Supergirl

Tales From 
The Krypto

Supergirl
Directed by Craig Gillespie
USA 2026
DC Studios
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Very light spoilers.

Supergirl is a direct follow up to last year’s new Superman movie (reviewed here) and the second film (kinda, it’s complicated) in James Gunn’s rebooted DC Cinematic Universe... which I still think was totally unnecessary and has deprived the world of a third, stand alone Gal Gadot/Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman movie. So I had every reason to hate this movie going in and... not just for that. 

I mean, as we already discovered from her cameo in the last Superman movie, Kara (aka Supergirl) is a bratty teen with a bad attitude who nobody would really want to hang out with. Added to that, the trailers for this movie were terrible and made me not want to see the movie... I mean, why can nobody cut a trailer which wants you to go see a film anymore? More importantly, to what I finally thought about the movie here... why are trailers not effective at showing the true spirit of the product anymore? Are they deliberately trying to keep people in the dark (frankly, the only time when I wished they’d done that to people was when Takashi Mike’s Audition came out... I’d have much rather gone into that movie thinking it was a standard, romantic comedy but, of course, if I’d thought that then I never would have gone in at all so... it’s a conundrum)?

Anyway, for all the expectations I had of this movie... I actually loved it and, though it has its flaws, it manages to somehow do a tonal tightrope walk and really pulls it off to give a coherent story with characters who grow through their adventures and... yeah, I was certainly entertained. Even though, through pretty much the whole movie, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak... expecting the director or somebody to screw it up and let everything down. Instead, we have a movie which leads to a quite moving ending. There may even have been a tear in my eye although, to be fair, the air conditioning in the cinema wasn’t great and I could have been responding to something else.

The film tells of a teenage girl called Ruthye, played by Eve Ridley. She sees her whole family slaughtered at the start of the film by this tale’s bad guy Krem... played somewhat charismatically by Matthias Schoenaerts. So she goes to various places on her planet, trying to ‘True Grit’ somebody into accompanying her in her quest for revenge. 

And I’m just going to pause a little here and compliment myself because, as I watched the movie I thought... yeah, revenge for hire just like in True Grit and I wondered if they even realised they were doing this. Well, when I looked up the trivia for the movie after I’d seen the film, it turns out that the original Supergirl comic this film is mostly adapted from is actually confirmed to be based on True Grit so, yay! Go me. 

Anyway, Ruthye stumbles upon Kara, aka Supergirl, played by Milly Alcock, who, like John Wayne before her, is always only a half step away from the next bottle. In fact, it’s mentioned both here and in Superman that she spends lots of time in Red Sun solar systems so she can get drunk on alcohol because, just like Superman, her powers reject intoxication when she is in a Yellow Sun environment. Anyway, she gets roped in by accident when her dog, Krypto (who is used less of a crutch in this movie and more as a catalyst), gets poisoned by Krem and has to stay with a vet as he slowly dies over three days, unless Kara can get the antidote from the bad guys. 

Shenanigans ensue, including a nice turn by Jason Momoa, somehow playing DC character Lobo and retrofitted into the story. Now, I’ve never read a Lobo comic in my life but he was all over the marketing of the DC universe in the 1990s (if I recall correctly) and, if I was being cynical, I’d question why you’d have an 18 rated character like Lobo turning up in a 12A rated movie. But, they somehow make it work and, I have to say, for a 12A movie, they do manage to push the envelope on the brutality of some of the shenanigans. I guess it’s that questionable, modern censorship issue where studios have learned they can go hard on the violence as long as they don’t show any actual blood or if the blood is a different colour. Personally, I’d rather they just raised the age rating and did it all properly but, cynically, the studios are just maximising the box office potential... I get it. I just don’t think it’s the right move. 

And the film works really well... quite surprisingly. There are a few problems, mostly around Kara’s constant and repetitive healing and weakening by red and yellow suns, depending on her situation. And the way her body rejects the Kryptonite in her system with exposure to the yellow sun does, of course, make a mockery of the whole plot because, as I wondered at the start of the movie... why doesn’t she just fly Krypto near to a yellow sun and heal him in minutes? But then we’d have no movie, I guess.

Anyhow, the performances and the well written dialogue really worked in this one and I was really surprised that I was still loving it by the end of the movie. Kara’s back story/origin and how she happens to stumble upon Krypto keeps coming in to give the audience something to believe in, with regards to the main character and, though it maybe does it one time too many, it doesn’t hurt the film so much. Tonally it feels a lot like Marvel’s Captain Marvel movie, to the point when music and song cues are structured to come and go at the same kinds of story beats, to give the longer battle scenes a kind of second wind halfway through, for example.

And that’s me done with Supergirl. I didn’t bother staying past the end credits because I read that there were no post or mid credits scenes on this one (which is a shame in this case) so I’ve no idea where the DC Cinematic Universe Mark II is going next. Two relatively good films in a row does not a franchise make (or break, for that matter) so, yeah, I guess we’ll see what happens next.