Supergirl
Writer: Ana Nogueira
Director: Craig Gillespie
Cast: Milly Alcock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley, David Krumholtz, Emily Beecham, David Corenswet, Jason Momoa
It’s more than the trench coat and headphones. The new DCU, still reeling from the rift Luthor left in Metropolis, is starting to look undeniably samey in just its second feature-length venture.
With Supergirl, director Craig Gillespie had the enviable opportunity to chart new territory, literally expanding a cinematic universe. He didn’t look too far for inspiration. It wasn’t to the untamed environments of Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. You couldn’t ask for more exquisite source imagery, like classic Al Williamson rendered in raggedy Art Nouveau. Nor did he lean on DC lore in general, siding with neither Rann or Thanagar in setting down landmarks. Instead he looked to Knowhere.
It’s inescapable; the outer reaches of this DCU aren’t so much lived-in as thrifted, wholly indistinguishable from James Gunn’s corner of the MCU. Sure, we’d hoped for Gunn to instill some of that Guardians magic in this new role as head of DC Studios, but this feels like recycled school work.
It applies not just to the grimy visual language of the film, but to the tone and characterization. And I’m coming at this as a Gunn stalwart with great affection for his Superman. While that film still feels like Gunn spreading his wings, if only a little bit, Gillespie’s effort is full regression.
You copy a mixtape one too many times and it starts feeling impersonal. Less a curated love letter, more a commodified greatest hits.
And that’s a shame, because Alcock is a terrific Supergirl. She’s scrappy. She’s compassionate. She shoulders ghosts. Already an ace with fantasy languages, she can now add Kryptonian alongside High Valyrian on her C.V. Give me more of young Kara and Papa Krumholtz making me forget I’m reading subtitles. She’s perfectly suited to carrying real tragedy and to uplift us in the end. It’s not just that I want Krypto to be okay. I want that for Kara, too. It’s too bad the script doesn’t offer her the full depth of Woman of Tomorrow to plumb. It just doesn’t have the juice – or the real estate, in fairness – to pull off her and Ruthye’s final encounter with the murderous Krem in a meaningful way.
Between this and Thor: Love and Thunder, it’s pretty clear the best comic book runs don’t always translate to the screen. But I don’t think it’s as simple as the filmmakers being unfaithful to the book. Even as loose an adaptation as this could’ve worked. We know this because True Grit was already a great novel and two great movies before Woman of Tomorrow came along in homage.
But maybe we don’t need two Rooster Cogburn stand-ins? That, or the dichotomy between Kara and Momoa’s raucous bounty hunter, Lobo, needed to be a little more prominent in the stew. That version of the movie sounds enticing. Instead, the Last Czarnian functions as more of a Kool-Aid Man ex machina. The weekend dad of plot conveniences. He’s fun, to be sure. But it feels like wasted potential.
The opportunities are there. In typical incarnations, Kara is already in her teens when her cousin is born. It’s her mission to find and shepherd Kal-El on Earth. Her pod is waylaid en route, leaving the boy to find his way with the Kents. He essentially laps her. Now he’s the elder Kryptonian firmly established on Earth and she’s, well, Superman’s cousin. It serves to compound her identity crisis. Exploring Kara’s feeling at being supplanted in her role as protector by the likes of Clark and even Lobo is a bit of uneaten pathos on the film’s plate.
Then there’s Krem, he of those Yellow Hills. It’s not like he’s an Anti-Monitor level threat in the original story, but here he’s even more the hench-orc who tumbled his way up the ranks of Shadow of Mordor’s nemesis system. Given the inescapable comparison to Guardians of the Galaxy, this dude is essentially a Ravager. Schoenaerts does his level best to apply some Gary Oldman tics, but maybe giving Kara more of a history with this creep might lend their interactions some weight. Instead we’re left to recall similar-looking leather daddies abducting virginal “brides” in yet another franchise from an Australian director.
Things do get a little interesting when screenwriter Nogueira ventures out from Gunn’s shadow. As it turns out, Krypton was not necessarily a monoculture. An extended flashback to doomed Argo City alludes to some pretty uncomfortable holiday dinners, depicting Kara’s parents as troubled by Jor-El and Lara’s vision for Kal-El as a Goku-esque conqueror of worlds. In stark contrast, Emily Beecham’s Alura In-Ze asked only that their daughter be good. That’s something, right?
Insights and world-building like this are few and far between though. There’s a world where I can understand Kara addressing a non-human as Squidward or referencing the Titanic to justify a lounge act’s continued singing of “The Girl From Ipanema” in an alien bar, but this film doesn’t offer the infrastructure to make such choices feel anything other than sloppy.
We’re coasting here.
The Maiden of Might deserves so much better than Peter Quill’s hand-me-downs. So does the DCU.
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