Supergirl (Craig Gillespie, 2026)

Part One: The Spoiler Free Review Of The Actual Movie I Watched

Last year, James Gunn’s Superman reinvigorated the superhero genre at the box office. Gunn, having taken over as the ring leader of the DC film slate moving forward, had a formidable task. Could he restore the interest in DC’s output of films based on its most celebrated characters? 

He did. Superman was a box office success, critically well received, and maybe most important of all, a big hit with the fans. The public loved Superman. It was a big, bright spectacle, focused on the idea that humanity’s penchant for putting one foot in front of the other, and trying to do the best we can is enough, and our desire to do so it laudable.

One of the things Gunn has repeated in interviews and on social media, is that he is focused on giving writers and directors the chance to make their own films. He hasn’t said it in so many words, but it’s clear the idea is to avoid the mistakes Marvel has made in creating a slew of films whose tone and atmosphere, general intent, are almost identical.

With a small cameo in Superman, Supergirl was announced as the next film to hit theaters, starring Milly Alcock as Big Blue’s Kryptonian cousin, Kara. The question for DC, after the success of Superman is, “Can they repeat it?” 

If Supergirl, as a film itself, is the only factor to take into consideration, the answer is, “Yes.” 

It’s a different film than Superman, in tone and intent, but still feels of a piece. In the few short scenes involving him, David Corenswet’s Superman never feels out of place. Kara is a different Kryptonian, and more than anything, that difference in who the characters are, is the difference between the two films. Kara didn’t have the idyllic Kansas childhood, raised by salt of the earth farmers who are still around to give her advice, providing her the sense of stability that pours from that presence in Clark/Superman's life. She hasn’t had the experience of being accepted and idolized as a hero. She’s wrestling with some demons, and isn’t the superhuman mountain of optimism and hope her cousin is. She has a poorly trained dog that is the last remnant of the family and planet she remembers as home, and a penchant for finding planets with red suns, so she can get loaded. She’s a messy young woman, trying to figure out what a future means, when everything in her past has been obliterated, whose most likely candidate for companionship and the stability of being loved and loving, is the literal avatar for hope, kindness, compassion and everything humanity believes is the best of itself. 

I consider superhero fare a sub genre of action fantasy, and as an action fantasy film, Supergirl delivers a fun, satisfying, at times emotionally touching experience, with a strong grasp on what makes for an emotional connection to its characters. Milly Alcock demonstrates the outpouring of praise for her stint on the Games of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon, wasn’t misplaced. She has an impressive ability to evoke warmth, intensity, fury or heartbreak from moment to moment, and can play the comedic beats with as much skill. If nothing else comes of Supergirl being made, it should result in Milly Alcock being considered for more high profile roles. I’ll be looking forward to seeing her get the opportunity to grow this character, and Supergirl sets up some key differences between the character of its title and the cultural behemoth her cousin is. Given what we’ve seen from the two actors playing these characters already, and who we’ve now been shown the characters are, there’s an opportunity to give both the actors and characters a chance to really shine, and to explore intelligent, relevant questions about the responsible use of power. 

The story in Supergirl isn’t breaking any boundaries, but it is handled adeptly. The emotional beats work. The script is well written and handled well enough to create an investment in Kara and Eve Ridley’s Ruhtye serving as the audience surrogate into Kara’s story. Ridley puts in a good performance, at points playing the foil to Alcock, and the two women have good chemistry together. 

The one way Supergirl lacks is in one of the action sequences. There is one particular action scene that’s too frenetic, and keeping track of exactly what is happening and what we the audience are supposed to focus on, gets a bit lost, despite how much of it takes place in slow motion. I am not generally in the camp that believes slow motion is cheating, but there are a few points where the slow motion lasts longer than it needs to and ends up detracting from what should be a selling point for Supergirl as a character. Part of the fun of Supergirl and Superman as characters, is how outrageous their powers are. Their sheer speed and strength can be used to produce that sense of spectacle and awe in an action sequence, by showing the impact of using those powers. Slow motion can, and in this case does, blunt that effect. 

That being said, there is also one particular scene where the use of that slow motion pays off well. It’s cribbing a bit from a concept Gunn used for one sequence in Superman, but Gillespie puts his own spin on it, and the dynamism of how it’s shot combined with what we’re seeing succeeds in conveying the kind of awe we as an audience should experience when confronted with beings capable of such incredible feats. It demonstrates Supergirl’s sheer, unchallenged dominance, even when significantly outnumbered. It conveys that she can be every bit the force her cousin is. 

