Supergirl

"Supergirl" is a female-led superhero movie, and as such the reviews are utterly useless - there's a loud and obnoxious strain of review-bombers who would have you believe this is the greatest insult to filmmaking ever consigned to the screen, and there's a misguided counter-movement who consequently cannot bear to admit any flaw in the piece. It's really quite maddening.

Supergirl is a character who has had several interpretations on the screen (and, like most superheroes, even more in the comics): there's the "female Superman" iteration portrayed by Melissa Benoist and Helen Slater, there's Sasha Calle's brutalised and damaged version from "The Flash", and here we have Millie Alcock's drunken and messy version. (There's also a version in "Smallville", but I didn't get far enough into that show to see it.) My favourite, generally, is Benoist's take... but I do have to note that "female Superman" is a largely redundant character - it's fine if Supergirl is essentially the only Kryptonian in your shared universe, but doesn't work if you're doing a Cinematic Universe centred around Superman himself. You need something different.

Anyway...

There were parts of this version of "Supergirl" that I really enjoyed, and I thought Millie Alcock was very good indeed in the role. I liked the tone of the piece, and I thought that the action sequences were mostly well done.

Sadly, there was also a significant amount that I just didn't care for. I found pretty much all of the rest of the cast largely wasted - even the usually-reliable Jason Momoa was largely forgettable (though I'm guessing Lobo will appear again...). The villains were bland (more on this later), the secondary hero was wasted, and generally it was just a whole lot of people who existed to take up space. A real shame.

I'm now going to have to go into some spoilers, so if you want to avoid, stop reading now!

There were two things in particular I didn't like about the film. Firstly, Supergirl kept finding herself getting caught out and poisoned, or incapacitated, or poisoned and incapacitated. Once was fine, but this kept happening over and over again. After about the fourth time I really started to get bored - let's just get to the end, please!

The other big problem was the villains of the piece, who were frankly all over the place.

They are introduced as raiders come to shake down a blacksmith to steal some swords - the best ever forged. Fair enough. They proceed to slaughter everyone, leaving the daughter, Ruthye, as the sole survivor. An important note: they were clearly aware that she was there, but just left her.

Ruthye then takes up her family blade, swears revenge, and draws Supergirl into the action. Except that Kara is determined not to get involved - unfortunately for her, Krypto is poisoned and she needs to get the antidote.

Later in the film, having stolen these swords, they then made no use of them whatsoever. Instead, their motivations had changed: they're now an all-male species (how?) who capture lots of young women to be their "brides" and propagate their species. Consequently, they're shown as being quite keen to capture both our heroes.

The key problem with that? Ruthye is the very same daughter that they clearly saw, but just as clearly left alone at the outset of the film. So, really, it would have been much, much easier just to take her right at the start. And then none of it happens.

But the whole "brides" thing is problematic in another way - they're another example of characters existing in the film to take up space, rather than in their own right. As mentioned, Supergirl isn't motivated by this obvious and horrible wrong - she wants the antidote for her dog. Ruthye is motivated by her desire for revenge. In terms of story, both of those are perfectly coherent motives, but they fall somewhat short under the circumstances.

Worse than that, none of the "brides" actually exist as characters. There's one who has a couple of lines (because the script required a reason for a sudden but inevitable betrayal), but barely that.

Thinking on it, it feels like the "brides" were probably added to the script quite late, and so don't really fit with the rest - they probably exist simply to show how beastly the raiders are. And that's fair enough, I guess - they deserved a good punching.

Anyway, "Supergirl" is an okay film. It's not the abomination the review-bombers would have you believe, but it's a long way from being a masterpiece. In terms of similar films, I'd consider it much better than the previous "Supergirl", a little better than "The Marvels" or "Wonder Woman 1984", but less good than "Captain Marvel". It's also much less good than "Wonder Woman", which probably remains the best female-led superhero movie (though itself not without it's flaws).