Supergirl Review

After crashing through the Fortress of Solitude to pick up her dog, Kara Zor-El is back in Supergirl. It's a hard-drinking, isolated version of the character in a movie that brings a lot to like, from western tropes to needle drops. But for every dog that needs saving and young child that needs role modeling, can this rough and tumble Supergirl be a new enough take on these tropes to really soar? Or is it more red sun than yellow? I'm Clink Gage, and this is my review of Supergirl. Aren't you the ditz from that dive bar? Funny. That's what I've been calling you. Touché. Going into this movie, I was excited. I had real expectations. Before you even get to the DCU of it all, I'm officially a fan of Craig Gillespie. He's a guy who makes movies that are all better than you'd think they'd be. Cruella, and I, Tonya, and Lars and the Real Girl, and even Finest Hours, that boat-broken half-rescue movie was surprisingly really good. And these are movies that could have easily become forgettable entries in their particular genres, like Just Another Biopic, or Another Live Action Remake, or Another Movie About a Guy Who's in Love with a Sex Doll. So the prospect of tackling a superhero movie with that particular ability to elevate a film in an otherwise tired category was intriguing. And where the DCU is concerned, I'm here for James Gunn's universe. I've liked what's gone into it so far, and I loved Millie Alcock's first appearance as Kara in her cameo in Superman. I think this version of Supergirl is a blast, and her solo outing didn't do anything to change my mind on that front. But this is also where Supergirl starts to become a tale of two movies. For everything that the movie does right, that thing's got an alter ego that's doing it a little wrong. As a result, the movie is this shuffling, few steps forward, few steps back kind of slog that never really finds a rhythm. For example, the reluctant hero thing is actually very difficult to pull off. It's hard to play I don't care in an engaging way, because if the character on screen doesn't care, then I certainly don't care either. Alcock manages it here about as well as you could hope for. Let's be honest, babe, it's not a very high bar to clear. Kara is a mess, and there's no real concern with her ever not being a mess as part of her journey. It's very fun. And the other side of that coin, however, is that she doesn't have much of a journey. She's not a markedly different person at the end of the movie than she is at the beginning. And not because of anything she did or didn't do as a character or an actor, but because the story she's been put in doesn't give her much to do at all. And the result is a movie that sort of flattens out and drags. And when she first meets Eve Ridley's Ruthie, the young girl out for revenge against the man who murdered her entire family, Kara is protective, sticking her neck out to do the right thing for a kid who's in over her head. And by the end of the film, Kara does exactly the same thing. A part of the point there is that it highlights the impact she has on Ruthie. Ridley ultimately gets the lion's share of the character work in the film, and her character's journey winds up feeling far more complete than Kara's. He has three days. You cannot give up on me. So while Millie Alcock's performance is a real strength of the movie, and she does pull off the reluctant hero trope, it is a very familiar trope. And the shorthand that's used in portraying it is a real weakness. Familiarity in general is another villainous plot Supergirl tries to thwart. On one hand, the movie wears its influences proudly. The comparisons to James Gunn's work on Guardians of the Galaxy have been obvious since the trailers first dropped. And we knew the true grit archetypal Western structure would be a big part of the film because of the source material, Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow run. A Mad Max influence is just as obvious in the grimy lifeless terrains and dying worlds on which most of the movie takes place. Planets where people scratch for survival, but the old reliable Mos Eisley Cantina should get a shout out as well. The alien design and practical makeup effects and costuming throughout the movie are genuinely top shelf. And clearly, the customers in Star Wars' most wretched hive were on the filmmakers' minds. And yet, while I'll happily take true grit meets Mad Max by way of Guardians and Star Wars, there still manages to be a dulled edge to the whole movie. Instead of taking the post-apocalyptic vibes of Mad Max, they lift a whole plot point straight from Fury Road and handle it, frankly, a little clumsily. And instead of the emotionally relevant needle drops of Guardians of the Galaxy, Kara gets slow paced montages set to a Jimmy Eat World cover that I found baffling. Your eyes are beautiful when you cry, a lot of pain. The film's two other headliners fall into these buckets as well. Matthias Schonertz as the film's villain, Krim