Jason Momoa’s Lobo is a fun character to watch, though he does feel a bit unnecessary to the story. Between Momoa’s clear joy in playing the character and the fact that Lobo represents another set of ideas about how power can be used, his presence adds something interesting, but its significance is never impactful. If this is an instance of including a character in order to seed his presence for future films, it’s not of the more egregious variety, and if nothing else, brings an element of the chaotic. There are points in the film where that chaotic nature means we don’t know exactly what to expect from him, and it’s welcome, but never fully employed for the depth of effect it could have. 

If you enjoy action fantasy films, including superhero films, Supergirl is going to scratch that itch. It has something relevant to say about the experience of being alive, and it does so without falling into schlock, unintentional camp or saccharine schmaltz, while delivering a few emotionally resonant beats. Though one particular action sequence is lackluster, the others aren’t. Of the three set pieces, one is competent and entertaining, one is lackluster, and the other has moments where the cooperation between camera work and choreography produce memorable imagery and put us in the position of feeling what Supergirl represents as a character. 

Part Two: An Observation on the Current Culture Surounding Film

That, my friends, is the end of my feelings/reaction to the film itself. If you are worried about spoilers, there will be a slight spoiler going forward, something related to the overall story, which has already been spoiled just about everywhere. I was debating about whether or not to write about the rest of this, and the conclusion I came to is that I don’t have someone who can fire me or deny me assignments and so on. I am going to say a bit about the “controversy” surrounding Supergirl. 

Supergirl is of the same quality as many of those perennially loved actions films that are more or less considered mid tier, but entertaining. They’re the kind of films that were regularly aired on cable channels. They’re not great movies, but they’re fun, they’ll hold your attention, and in some cases, something about the subject matter or themes is a little extra resonant. Sometimes, they have a lead whose just so compelling, they’re never a bad choice if you don’t know what else to watch. I feel this was about Man on Fire and the Equalizer franchise. They’re good, solid, competently made action films, and Denzel Washington is so gat dang excellent, I can watch them just about any time. 

There’s no shortage of response to Supergirl that is straight up, out in the open, no attempt to even bother hiding it sexism. The people who are complaining that Milly Alcock is not attractive enough to play the role are just flying their misogynistic flag for all to see. There’s also the contingent who keep saying superhero films lead by women don’t perform. Wonder Woman performed. Captain Marvel performed. We also have no shortage of films, maybe not directly tied to comic books, that essentially feature women as superheroes, and have made enough money to fill bank vaults. Many of them didn’t have the budgets Supergirl did, but it is just plainly contradictory to the factual evidence that action fantasy films with women in the lead can’t be financially successful. People kept coming back to see Milla Jovovich and Cate Beckinsale kick ass. There’s a reason both Resident Evil and Underworld have far too many sequels. I know I am not the only one who will show up to watch Charlize Theron kick a bunch of man ass, at the earliest opportunity, as an example. Atomic Blonde is one of those very good, very solid action films have already watched repeatedly, and will absolutely be watching again when the mood takes me. Is it great, as in one of the great action of films of all time? No. It’s still hella fun to watch Charlize Theron perform competence porn in the arts of espionage and hand to hand combat? Hell yes. 

I think a good portion of the issue Supergirl is running into, is the same controversy Superman ran into, but with misogyny added. Superman was not hiding the degree to which Lex Luthor stands in for a whole lot of our tech and defense industry wealthy these days. It was also not hiding the degree to which unlawful detention, online smear campaigns and corporate manipulation of foreign policy are realities. It wasn’t making a particularly pointed comment on any of these, other than the fact that they are indeed the kind of shit bad guys do. “Kindness is the new punk rock” became a source of online outrage, of course because Elon Musk and a bunch of these other maladapted anti-human lunatics have been running around croaking out of the shit boxes in the middle of their faces that empathy is going to destroy civilization. 

What I tried to do with the spoiler free review above in Part One, was to look at Supergirl as a film outside of all this bullshit. I had fun with this movie. I did not regret giving it my time or my money. I enjoyed Milly Alcock as Kara/Supergirl, and I’m genuinely looking forward to what she will bring to the role in the future. Is it a great movie? No. Is it a perfectly solid, fun action film with a few strong emotional hooks? Yes. Would I watch it again? I probably will, at some point, even if it’s just to catch up with whatever the next outing Supergirl appears in is. Will I do so without regret? Yes. The story here is quite good, has a strong foundation and was competently handled in its direction and production. 

