James Gunn's DCU was supposed to be the fix. Instead, "Supergirl" is proof that a bigger budget and a better comic pedigree can't save a movie from a script that doesn't know what it wants to be. Director Craig Gillespie, who once made the sharp and stylish "I, Tonya," here delivers something closer to a theme park ride with the safety bar broken: loud, disorienting, and over before you've figured out why you're supposed to care.
Alcock Deserves Better
"Supergirl" Is a Bloated, Charmless Mess That Wastes Its Best Asset
"Supergirl" review: Milly Alcock shines but a paper-thin revenge plot, wasted supporting cast and a botched climax sink the DCU's second chapter.
Milly Alcock deserved better. She's got the swagger and the wounded-brat charisma to carry a franchise, and she's stuck delivering hangover jokes and grief-cliché voiceovers in a story that treats "trauma" as a personality trait rather than an actual arc. The much-hyped Mad Max-meets-True-Grit premise sounds great on paper. On screen it's just a parade of snarling alien mercenaries with too many eyes, a script that can't decide whether Kara is a nihilist or a hero, and a CGI dog so obviously fake it undercuts every scene he's in.
The action, when it finally shows up, is muddy and over-edited, and the film saves anything resembling a real superhero moment for the last ten minutes, as if daring you to stay awake for it. Worse, it borrows Gunn's needle-drop, quip-heavy house style without any of his comic timing, resulting in a tone that whiplashes between bleak and jokey without ever committing to either.
At $170-plus million, "Supergirl" isn't just a creative misfire, it's a financial one. With a soft opening well below projections, the film is already being written off as one of the DCU's early stumbles. There's a good movie somewhere in Tom King's source material and in Alcock's performance. This isn't it.
