Supergirl movie review

The fact that they made this movie means a lot to me, personally Supergirl has always been my favourite DC character, possibly my favourite comic character all together. She was so amazing back in the 80s and 90s with her taking such a big part if the Crisis comics and the fact she’s had so many reinventions over the years, maybe more than any other comic character I can think of. From costumes, back stories, variants different origins and personas. She’s more as versatile as Spider-man has been over the years.

This movie is part of the new DC media takeover headed up by James Gunn and Peter Safran. They have taken on a huge job of doing a Marvel style overhaul of the DC properties to try and make one universe where they can all sit together. Now personally I think thats worked well for Marvel because they got fairly lucky but I think DC had it’s strength in it not being all interconnected. I don’t mind if we have a few variants of the same character on screen at the same time, get the story right, thats what really counts.

This movie stars Milly Alcock as Supergirl, she the OG Supergirl from Argo city, the same place we Helen Slaters Supergirl originated from. She’s sent to Earth by her family due to Argo city becoming poisoned from Kryptonite after its separation from Krypton. Now I love how this movie handles the back story of Kara here, they don’t hold back from detail and give us a really solid fall of Krypton and story of how she got to Earth.

I might have missed something but I did wonder why Kara didn’t return to Argo city once she’d made it to Earth, I’m sure her and Superman could have found a way to bring the people of Argo city home, in the movie they have space craft and travel through space, why not return for her parents? Details like this just poked out at me throughout the movie.

Moving on to the movie it starts off with Kara trying to celebrate her 23rd birthday on a bit of an intergalactic bar crawl, sounds like a pretty good idea, she’s a bit of a loner with major depression about losing Krypton and then her family. She’d not in a rush to go around saving everyone like Superman, she’s just trying to find her place in the world.

The movies story continues with her meeting Ruthye Knoll, a girl who’s family are killed my a bad guy called Krem who also likes to enslave girls. Ruthye runs into Supergirl at a bar, tried to recruit her to help, ends up getting Krypto poisoned and the two join forces to get an antidote and exact revenge.  A fairly simple straight forward story which helps as the movie has a lot of back story to cover and characters to introduce.

Along the way they meet Loboi who’s played by the joy born to play him Jason Mamoa formally known as Aquaman. I’m not exactly sure what he said to be recast in the new DC movies when everyone else got booted but well done, he’s obviously a professional and a bit of chameleon too. I really love what his character brings to the film. At first he looked a bit forced in the movie, I mean it’s Supergirl, does she need backup? But the film is true to the characters and Lobo isn’t the there help Supergirl, he has his own story and confidence that she doesn’t need his help. He just brings a bit of humour to the otherwise dark story and I like how at the end he lets the girls just handle it themselves and watches by the sideline. Even when Ruthye wants to take on Krem by herself for revenge, Lobo just lines them up and stands to the side.

Other characters include a bit of Superman peppered in, again he’s absent for most of the film but I think he’s just there to bring Supergirl into the wider DC universe. Kryptio the Superdog plays a pretty integral part to the movie as a lot of the plot revolves around him in a similar way to the Superman movie. At this point he’s the fluffy four legged glue holding the DC universe together.

The story was written by Ana Nogueira who is apparently also working on the Wonder Woman script along with a Teen Titans project. The movie is said to be based on the 2021 Supergirl comic series Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King which is regarded as one of the best modern Supergirl graphic novels in recent years.

The director of the movie is Craig Gillespie who’s done some amazing work on movies like I, Tonya and has a fairly successful career in both TV and movies. Although this is his first comic adaptation as far as I know and I think it shows a bit. There was one interview he did regarding the production of the movie where he said he didn’t read the original comic until he read the script and deliberately wanted to visualise it in his own way. Not this does seem to be taken out of context and is pushed as if he didn’t read the comic where in fact he does state he did read the comic series. He just wanted to come up with a direction based on the script to give it a bit of original grit and before reading the comic so he could look at it from an original way. Which I think worked well for it.

