Supergirl – The BRWC Review
Heraclitus has a famous saying: You cannot step into the same river twice. So, how many times is James Gunn and his superhero filmmaking approach being washed in that same river? I’ve lost count…Supergirl is the second film in James Gunn’s new DC Universe, and it’s already giving off the exhaustion of the MCU’s Phase 5. At a time when interest in superhero movies is steadily declining, it fails to offer us any different narrative or innovation from the superhero films we’ve seen countless times and are genuinely tired of. It has a visual world similar to Guardians of the Galaxy, equally boring and stale humor, heavy use of popular music, and desperate moments where it tries to win our hearts with Krypto’s overly cute behaviors.
Even though the film comes from director Craig Gillespie, who has made good movies like Cruella and I, Tonya, you feel James Gunn’s presence in every frame, and you never get the sense that you’re watching a Gillespie film. What you’re watching is a James Gunn film. The screenwriter is Ana Nogueira, an actress I had never heard of before. This is her first screenplay since she co-wrote a short film called We Win in 2018. Quite the career jump, it sounds.
As someone who has read and greatly loved the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic, I had Gunn’s promise that he would deliver a similar world, and I had naively believed he would fulfill that promise. But apparently, all that promise was empty. In last year’s Superman film, he almost managed to deliver on his promise of making it in the tone of the All-Star Superman comics — at least for me. But even then, he couldn’t help himself and turned that film into Guardians of the Galaxy as well. At this point, I think when producers hire James Gunn to direct a film, they should assign two police officers to stand beside him and give him an electric shock every time the film starts resembling Guardians of the Galaxy.
Kara is that cool, lone girl who doesn’t care about anything, just like she was shown in the final scene of Superman (2025). Sorry, I said “girl.” Because at one point Ruthye says something to Kara like, “Why is he Superman ‘man’ but you’re Supergirl? Why aren’t you Superwoman?”… I think it’s one of the most cringeworthy lines I’ve heard since the “X-Women” line in X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019). I’m not going to lecture about feminism, but if a female screenwriter is going to give a speech about feminism in a film with female leads, I believe she should do it in a much deeper way. These lines sound very juvenile.
Kara has been through major trauma because Krypton was destroyed. She travels through space with her dog Krypto, goes to planets with red suns (because the powers of the El family, which come from yellow suns, disappear on planets with red suns), shuts down her powers, drinks, and has fun. One day, the villain Krem — who has by far the worst costume design and motivation I’ve ever seen in my life — kills the family of a little girl named Ruthye and poisons Supergirl’s dog Krypto.
Ruthye asks Supergirl for help to get revenge, and a classic student-teacher relationship develops between them. They go to different planets and fight, with plenty of action scenes. There’s also the Lobo character, whose presence creates tremendous expectations (and Jason Momoa delivers on those expectations as an actor) but whom I don’t think contributes much to the story in the end; he’s just there trying to entertain us.
In the end, the story continues with a predictable flow no different from other superhero movies and finishes with a few Superman cameos.
I’m genuinely trying hard to find even one thing I liked about this film, but I can’t. Whenever I look for something praiseworthy, Supergirl’s terrible costume, Milly Alcock’s inability to fully feel like “Supergirl,” the film’s superficial and boring “girls can do anything!” feminist messages, its slow and tedious pace, and the ridiculous lines that clearly come from an incompetent writer all come to mind, and I just tell myself, “Forget it.” It’s a massive fiasco, no doubt.
In conclusion, Supergirl — despite James Gunn stubbornly trying to take credit for the success of The Penguin series and the Christopher Reeve documentary and presenting it as the beginning of the new DC — feels, even as the second film in this universe, like it’s already at the peak of superhero fatigue. It’s a colossal waste of 200 million dollars. Even the pollution caused by the Supergirl-themed plastic cups made specially for cinemas to promote this film is annoying me. That’s how irritating this movie is.
