Alcock’s Supergirl Worth Flying With
The best thing that director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Cruella) and screenwriter Ana Nogueira do with Supergirl is ensure that Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) is her own character with her own traits, desires, and emotional permutations. Unlike so many other live-action versions of the character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, she is not a carbon copy of her cousin Kal-El, aka Superman (David Corenswet). Unlike him, she actually experienced Krypton’s last city suffer an excruciating, painful death, and Kara carries that weight with her. This story does not sugarcoat any of this.
Inspired by the comic book series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, written by Tom King and artist Bilquis Evely, Gillespie’s film is an interstellar adventure about a broken girl with a good heart trying to maintain a solitary existence free from expectation or responsibility. Along with her beloved dog Krypto, she travels from one planet orbiting a red star to another so she can drink her pain away and avoid pep talks delivered by her continually optimistic cousin. It’s not much of a life, but it’s the one she wants, and that’s what matters.
Then she meets Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a teenage girl out to get revenge against the evil Brigand Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts). He nonchalantly murdered her entire family right in front of her. The girl wants Kara’s help to track down and hopefully kill this monster. But the solitary Kryptonian wants nothing to do with Ruthye’s quest for revenge. Nothing, that is, until Krem poisons Krypto, and then the pair have only 72 hours to track the Brigand leader down and get the antidote before the dog dies.
Think of this adventure as a sci-fi variation on Lone Wolf and Cub, John Wick, and any one of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, only with not quite as much imagination or ingenuity. But that does not mean this Supergirl does not entertain. Far from it. There are several moments throughout this colorful intergalactic escapade that brought a smile to my face. I found this follow-up to last year’s Superman to be a fun ride, and if it doesn’t quite soar to the same stratospheric heights, that’s okay, as it introduces a fascinating and complex heroine that I’m eager to see more of going forward.
The motion picture works best as a series of vignettes. The bar where Ruthye and Kara first meet, where the latter retrieves the former’s stolen sword and bests a grumpy adversary with drunken, yet confident, clumsiness, is wonderful. Even better is a later sequence with the twosome on an interstellar bus that’s robbed by a trio of tech-obsessed pirates. Kara’s full powers are incrementally revealed during this sequence as the vehicle floats closer and closer to the healing rays of a yellow sun, and Gillespie displays a visually playful irreverence that suits this set piece nicely.
Another aspect I was drawn to was that Kara was allowed to fail. There is a significant action sequence where she and Ruthye first catch up with Krem — and are (sort of) assisted by mercenary and bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa) — and not everything works out as they intend. Things fall apart on a massive scale, and not everyone gets away unharmed. For Ruthye, this is a life lesson she did not imagine having to face when she set out on her quest. For Kara, it’s another example of why she shouldn’t try to be a hero.
As wonderful as all of that is, Gillespie does have trouble maintaining a consistent pace. There are lulls where the film seems to meander around aimlessly, trying to rediscover solid footing. Even more than producer James Gunn with his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, Gillespie relies way too much on needle drops and canned pop and rock ditties to augment whatever is transpiring up on the screen. They’re everywhere and, especially as events reach their climax, they sadly grow increasingly tiresome.
But the biggest issue is the villain. This is a baddie who murders entire families, multiple times, and has a mission to create a harem of child-brides from all over the galaxy for him and his men. He also shoots Krypto while eating a bowl of cereal, for gosh sakes. Krem is a horrible dude, make no mistake on that front.
This makes it bizarre that this antagonist is such a forgettable nonentity. Schoenaerts tries to make Krem a hissable miscreant, but there unfortunately isn’t a lot for him to work with. He’s bad, sure, but not memorably so, and that’s a problem, especially at the end when Kara has to face an internal moral dilemma as to how best to deal with him.
Thankfully, Alcock is excellent. She has wonderful chemistry with Ridley, and her scenes with David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham (as a youngster during the last days of Argo city) are suitably heartbreaking. The actor brings true pain and pathos to her performance, yet also effortlessly taps into Kara’s inherent goodness and grace with affecting subtlety. Even better is how Alcock is able to showcase an internalized rage that finally bursts forth during her final confrontation with Krem. It’s a superior performance.
Other highlights include the sumptuous production design and the creative practical visual and makeup effects, especially as it pertained to the inventive gallery of alien creatures Kara and Ruthye interact with as they try to stay hot on the Brigand army’s trail. Additionally, while it’s not utilized as fully as I personally would have liked, composer Claudia Sarne (The Book of Eli) has crafted a rousing score. If only there had been more of it.
It’s easy to criticize Supergirl. It has some lumpy plot coincidences and suffers a major villain problem similar to so many other good-not-great comic book adaptations. But when this adventure soars, it does so with vigor and vitality. In Alcock’s hands, Kara Zor-El is her own woman, a superheroic (and something anti-heroic) figure full of idiosyncrasies, nuances, and personal failings that allow her to exist in the same universe as Kal-El yet still be different enough from him that they’re not male-female doppelgängers. I’d fly along with this Supergirl just about anywhere.
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
