SUPERGIRL: THE HERO SHE HAD TO BECOME

After the financial success of the rebooted Superman, flagship of the new DC cinematic universe, hopes were high for Supergirl. The solo cinematic outing for the Maid of Steel starred House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock in the title role and promised a gritty story based on the iconic comic arc Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. But unfortunately, it underperformed at the box office, grossing $125 million against a budget that’s, let’s just say, was higher than that. Likewise, the reviews didn’t set the world on fire.

And yet – none of that means it’s a bad movie. Quite the opposite in fact. Supergirl is an exciting slice of power fantasy for women, with a winning heroine in Kara Zor-El, second-to-last of the Kryptonians. It borrows bits of Guardians of the Galaxy, Mad Max: Fury Road and (of course) Superman to create something comfortably familiar but still new.

Yet there’s no getting away from it: power fantasies for women don’t always do well at the box office, and perhaps more importantly for the superhero machine, they don’t always do well at the toy store either. It isn’t so long ago that toy sets of Marvel’s Avengers left their one female member Black Widow out of the lineup, not wanting boys subject to the apparent indignity of involving female characters in their play. But Supergirl (and it is very much highlighted in the movie that Clark Kent gets to be Superman while Kara is stuck being a girl) isn’t a polished badass like Black Widow, or her fellow DC hero Wonder Woman – she’s a mess.

She never got over the trauma of what happened to her people, the details of which are gone over in an extended flashback sequence where all the dialogue is in Kryptonian. But her parents appear to have been, unlike Superman’s, nice people who weren’t interested in conquering other planets, and they raised Kara to be good. Not nice, but good.

It is unfortunately hard to talk about this movie without mentioning the right-wing backlash. Commentator Megyn Kelly and others online derided the film as “woke” but it’s very hard to ascertain what that means. Dean Cain, once but no longer a Superman actor himself, appeared to take the backlash as free reign to insult Milly Alcock’s looks – so perhaps “woke” in this context simply means a woman is on screen who doesn’t give any indication of being interested in men? Milly Alcock said in a pre-release interview, “I love how this film doesn’t center around any sort of love or romance or anything like that at all.” She also mentioned that she supported queer readings of her character, which only increased the backlash. And this served to in many ways overshadow what is a perfectly good superhero movie.

All in all it’s a terrible shame Supergirl underperformed, because Milly Alcock clearly put a lot of love and effort into the character. She learned multiple fictional languages and trained every day for her stunts, learning to move like a superhero. And to be fair, reviews of the movie highlighted that she was fantastic at embodying such an iconic character. “Alcock’s Kara Zor-El, like Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, has all the makings of a character ready to step out from the cultural shadow of the male character she’s derivative of and go her own way,” wrote SlashFilm’s Rocco T. Thompson. Previous Supergirl actress Helen Slater praised Alcock’s performance too, saying to The Hollywood Reporter, “I loved the new Supergirl film, I thought Milly Alcock was astonishing – fierce, strong and great comic timing!”

Continued below…

It’s also worth pointing out that despite the film’s middling critical reception on RottenTomatoes – 53% – the audience score on the site is much higher at 73%. Clearly the film is resonating with someone, and that someone is most likely women.

Even beyond Supergirl herself, there’s plenty to enjoy in this movie. The aliens are fun and creative (one of them is voiced by Seth Rogan in a voice cameo) and fan favourite Lobo makes an extended appearance, played by former Aquaman star Jason Momoa.

Momoa has been a fan of the bounty hunter antihero ever since he was a kid, and there’s no denying he’s the perfect casting. His love for the character really shines through, and hopefully he’ll be back for more in the DC cinematic universe at some point.

James Gunn, the man behind the reimagined DC movies, plans to bring back Kara as well. She will make her next appearance in the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow, alongside David Corenswet as Superman and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. She’s here to stay, and hopefully she’ll end up a heroine for a whole new generation of superhero fans. Oh, and this time, there’s toys.