schoenaerts’s sneering performance quickly becomes indistinguishable from the average mobster in a straight-to-streaming action thriller. Jason Momoa also appears here in the role of bounty hunter Lobo, but he doesn’t fare all that much better. The actor’s natural, charming exuberance is largely wasted in a character who communicates in grunts.
That leaves Alcock alone at the film’s centre, still finding moments to shine, embracing both the aggro-sarcasm and tender vulnerability of a hero who doesn’t believe they’re a hero, but remains fundamentally good despite it. If DC wants to secure her future, they need to find her a world where she belongs.
Dir: Craig Gillespie. Starring: Milly Alcock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley, David Krumholtz, Emily Beecham, David Corenswet, Jason Momoa. Cert 12A, 108 minutes.
‘Supergirl’ is in cinemas from 25 June
