Supergirl brings girl power to superhero movies as it crashes onto 4K discby Jim Bray Warner Brothers' latest superhero movie is another attempt to create a DC superhero universe that will rival Disney's Marvel Studios' wild run of successes. And it doesn't. What we get instead is a nasty and angry movie, a movie that almost feels as if it's trying to emulate James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, but without the humour and without any particularly likeable characters. It's a shame. I was always a DC guy back in the day when I read comic books. But I have to admit that, with a few exceptions such as the original Superman from 1978 (which is still the best, to me), the first Wonder Woman and Aquaman movies, Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy – and The Flash to a lesser extent – most of the classic Marvel films (by which I mean "up till Avengers Endgame", the last Marvel film I saw) were more interesting and entertaining. I wasn't a big reader of Supergirl, perhaps because I'm a guy, but I know enough about her that she has been traditionally kind of a female version of Superman. Duh! Now, we get a spoiled brat (Milly Alcock) who, at movie's beginning, is living on a planet with a red sun, which of course strips her powers from her because it's like the sun under which she was born on Krypton. She just turned 23 years of age and seems to prefer drinking herself into oblivion than living the destiny she undoubtedly feels was thrust upon her by her parents when they saved her from the destruction of their home city Argo. Actually, I liked the flashback scenes of Krypton and Argo, which are shot beautifully and give nice back story to the, well, front story. But that front story, yikes! The planet she's hiding out on is bothered by a bunch of brigands and they've just killed the family of young Ruthye Knoll (Eve Ridley) so they can steal the weaponry her father crafted. Ruthye, looking for vengeance, meets Kara and decides she's going to team up with her whether Kara likes it or not. Then Kara's beloved dog Krypto is shot by brigand leader Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts) and she only has three days to track him down and get the antidote to the poison he put into the dog. So off she goes. Yep, while superheroes like Superman (David Coronswet in this case, who also makes a couple of cameos here) battle super villains like Lex Luthor or the Joker or whoever, Supergirl sallies forth to – save her dog. Oh, sure, she has to battle the brigands to do that, but geez. Whatever happened to thinking big? With Ruthye tagging along – she wants to kill Krem with her big sword – they head from planet to planet (we don't really see much of Earth in this movie), along the way running across human traffickers and another DC character (though I'd never heard of him) called Lobo, played larger than life by the larger-than-life Jason Momoa. It's basically a revenge movie for Ruthye and a save my puppy movie for Kara – who needs to get the antidote from Krem before Ruthye slices him to pieces. Kara tries to convince Ruthye that killing Krem is a bad idea, that it leads, well, to the dark side of the force. Part of this is apparently due to Kara's mother – upon sending her away to Earth to hang out with Clark Kent – admonishing her to "be good". SPOILER ALERT (skip this paragraph if you don't want the spoiler): Turns out Kara's idea of being good includes throwing away being good and embracing the deliberate breaking of one of the 10 Commandments. How good does that make her? Along the way to this climax, we go from planet to planet and situation to situation, places and pieces that look and sound great but that's about it. Adding to the Guardians of the Galaxy feel (James Gunn made those movies, by the way, the first two of which were terrific) is the use of popular (well...) music clips to add to the mood. According to the supplements on the 4K disc (which also includes digital code for download), the story is based on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, a comic book series from a few years ago. I never heard of that series, and I hope the movie wasn't too faithful because that would mean the comic books suck, too. One can't really fault the audio or video quality, just the writing. That means the Dolby Vision picture quality is excellent and doesn't suffer from the darkish look of the Zack Snyder DC flicks. Colours are bright, detail is wonderful and blacks are very deep. Ditto for the Dolby Atmos sound. I don't have Atmos, and my ears at this point in my life probably wouldn't notice it, but the 5.1 Dolby TrueHD is still very good – better than the film deserves. There are plenty of low frequency effects and all the channels I experienced were used well. The special features, which come on the same 4K disc as the feature, are pretty interesting but also pretty standard. There's a nearly half hour "making of" documentary that's reasonable, but most of it seems to be talking about a very different movie than the one I had just sat through – they seemed to think it was good! So, with "Flying Off the Page" we get producer Gunn, writer Ana Nogueira, and some others opining about Supergirl's history and how they adapted it to make is suck. "Girl's Best Friend" is about the damn dog (get it? Man's best friend, in a chick flick!). "A Practical Legacy" is quite an interesting look at the many and very well-done practical effects in the film (and I think it would have been a lot of fun doing the wire work to make characters fly!), while "The DC Dream: Lobo" introduces us to a character that was actually more interesting than Supergirl. "Showdown at Evely Square" looks at one of the action scenes, "Space Is a Bad Neighbourhood, Babe" looks at various aspects of the production design and creation of the alien worlds, and "Mixtape for a Hero" features composer Claudia Sarne and others reminiscing about the film's rather forgettable original score. "You Are Here: A Superhero Map of the Galaxy" sees Eve Ridley ("Ruthye") narrating a featurette on the various planets and key locations used in the film. "Krypto Saves the Day!: Coastal Catastrophe" as an animated cartoon featuring Krypto and Superman. You also get two deleted scenes. I went into Supergirl wanting it to be good, and hoping it would be good. It ain't. Copyright 2026 Jim Bray |
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