Supergirl

Then there’s all the superhero stuff. We’ve had several decades of superhero battles…even Superman battles, yet every action sequence here looks and feels like it was made by effects artists who just graduated from “computer school.” The final battle is an embarrassment, and the space bus sequence is boring.

But the real issue is the story and the dialogue, and it’s unsophisticated and uninspired from start to finish. I could have written this script, and if I could have, it would mean it’s a bad script. There’s no nuance anywhere in it. Kara’s character arc is barely an arc at all: she starts depressed, becomes a reluctant hero, gets outsmarted and nearly beaten by the villain, then wins because…because of a natural event (spoiler here, so I’m being vague). That’s it. That’s the whole movie.

“I could have written this script, and if I could have…it’s a bad script.”

Krem is the villain because he’s a man… and mean… and bad… and not one scene bothers to explain why. No motivation, no logic behind the cruelty, nothing. It’s trust-me-bro, he’s bad because the script says he’s bad. Ruthye’s revenge plotline doesn’t fare much better. It’s a story we’ve seen a hundred times, and this version resolves it about as poorly as it’s ever been resolved, complete with a girl boss jailbreak that wouldn’t survive five seconds of real-world logic. Add in the eye-rolling “feminist moments” that land with all the subtlety of a brick, and you’ve got a screenplay without a single original thought. It lacks any moment of real inspiration or reason to care for Kara, except for the fact that she is a woman in peril. Movies with this kind of a budget should swing for the fences, but instead try to get on base by constantly bunting.

I suppose Lobo is the one bright spot. Jason Momoa brings some actual energy into a movie starving for it. But honestly, as a Marvel fan, I don’t know who Lobo is supposed to be, and I care even less. It might as well have just been Momoa acting cool for all the time he’s on screen.

Supergirl is profoundly awful, an embarrassment, and I’d like to offer my sincere apologies to The Marvels. You are, by far, a better movie than this Supergirl. There are plenty of female indie film screenwriters who are actual fans of the comic book and genre movies in general, who could have written a better script than this and would have deserved the million or two that DC Studios paid for it. Let’s just say that Wonder Woman is in big trouble.