Supergirl ~ Review

By: [email protected] on Fri, 06/26/2026 - 15:54

It’s always a strange feeling when you see a movie and feel completely out of step with most responses. It makes you feel like you’re living in a completely different reality than the rest of the world. What makes discussing Supergirl particularly difficult is that the only thing anyone seems able to discuss is its critical reception and box office performance. Some people are even going so far as to say it's the worst comic book movie ever made. But I’m here with a hot take, or at least a mildly warm one…Supergirl lowkey rocks. It’s a fun adventure romp with a firecracker starmaking performance from Milly Alcock. The movie is not perfect, but no movie can be.

Loosely based on the 2021-2022 comic miniseries Woman of Tomorrow, written by Tom King with art by Bilquis Evely, the story finds Kara Zor-El (Alcock) and her dog Krypto on a planet with a red sun getting blind drunk. Why is she on a planet with a red sun? Because it’s the only place in the universe she can actually get drunk. She’s celebrating her 23rd birthday and trying to forget her sorrows. Unlike her cousin Kal El, aka Superman (David Corenswet), Kara was around for the destruction of her home planet, Krypton, and watched her parents (David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham) die. Anyway, Kara is approached by the young teenager Rutheye (Eve Ridley) to help her get revenge on the space bandit Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), who murdered her entire family. Initially, not wanting to help Rutheye, Kara reluctantly agrees to help her when Krem poisons Krypto, and the only way to get the antidote is from the space bandit himself, all the while an intergalactic bounty hunter named Lobo (Jason Momoa) stomps around the margins of the story. What follows is a True Grit-style road movie crossed with The Fifth Element.

Supergirl is an exceptionally simple story, and I don’t mean that as a complaint. The film could have easily turned into a giant blockbuster, but it is focused on Kara’s story without a ton of sequel bait weighing everything down. And it’s refreshing to see that in a summer blockbuster. For me, the big problem is that the wild art and loopy sci-fi concepts of the original miniseries are absent here. The visuals in the film are not nearly as vibrant, and the story has been stripped down to its barest essence. Which does make sense, as there’s a beautiful section of the comic where Supergirl races a supernova riding on Comet the Superhorse – which looks amazing in painted images, but might look pretty silly on the big screen. That being said, I do like that director Craig Gillespie instead goes for a Mad Max aesthetic and really leans into a western-90s sci-fi vibe (think The Fifth Element).

The script by Ana Noguiera keeps the story moving while retaining an emotional core. I do feel that the movie could have stood to give the emotional moments more time to breathe, and the story does that twenty minutes of character development were left on the cutting room floor.

The cast across the board is game for the material. Schoenaerts dives in whole hog to his moustache-twirling villainy, and Eve Ridley is great as the naive but fierce young warrior Rutheye. Momoa is clearly having a blast as Lobo, a character dripping in 90s comic cheese, and Momoa really leans into all the silly badass one-liners. I hope to see more of this character in future projects. But the star of the movie is Alcock, who brings a complicated portrait of Kara Zor El to life. At times, she recalls Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, and at others, she brings depth and heart to her performance. There’s a moment where Kara yells into the void of space that actually moved me. It will be interesting to see where the DCU takes Supergirl going forward because I do actually look forward to seeing her opposite Corenswet’s Superman – the glimpse of their relationship we get here is a delight.

All in all, Supergirl is a good time at the movies. By no means perfect, but it has enjoyable action and a lot of heart. I don’t know what the internet and other critics are smoking.

Three out of Four Stars