Things I loved about this movie include all the back stories, I wish we had more from Krem and Kara and even Lobo but there wasn’t great chunk of back story, although what we did see from Argo city was very well done and reminded me a bit of the original Christopher Reeve movies.

Milly Alcock was a great casting for Supergirl, but she’s unfortunately not won everyone over though, She’s suffered the same fate that Andrew Garfield did in Spider-man, he was a great actor but he followed right on the heels of Tobys Spiderman, and fans of him didn’t get closure on that story, it wasn’t a graceful end. So anyone walking in those webbed shoes would be web slinging into a conflicted fandom. Much like Milly Supergirl, fans loved Melissa Benoists Supergirl from the TV show and that was a tough act to follow, then we also has Sasha Calle who played Supergirl in the Flash movie. Again she both of those Supergirl incarnations were great and fans wanted more, they are still well regarded in recent memory so anyone playing Supergirl is going to be flying into a conflicted fandom. It’s hard enough when you have to please people who like comic book movies or dont, then you have Marvel vs DC fans and then on top of that you have fans of the previous DC movies and new movies. I think this is why Peacemaker was so successful, he was fairly original and fans had nothing to compare him to, no other versions they felt they had to take sides with. Lets face it every Batman we get will be compared to Michael Keaon or Christopher Bale and even if its a good movie they will be bashed by some people for not being a carbon copy.

The RnD and visuals behind Melissa Benoists Supergirl hit thr ground running, like she flew out of the comics, and this was a TV show with a fraction of the budget.

Sasha’s Supergirl was something a bit different to what we’d seen before but it did great due to the impact of the whole comic book aesthetics. Again the visuals and costime felt more well developed than Millys and Sasha was only a supporting character in the Flash movie.

Now the film wasn’t perfect, as I started with, I’m a bit fan of Supergirl and I think she deserved more love from the production. The CGI just looks very choppy at times and not as sharp as I’d expect, almost like it was put together or changed in the last week before release, a bit like how the Flash movie looked at times. It didn’t feel like she got the same treatment that the Superman movie got. Which is one thing I think is good about Marvel, they have the same teams working on each movie pretty much and they stay consistent and to a high degree of quality.

Also as mentioned it felt like the story needed more detail in places, they might have explained why she and Superman didn’t return to Argo city to save everyone else but I missed it. Krem also seemed a bit weak and 2d as a villain, he looks almost like a thug at times then others a genius. I’m not sure why he felt a bit under developed.

Having it all self contained worked in a way but by doing that it didn’t leave me wanting more. Say if they introduced more A list DC characters and left us asking more questions I’d have loved that. Maybe even some massive twist at the end where nobody notices Supergirl missing because there are two Supergirls because Lex has cloned her like he did Clark and made his own Matrix (Another variant of Supergirl), Or maybe Power girl arriving on Earth at the end through one of the multiverse portals. Maybe one of the Green Lanterns helped her escape Argo which explains why only she made it out. Just something to expand the overall story and add a bit of a high five to fans. It would have been an amazing opportunity to introduce Brainiac before the next Superman movie as he destroys Krypton when removing Kandor. So many missed opportunities in making it so self contained.

Promotion of the movie wasn’t great either. I only run a fairly small blog compared to the bigger sites but back in the day I’d have been sent an invite to a press screening or promo material, DC haven’t reached out for things like that with fan sites since Ryan Reynolds played Green Lantern leaving most of the early reviews to bigger media outlets that don’t get comic book movies meaning the initial reviews will be poorer. Stills from the movie showed off some of the worse off looking clips and missed out on some of the better visuals. The posters too could have been a lot better.

For example I’m not sure who did the whole superhero punching the ground with their other hand in the background first, but for the last 20 years or so that pose has belonged to Iron Man. Whoever was in charge of the photo shoot who asked Milly to do the same thing was just lazy. It doesn’t show off Supergirl’s look or character at all, just a lack of creativity.

Ironman did it better.

Posted by Adi Mursec on July 4, 2026