of the Yellow Hills, looks incredible. His whole appearance would make the creature design team from A New Hope proud. The beads studded into his face, the machinery grafted into his body, the weird little red button he needs to activate to speak. All of it adds up to a striking and genuinely pretty cool image that would have felt at home in the Thunderdome. But they don't ever do anything with it. Krim, for all the post-apocalyptic biker gang aura he generates, gets nothing else to go on. He has some affectations that Schonertz is clearly having a good time with, like how he's eating something in almost every scene. But that's really all they are, affectations. There's nothing that makes him scary or formidable, other than a few throwaway lines about his relative strength and the way other people on screen are afraid of him. Meanwhile, Jason Momoa's Lobo finds his way into the movie as well. And the mostly impervious anti-hero bounty hunter is just as much fun as fans have been anticipating. Now, cigar chomping gets thrown around a little excessively anytime a J. Jonah Jameson or a Hellboy or a Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day show up on screen. But Momoa more than earns that descriptor in all the best possible ways in Supergirl. He looks the part as well with face paint and prosthetics that cut the kind of imposing figure the fan favorite deserves. But Lobo doesn't need to be there. Characters come and go in movies, sometimes with very little fanfare, sometimes playing crucial roles in the story, and they don't always have to be the latter. The issue with Lobo is that he feels extra tacked on. The one major scene he has with Kara has real reshoot energy. It's added on to a scene that didn't need any extra motivation to get to the next scene, nor is he a particularly unique foil for Kara that propels her character in any meaningful way. He just happens to be looking for the same group of guys that Kara and Ruthie are after. The only real added value he gives the movie is a few, admittedly fun, one-liners, and maybe that's all Lobo needs to be. Ultimately, he only shows up to put his immortal stamp of approval on Kara's actions, but that feels both unnecessary and, frankly, more than a little pandering. And it leaves me not entirely sure what to do with it. Stop, you're hurting my head. So the story of this movie continues to be, they did it right on the one hand, but on the other hand, not so much. And as just the second entry into Guns D.C.U., that issue spills over into all the stuff that comes with being part of a currently expanding, expanded universe. On one hand, Supergirl needs to continue building outwards to some extent, and this is another of the film's strengths. Her scenes with David Coren Suet's Superman are wonderful. That's not to say that Superman saved the day here, or that Supergirl needs Superman to be interesting. It's the dynamic between the two of them that is great. One positively looking towards the future, while the other still nurses old wounds. I'm definitely looking forward to more of this duo on screen. But on the other hand, where her solo film is concerned, Supergirl needs to flesh out Kara's backstory. And the structure of how and when flashbacks are deployed in Supergirl aside, because my personal preference would have been a straight chronological telling of this story, as opposed to stopping in the middle to tell us her backstory. I did find myself way more interested in her time growing up on a floating lifeboat of a city after the destruction of Krypton. Now there's work being done there on both fronts, as the film continues to build on the changes made to Kal-El's origin story from Superman, while also introducing another side to that story via Kara. The present day of the film, with all the cribbing from True Grit and Mad Max and Guardians, feels far less fresh and interesting than Kara's shielded childhood on Argo. Again though, this is Supergirl's biggest challenge. There are a lot of things that work throughout this movie, but there are just as many reasons why they don't quite add up. He sees the good in everyone, and I see the truth. And so, I'm giving Supergirl a six. Kara Zor-El's standout moment in Superman gets a feature length follow up that almost gets everything right. Unfortunately, that means it gets everything almost wrong as well. Millie Alcock is great as Supergirl, carrying the weight of real trauma and cementing a very cool dynamic with her on-screen cousin. While the alien design and practical makeup effects make the film a joy to look at. Jason Momoa's Lobo and Matthias Schonert's Krim are just as cool visually. But unfortunately, they also don't have a lot to offer in this entry in the burgeoning DCU that treads more water than I would have liked. That is what I think of Supergirl. Let me know what you think in the comments below. And for more movie reviews, you're already in the right place. Be sure to subscribe to IGN wherever you like to watch.