Supergirl movie review: another disjointed DC superhero film
Supergirl film review and star rating: ★★
I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie has been handed a rather heavy baton inheriting the next film of James Gunn’s rebooted DC franchise.
It seemed last summer’s surprisingly heart-warming rendition of Superman (2025) had turned a new leaf for DC following Zack Snyder’s decade-long churn of lukewarm superhero films – think Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Justice League (2017) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) – that were often a dark, muddled down blend of hyper-masculine aesthetics without a concise plot.
Viewers were left with a shred of hope, however, for the future of DC adaptations when Milly Alcock came crashing through the fortress of solitude as Kara Zor-El, also known as Supergirl.
This time we follow Kara in her own feature film, Supergirl. Opening credits move through her outlandishly messy, post-bender spaceship bedroom. Clothes are strewn about, piled over copies of The Daily Planet with David Corenswet’s Superman featured on the cover. It’s a polite nod to the previous film before Krypto, her super canine companion, crudely pees on the newspaper.
Tonally, the film divides itself from the squeaky clean image of Clark Kent who is keen for Kara to rejoin him on Earth, though she’s reluctant to oblige.
Supergirl movie: action scenes don’t land
Kara is a jaded persona — effortlessly mastered by Alcock who came in swinging after working on House of The Dragon (2022). Whether she’s hungover hiding under blankets and sunglasses or super-suited up, her portrayal of Supergirl sets the stage for a modern female role model.
Her only concern being the amount of drinks she can throw back until she’s begrudgingly paired with Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) whose family has been brutally murdered by space pirate Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts).
Things get real, though, when the intergalactic antagonist shoots Krypto with a poison arrow, and Kara must retrieve the antidote from him in 72 hours or else her poochie pal will die.
It’s a race against time for our heroines, but for a film that focuses on time getting away, the film drags as it shoves overwhelming subplots and additional characters into each scene. On top of murdering families and shooting dogs, it’s revealed Krem runs a sex trafficking ring preying on young women.
Action scenes distract
Gillespie stages three different narratives in what feels like an act of spinning plates to present the many ways violent men terrorise women, but this only makes the film unravel. We’re left wondering if women can stand up for themselves when Jason Momoa’s portrayal of Lobo the bounty hunter is roughly inserted into every scene to help save our protagonists.
Supergirl finds herself in many scenarios either outnumbered or weakened based on the sun’s radiation, and the only solution to be found is to let Lobo come crashing in on a motorcycle chucking hand grenades.
While it’s somewhat helpful to let a burly man blow everything up, it adds nothing but visual chaos and overtakes any chance of developing a deeper theme to the underlying child bride plot point. In the end, it’s difficult to assess why Lobo’s appearance is needed if it’s not to fuel Momoa’s egotistical desire to tear up a set with cheap one liners and take up screen time that could have been spent developing a thoroughly thought-out story that says more.
Humorous quips and action scenes distract from the intention to examine global issues like sex-trafficked child brides. James Gunn managed these nuanced topics well when examining international tech supervillains in Superman, but that clever nuance is missing here. Who’s to blame other than whoever cleared Gunn’s departure from the director’s chair.
On the surface the film looks and sounds like the feel-good superhero stylings of Gunn, but it fails at coming to par with its predecessor.
Try as she might, Alcock’s work isn’t enough to beat Gillespie’s disjointed and superficial telling of Supergirl.