Supergirl (1984) – Review. By Rufus Black.

With a new Superman hitting motion picture theatres once again, you may find yourself re-watching all of the Man of Steel’s previous cinematic adventures in preparation. But there’s so many – and if you’re putting on the George Reeves movie, why not his whole series? And if that means you’re watching that one, why not any of the other multitudinous series? With so many on-screen iterations, you may, like me, content yourself with just the trusty Salkind/Cannon pictures. In which case, you’d be remiss to excise Supergirl.

Everything about this picture screams, “Why?”. After Superman III, it would seem difficult to win the public back to the franchise. Harder still without Reeve himself, or Richards either Donner or Richard Lester. To the untrained mind that a tangentially related mess with few returning characters, cast or crew would not fare well at the box office after a critical failure. And that untrained mind would be entirely correct, owing to the tremendous loss of money at the box office.

For reference, Supergirl, or Kara, is a Kryptonian living in Argo City, which is sustained by a powerful item called the Omegahedron. The item finds its way to Earth following an accident, and Supergirl follows, intending to retrieve it, only to find that she’s been beaten to it by Selena, an amateur witch who harnesses its incredible power to make a gardener love her for a day. Hmmm.

I went into Supergirl with an attitude of irritation, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to sit through Superman IV with a quiet mind if I hadn’t ticked this movie off the list first. And within ten minutes I was glad I gave it a chance. The main reason? Helen Slater. Here is a film where you can see the incredible talents of Peter O’Toole, Peter Cook and Faye Dunaway completely failing to hold your attention. Meanwhile, Slater steals every shot she’s in, despite this being her feature film debut. Where Reeve marvellously drew a perfect distinction between his Clark and his Kal-El, Slater seems to be balancing two contrasting sides to Kara continuously throughout. On one hand, she’s naïve and in doe-eyed awe of Earth and its inhabitants, oblivious to its ways until they’re spelled out to her. And yet, at the same time, she carries a wisdom and ethereal quality that suggests nothing would surprise her. It is the way that she balances this dichotomy that forgives the inconsistencies in the way she’s scripted.

Speaking of inconsistency, it is perhaps the picture’s main sin, and you will find yourself asking a lot of obvious questions that remain unanswered. How are all these Kryptonians still alive, and aware of Kal-El’s actions and history on Earth? Where did Supergirl’s costume come from, and why is it identical to Superman’s? How can Supergirl shape shift? Why doesn’t Selena release the spider immediately so that the gardener doesn’t fall in love with Kara? And, most bothersome of all, why does Kara adopt a civilian identity at all? This last one irked me for the whole runtime. We’re well aware she has to find the Macguffin quickly, as her city has limited time to survive without it. And yet, despite it being of absolutely no benefit to her, one of her first actions on Earth is to pretend to be a schoolgirl, get comfortable in a dorm room and attend classes regularly.

The plot is nonsense, and devoid of any characters beyond Kara who hold any attention. But in some sense, that is secondary to a very important point: you will believe a girl can fly. At least, sometimes. Specifically, you’ll believe it when a stunt performer is on wires. It is these sections of film that are almost balletic in nature, and I’ll waive any clunky exposition that was needed to put her in the air. All the more disheartening, then, that the US theatrical release heavily cut them for runtime, although thankfully the studio seemed to think the international audience had patience enough to keep them. However, when she instead flies against a backdrop, it is merely a pale echo of what went thrice before. The lighting and colour on her doesn’t match the frame behind her, and the human brain is well aware of the trick, save for a few inexplicably sepia frames near the end where everything is awash in a filter and actually looks pretty good.

There’s a lot of chaff in Supergirl, but the title character is the wheat. Its greatest flaw is that doesn’t seem to recognise that. Every time she really gets super, it cuts right back to school, or worse, back to Dunaway and Brenda Vaccaro fawning over young men. Why? I can scarcely imagine. Considerable faith in a female-led superhero film when the genre itself was in its adolescence put her in the air, but keeping her there for longer than five minutes at a time seems to be a different matter.

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