In what early reviews I have seen though, I think there’s something else hiding in plain sight. The antagonist of the film is running a human trafficking ring. Maybe they’re not all human, I don’t know. It’s a sci-fi, action, fantasy film. There are a bunch of alien races running around. It is a trafficking ring though, and we do know they are specifically kidnapping and trafficking women and girls. There’s no particular attempt to make it more relevant, timely or topical than that. If anything, the film as a whole suggests it’s difficult being a young woman in a violent, uncaring universe, and shitty, violent people do shitty, violent things to young women. Part of what is satisfying about Supergirl is that Alcock handles the balance of being a messy, somewhat emotionally imbalanced young woman, who also has a bit of swagger, and deserves to have that swagger, because of how underestimated she is. Alcock is a young, petite woman. Supergirl has god-like powers, and Alcock plays her confidence in that reality well. If Supergirl says, “I”m going to do ______,” she can, despite being a young woman trying to put one foot in front of the other, while existing with the traumatic experiences she’s already had. 

Kara is not Clark. This Supergirl is not a gender switched Superman. She’s not a beacon of hope, kindness, and light. She’s a bit feral and uninterested in how anyone else feels about that. The film, like its main character, is a bit shaggy. It’s a bit unkempt. Like it’s main character, it still succeeds in trying to be what it wants to be. Kara gets to decide, over the course of the time, who it is she wants to be, and I think that, more than anything, is what so many of the film critics (especially men) are responding to with a negativity the film just doesn’t warrant on the basis of its quality.

None of this is revolutionary, in the same way Superman basically saying, “I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the other and do the most right thing I can,” isn’t particularly revolutionary either. What both films are doing, and I think more than anything else to draw this kind of ire, is that they treat all of this as self evident. There’s no big, preachy message. They are staying in their lane, as the saying goes, speaking to simple, shared understanding, and are still at odds with the current fascistic,  regressive political and social movement trying to seize power. They are at odds with this, because despite what they say, a whole cadre of what they want and what they mean is atoms with that shared understanding of the experience of being human. By treating that shared understanding as shared, they’re not inviting the conflict that makes it possible to start convincing people it’s not shared. 

Supergirl isn’t going out of its way to point out the relevance of a human trafficking ring to today’s world. It’s not going out of it’s way to give a PhD thesis on the degree sexism is damaging to young women. It’s not a TED Talk about being able to do the right thing, even when you’re kind of a mess, and that doing the right thing still has the same impact, whether or not you set out to do it for the most morally satisfying reasons. 

It’s all the things it treats as self evident that are provoking the reaction is has. Because we’re now conditioned to all of these things being a fight, and being things that have to be litigated and argued, said emphatically, as if they aren’t relatively common understanding and beliefs. It assumes the audience has the capacity to get on board with all of this, without having their hands held, without being cajoled and harassed, without needing to make a show of its belief the audience can handle all of it. It goes about telling its story as if it were just any other story, because it is.  

I think the reason Supergirl is being purposely targeted by the culture warrior crowd of the far right, and the reason so many male critics are having what’s probably a much more unconscious reaction to it, is that if you want there to be a larger movie audience for films like Women Talking, Certain Women, and Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles in ten or twenty years, you make Supergirl today. Because that audience is going to get used to the idea that there isn’t anything particularly special or different about telling stories about women and the things they experience in their journeys through this world. You don’t have to scream at the audience that you’re telling woman’s stories. You just have to tell them human stories. Supergirl is a woman’s story. It doesn’t go out of its way to tell you that. It is firmly founded in its genre of storytelling, while also being about things women actually deal with. It’s all treated as self evident. 

Films like Supergirl will be attacked/undermined, because they’re not “radical enough.” They’re not designed as confrontations. I love confrontation as part of the artistic intent, my tolerance for it seems to be unusually high too, so I’m not knocking that. As with many other things, I think we need those in the environment of media and arts, but we need the Supergirl’s too, specifically because it treats the idea of stories about women and about the things they encounter in life to not be special, and expanding the audience who perceives them that way, moves us forward. When women’s stories aren’t different/special/unique/niche, and are perceived as self evident as part of the tapestry of human stories, we’ll be on our way to a better collective future.