Review: ‘Supergirl’ barely takes flight
2026 / Dir. Craig Gillespie
Rating: 3/5
Watch if you like: 2025’s Superman, Guardians of the Galaxy, and a little John Wick and Mad Max flavor in your superhero movie but you could also just watch those movies instead so what is there to do besides order the unfortunately erotic Spider-Man: Brand New Day popcorn bucket?
When Supergirl (Milly Alcock, House of the Dragon) showed up drunk at the end of 2025’s Superman reboot, bursting through her cousin’s fortress of solitude to collect her dog, Krypto, and calling him a bitch, it was a fun tease that her story was going to be a bit more chaotic and perhaps proof that James Gunn’s take on a DC universe would have more differentiation in style than the Marvel Cinematic Universe that largely bleeds together at this point. However, when the trailer for Supergirl dropped, the last thing I expected was that it would have a suspiciously similar space western vibe to Gunn’s very own Marvel series, Guardians of the Galaxy.
Catching up with Kara Zor-El, she’s celebrating her birthday by traveling to different “backwater” planets that orbit a red sun, where she’s able to get blasted on space hooch in exchange for not having access to her full powers that only appear under a yellow sun. It’s one such hangover on a desolate planet that results in her spaceship being stolen, her dog poisoned, and a reluctant team-up with a young girl out for revenge against Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts, The Old Guard), the leader of the Ravagers—sorry, the Brigands—a cult of misogynistic techno BDSM space pirates that kidnap young girls to breed more techno BDSM space pirates.
Despite some of the on-the-nose similarities and some hit-or-miss needle-drops, a really out-of-place cover of Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle” nearly ruins an epic late-movie fight scene. Supergirl treads different waters from Guardians, taking more influences from Mad Max, Blade Runner, and a bit of John Wick for good measure. Do those influences transcend their source material into a unique take on the superhero movie? Not particularly, but having some different flavors certainly helps differentiate this from the MCU.
What stood out to me the most was how much mediocrity we now put up with from Marvel and similar Hollywood movies, and how just a little craft can go a long way to elevating what would otherwise be a pretty generic action-adventure. For instance, Supergirl was shot on location in Iceland and Scotland rather than all on green screen. The action sequences aren’t groundbreaking, but they’re all visually understandable and not just CGI slop. There’s attention to lighting, and they used Rob Hardy (Alex Garland’s longtime cinematographer) to actually make this movie look pretty damn nice.
We’re not getting a really fleshed-out science fiction universe here or anything, but there’s some fantastic production design going on that makes Supergirl feel more unique than it actually is. There are creative alien designs that would give Star Wars a run for its money, even when they’re not absolutely necessary. After Kara loses her spaceship, she’s forced to take basically the intergalactic version of a rundown Greyhound bus full of weird, shady characters, and makes a stop at an intergalactic truck stop where you can get space Slurpees and some sort of snack that gets pooped out of an alien slug. A lot of genuinely creative people worked on this movie, and that effort pays off in creating a grotesque, broken-down universe that doesn’t feel that far off from life in 2026.
To an extent, I also appreciated that this is a smaller-scale, largely self-contained story that’s under two hours. Kara’s not trying to save the world, just save her dog and take down one group of sci-fi sex marauders. A bit more time to make the movie have less of a generic plot and more detailed characterization would have helped. The bad guy’s incredibly generic, Kara’s sidekick Ruthye (Eve Ridley) doesn’t do a lot, nor does an appearance from Jason Momoa as Lobo, a cigar-smoking, motorcycle drivin’ bounty hunter.
Kara herself isn’t really a character you want to spend a whole movie with, either. Born on basically a bubble ruin of the remains of Krypton that also died off agonizingly slowly over the years due to Kryptonite poisoning, she’s a disillusioned and angry shell of a person, drawing stark contrast with her cousin. That’s why she’s mostly alone, other than her dog or getting drunk in the broadest Hollywood way ever. Ana Nogueira’s script thankfully avoids bland, fake-capitalism girl-power, but it lacks any substantial exploration of Kara’s grief. The movie can’t go too dark, or we might not ultimately like Kara, so it just stays in a muddled grey.
Instead, we’re just waiting for Kara to don her costume and become Supergirl. Alcock was cleverly cast based on her role as the younger version of Rhaenyra Targaryan, a plucky princess in House of the Dragon not willing to accept her lot in life, but she’s not given a whole lot to do until the end other than be moody. Even in the fight scenes, Kara is restrained in some way, either by not having the right sun or getting poisoned so that she’s conveniently not able to easily overpower the BDSM space pirates. Still, when Kara finally puts on the letter S, it’s immensely satisfying watching her smash through dudes and machines with a giddy, chaotic glee. Superman has duty, Supergirl has fun.
So far, the “Gunn DCU” has shown a lot of care and craftsmanship rarely demonstrated by Marvel these days. Supergirl may have been more competent and overall successful, but more risks and creative turns could have been taken here to overcome superhero fatigue. With a Clayface movie set to debut around Halloween that, allegedly, jumps wholeheartedly into body horror, that may be just the kick in the pants for future DC movies to get weirder and take more chances.