REVIEW

‘SUPERGIRL’ Is Boldly Inessential for the DCU’s Sophomore Feature

By Matt Oakes · June 24, 2026

Superhero movies, much like Superman himself, have spent the better part of the last fifty years flying circles around the globe. Universes have triumphantly risen… and fallen into financial, critical, or parasocial disrepute. Franchises have been rebooted, rebooted again, and occasionally rebooted a third, forth, or fifth time just for good measure. While James Gunn’s fledgling DCU is still very much finding its footing, Supergirl – only the second feature in this new cinematic universe – suggests the franchise may have more than a few speed bumps in store in its mission to get off the ground.

Director Craig Gillespie’s cosmic adventure occasionally takes flight, but more often than not feels like a mixed bag: a movie populated by an interesting title heroine, yet burdened by an overwhelming feeling of sameness: familiar storytelling, disposable action, and an over-reliance on sci-fi superhero tropes that have already overstayed their welcome a few phases back. The most frustrating part is that the movie presents a mostly compelling version of Kara Zor-El, it just strands her in this largely rudderless miasma of hacky plotting and visually messy CGI shlock.

As played by Milly Alcock, Supergirl is an interesting counterpoint to Superman and perhaps a logical next step for where to drive this universe. Where baby orphan Clark Kent (David Corenswet) absorbed the kindness and decency of rural Kansas, Kara watched her Krytpotian civilization die up close and personal. We meet her midway through a rather long cosmic bender, bouncing from planet to planet searching for the red sun environs that allow her to get actually get inebriated enough to temporarily forget who she is and where she came from.

It’s a surprisingly messy and emotionally damaged take on a character and Alcock is great at communicating the sweaty exhaustion and self-destructive impulses lurking beneath Kara’s (rarely worn) super suit. She feels like someone still struggling to survive a tragedy she never fully processed, because that’s exactly who she is.

The plot kicks into motion when Kara crosses paths with Ruthye (Eve Ridley), an annoying young girl seeking revenge against a heavily-body-modded space marauder, Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), who murdered her family. Initially uninterested in taking up the girl’s cause, Kara becomes involved after the pinheaded marauder poisons her loyal pup Krypto and commandeers her ship, forcing the pair into an uneasy alliance that sends them bouncing across the galaxy in search of revenge and a dog antidote, respectively.

Which raises the biggest issue with Supergirl: why does her big introductory movie keep insisting on turning her into a babysitter? I understand from the most basic level why the screenplay from Ana Nogueira, Jerry Siegel, and Joe Shuster goes there. Kara is meant to discover her purpose and innate goodness through helping someone else. That’s the arc. But the “lone wolf and cub” template has been run so thoroughly into the ground at this point that it’s impossible not to feel completely blunted to this exact type of cliche story framework.

We’ve seen it in Logan. We’ve seen it in The Last of Us. We’ve seen it in The Mandalorian. It’s coming soon in Star Wars: Starfighter. We’ve seen it everywhere. More importantly, it forces Supergirl to constantly split focus with a child sidekick who never becomes interesting enough to justify the amount of narrative real estate she’s given. Every minute spent servicing that relationship is a minute not spent exploring the more compelling character in the movie: Kara herself.

The decision becomes even stranger given some of the movie’s broader thematic ambitions. There are moments where the screenplay appears at least somewhat interested in themes of gender, exploitation, and violence against women. Krem’s entire operation revolves around abducting women from across the galaxy, trafficking them, and using them as breeding stock. It’s a genuinely horrifying concept and one of the darkest ideas the DCU has introduced thus far: child sex slaves.

Yet the film largely treats this plot point as background noise rather than something worth seriously engaging with. It’s difficult not to notice the contradiction at the heart of the movie. This is ostensibly a film about a female superhero finding her purpose, yet much of its plot revolves around women being victimized, imprisoned, sold, or protected by others. The film seems to want to gesture toward something meaningful here but never seems particularly interested in unpacking or examining it. And again, with child sex slaves. The result is a bit…uncomfy.

From purely a setting perspective, Supergirl fares somewhat better. The various planets Kara visits are populated by bizarre creatures, grimy settlements, and enough strange alien life to keep things mostly engaging on a scene by scene basis. There’s enough intrigue to these worlds and enough alien life to help the film – and larger universe – feel genuinely expansive. The trouble is that almost none of it manages to be distinct.

Everything found in Supergirl is so heavily indebted to James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films that it struggles to ever establish an identity of its own. The oddball aliens, the colorful cosmic settings, the irreverent tone, the found-family dynamics, the unexpected and irreverent needle drops – they are all overly familiar. Because we’ve seen this blueprint. Three times already. It makes sense given Gunn’s role as architect of the DCU, but it also leaves the impression that Gillespie (Cruella, I, Tonya) never quite manages to make the material his own. Instead, Supergirl often is just Gunn-lite, borrowing heavily from a playbook we’ve already seen executed better elsewhere, with a more compelling ensemble.

The action doesn’t help. Much of it devolves into the kind of muddy CGI sludge that has become increasingly common in blockbuster filmmaking. Fights blur together. Visual geography disappears. Set pieces come and go without leaving any kind of an impression. For a character capable of flying through stars and punching spaceships apart, the action rarely feels particularly exciting. It’s dizzying in the wrong way – more exhausting than exhilarating.

Even Jason Momoa’s introduction as Lobo proves more shrug-worthy than eye-popping. Momoa is clearly having fun and possesses enough raw charisma to make almost anything at least quasi-watchable, but the character feels largely shoehorned into the narrative. His presence reads less like an organic addition to the story and more like a way to get a back-door a popular actor back into the DCU as quickly as possible. He’s fine, I guess, which is about the same assessment I’d level at the movie at large.

What’s frustrating is that beneath all of this sits a compelling enough story about finding purpose. Kara begins the film as someone who has survived unimaginable tragedy but never figured out what comes next. She drifts. She drinks. She picks fights. She deliberately exposes herself to danger because danger at least makes her feel something. As the movie ultimately becomes about her discovering that her powers can be used for something greater than self-destruction and revenge, Alcock sells the transformation well enough. I only wish the screenplay did literally anything original with that character so that it doesn’t feel like we’re stuck in a story washing machine on its fourteenth cycle.

But that’s ultimately where Supergirl lands. To its credit, it tells a coherent enough story. It doesn’t feel stitched together from months-later reshoots or Frankensteined into existence around half-finished set pieces like some of the worst offenders in the superhero genre. Gunn’s oft-repeated “start with the script” philosophy somewhat holds up under scrutiny. Yet as the second entry in a brand-new cinematic universe, it feels surprisingly inessential. Superman felt like a mission statement. Supergirl feels like a way too early side quest.

The result is a movie with a strong lead performance from Alcott and just enough personality to remain watchable, but not enough vision to make the future of the DCU feel especially urgent. If the goal was to further invest audiences in this universe and lore, Supergirl falls frustratingly short. As simply a means to further introduce Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El, mission accomplished I guess? She’s the best thing in the movie. As for everything else, it’s a disposable, inessential mixed bag that fails to answer the biggest question of all: why do we continue to make superhero movies in 2026?

CONCLUSION: Although Milly Alcock remains inspired casting as Kara Zor-El, ‘Supergirl’ leans too heavily on worn-down sci-fi and superhero tropes to fully capitalize on its strongest asset. Director Craig Gillespie and DCU architect James Gunn have crafted a perfectly serviceable cosmic adventure about purpose and belonging, but one that repeatedly pulls focus from its most compelling character, leaving the DCU’s sophomore feature feeling more like a detour than a destination.