Title: Supergirl
Describe This Movie Using One True Grit Quote:
ROOSTER COGBURN: I never shot nobody I didn’t have to.
GOUDY: That was not the question. How many?
ROOSTER COGBURN: Uh, shot or killed?
GOUDY: Oh, let’s restrict it to “killed” so we may have a manageable figure.
Brief Plot Synopsis: Alien John Wicks her way across the universe.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3 Sheriff Lobos out of 5.
Tagline: “Truth. Justice. Whatever.”
Better Tagline: “Gimme back my dog.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: It’s almost Kara Zor-El’s (Milly Alcock) 23rd birthday, and she’s celebrating in a manner familiar to most 20-somethings: getting drunk and dodging calls from her family. But then Ruthye (Eve Ridley) shows up, looking for revenge against the space thieves that murdered her family. Kara hems and haws until her dog Krypto is poisoned by their leader, Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). Kara and Ruthye now have three days to get the antidote. And if Krem and his band of intergalactic human slavers lose some limbs in the process, well, a girl has to cut loose on her birthday.
“Critical” Analysis: Supergirl is the second entry in the James Gunn/Peter Safran-helmed relaunch of the “DC Universe.” Fittingly, or — more to the point — safely, they’ve kept things within the House of El*. The movie continues the gradual introduction of DC’s core supers, while not drowning the audience in comic minutiae or multiverse crap.
Adapted from the critically lauded Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow miniseries, Supergirl gives us a Kryptonian refugee with a markedly different backstory than her cousin Kal-El. Being raised on a dying chunk of her home planet and seeing everyone she loved perish means Kara has a less charitable worldview than Supes.
Director Craig Gillespie and writer Ana Nogueira (and, presumably, Gunn himself) take a page from early MCU movies. Specifically, focusing on a personal struggle as part of a wider evil plot. Kara’s primary focus is saving Krypto, but the brigands** holding his antidote are involved in a much more nefarious scheme. Namely, kidnapping women and girls to propagate their all-male society.
So why did the human trafficking Ravagers brigands leave Ruthye alone after killing her family? Good question.
What follows appears to be the new paradigm for DC Studios: scenes of fitfully entertaining action (really appreciated Kara turbo-kicking one dude in the nuts) sprinkled with generous helpings of soul-searching. In Superman, Clark had to deal with the fallout from discovering his supposedly benevolent parents actually wanted him to conquer Earth (kinda brigand-like, when you think about it). Here, Kara must come to terms with her survivor’s guilt and growing into her parents’ expectations.
The problem is, Gillespie and Nogueira nod at the source material (Woman of Tomorrow takes its cues from True Grit, with a dash of Heavy Metal) while truncating its message to fit under two hours. They draw some convincing parallels between Ruthye and Kara’s grief, but mostly use it as a placeholder between slo-mo fight scenes.
You can’t blame Alcock, who brings out Kara’s pathos, determination, and humor with ease. The filmmakers were undoubtedly aware of the testicular shrinkage her casting would provoke in the usual dipshits and wisely avoided addressing it directly. Dropping Kara in media res also gives us a better handle on her character than jumping straight into origin story territory. And props to giving us a hero who spends almost the entire movie in a Blondie T-shirt.
Schoenaerts, who was particularly vile as Eric Deeds in The Drop, is … not great here. Krem is as cartoonish a bad guy as you could ask for. And again, his brigands are pretty much GotG’s Ravagers, if the latter were also into sexual slavery.
Those higher stakes occasionally give Supergirl more depth that the average superhero slugfest, but the formula — desaturated CGI melees and all — holds sway. Maybe the filmmakers got cold feet at the thought of going more deeply into uncomfortable subject matter and backed off. Or maybe it was the plan all along. Neither is optimal, but if the uneven — yet still enjoyable — Supergirl is indicative of the studio’s path forward, DC’s new universe still has a few problems it needs to solve.
Not the least of which is: why is Lobo (Jason Momoa) here? As a jumping-off point for a solo movie (and one late scene certainly suggests he’ll be back)? To assuage fanboys? Momoa can play this kind of bro-dude a-hole in his sleep. But his presence does little besides betray a lack of confidence in the lead character.
* I went down a rabbit hole looking into how Kryptonian names work and I’ll spare you the details.
** They say the word “brigand” dozens of times. It was like a Robin Hood movie.
Supergirl is in theaters today.
