Culture
Now Playing: ‘Supergirl’ gives us the messy Superhero we need
By: Gordon Briggs
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Superman is the symbol for truth, justice, and the American way. He’s a figure of optimism and strength.
Playing like True Grit meets Mad Max: Fury Road, we follow Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl (played with a prickly energy by Milly Alcock) , who, while both mourning her traumatic past and celebrating her 23rd birthday, teams up with a young girl named Ruthye, and her dog Krypto and space outlaw named Lobo to embark on an intergalactic journey to hunt down the space pirates who murdered the girl’s family.
In spite of its flaws, I feel the film largely works because of how it conceives Kara Zor-El’s character. Alcock isn’t just playing this character as “dark” like Batman, or with the smug snarkiness of a Deadpool. Rather, Alcock plays Kara as a wry, disillusioned teenager, mixing the self-confidence of a superpowered hero with the sorrow of someone burying their personal trauma in a bottle of booze. That choice of vulnerability and isolation makes her more relatable than most other super-powered IP heroes.
What’s entertaining is how appropriate Kara’s interaction feels for a culture exhausted by caped heroes. This Kara feels fatigued and disinterested with the whole idea of being a hero. Plus, Alcock never seems to soften those flaws to make her more conventionally likable.
Something I appreciate about this film is how it knows we’ve seen other Superhero films before. Rather than making Kara’s story an ’origin story’ that begins with her learning about her powers and forming a likable crew of fellow heroes, this movie drops us right into the middle of Kara’s turbulent life. When we first meet Kara, she isn’t drawing her trademark red cape. Instead, she’s cloaked in a brown trench coat and is partially hungover. It may seem like a minor costume choice, but nuances like that help emphasize how different Kara is from her cousin, Superman.
Plus, it helps the audience realize she isn’t a glamorous Earth protector yet; she is a hardened, chaotic loner who doesn’t care about looking like a perfect woman superhero we so often see from this genre.
This idea can also be seen in the film’s visual design, which intentionally rejects the bright, shiny grandeur that defines modern blockbusters and instead pulls us towards the dirt, setting the story in rustic, often grimy locations that echo its “Wild West in space” aesthetic. Kara is a hero who operates as a cynical cosmic traveler, bouncing between alien planets on gritty “space buses” rather than the warm coziness of her cousin from Kansas.
As much as I was entertained by the character of Supergirl, this film is not without its flaws. For instance, the movie feels as if it’s been cut and recut to heighten its humor and soften some of its darker edges. Plus, as fun as Jason Momoa’s Lobo can be, it never felt like the outlaw Lobo had a substantial relationship with Supergirl. Plus, many of its action scenes are heavy on CG spectacle and needle drops of popular songs we’ve seen dozens of times before. Overall, I don’t think this is a super movie, but it’s still an entertaining popcorn flick that hopefully has a star- making performance at its center.
★ ★ ★