Supergirl Trips Over Its Cape

Supergirl

★

Supergirl is the next film in producer James Gunn’s vision for the DC Comics universe, a follow-up to last summer’s Superman. Supposedly, this film jumped ahead of other planned films because the screenplay was so good.

Someone must have lost a bet somewhere, because the script is amateurish, riddled with bad dialogue, weak character development and nonsensical action scenes.

Milly Alcock as Supergirl with Krypto
© 2026 Warner Bros. Pictures

Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) is known on Earth as Supergirl. She’s the cousin of Clark Kent (David Corenswet), better known as Superman. Both were born on the planet Krypton and both have the same superpowers because Earth’s sun is yellow and Krypton’s is red.

The setup is pretty simple. Kara travels to planets with red suns because Earth’s yellow sun gives her superpowers and keeps her from feeling the effects of alcohol. She’s a party girl, wakes up with hangovers and celebrates when her dog, Krypto, manages to pee more on a newspaper than on the carpet. Kara’s life is a mess, much like the screenplay, and she’s clearly suffering from depression.

Matthias Schoenaerts as Krem
© 2026 Warner Bros. Pictures

The main villain in the film is Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), a boring character who looks like an 8-year-old had too much fun with a Caboodle box full of plastic jewels and superglue.

When Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a girl on one of the red-sun planets, loses her parents to Krem, the Bedazzled villain, she begs Kara to help her catch him, so she can kill him. Kara wants no part of helping Ruthye.

Krem steals Kara’s spaceship and shoots Krypto with a dart laced with a concoction that will kill him in three days. Krem leaves the planet with the antidote, so Kara sets off to catch him, save her dog and help Ruthye get revenge.

Milly Alcock as Supergirl and Eve Ridley as Ruthye
© 2026 Warner Bros. Pictures

Jason Momoa is moderately intriguing as Lobo, even if he channels a muscle-bound version of Beetlejuice. Lobo is a morally ambiguous immortal with a god complex. In the comics, and in this film, he’s known as “The Main Man,” though his character has almost zero impact on this story. I suspect Gunn threw Lobo in to introduce him to audiences as the DC universe expands.

The action scenes take place on other dystopian planets far from Earth. They’re dirty and dusty, unappealing and pretty boring. There’s no exciting backdrop to highlight the fights, and the action sequences themselves are disjointed, hard to follow and a whole bunch of “been there, seen that.”

There are moments where the script seems to want to go deep into Kara’s character. There’s a reason Clark Kent is good-natured and believes people are inherently good. He didn’t witness Krypton’s destruction, and has no memory of the people who died as his spaceship zipped away from the planet. He was a baby when he was shuttled away.

Milly Alcock as Supergirl
© 2026 Warner Bros. Pictures

Kara was also sent off the planet before it blew up, but she was at least in her teens and carries the memory of the destruction of her friends and family. I’ll let the film explain why Clark appears older than Kara now. It’s one thing the film does fairly well.

The script fails to go deep into Kara’s self-destructive tendencies, which play like a clear symptom of severe PTSD. It’s a side of Supergirl we haven’t really seen before in the movies, and it’s a colossal missed opportunity to give her character serious depth. As it plays on screen, Kara is often unlikable, unrelatable and the opposite of heroic.

A final note about the dog. Krypto is wild, untrained and completely unpredictable. He also has superpowers, including super strength. If this film were real, the dog would have already killed someone. Kara might not care for herself very much, but that dog needs some serious training. Of course, that’s the least of this film’s problems.