Alright! Today I'm reviewing 2026's Supergirl, the first feature-length movie to star the last daughter of Krypton since 1984's infamous failure. An adaptation of DC's acclaimed Woman of Tomorrow miniseries, Supergirl is a sci-fi revenge story that sees Kara Zor-El team up with Ruthye Marye Knoll to exact revenge on Krem of the Yellow Hills, who murdered Ruthye's father and wounded Krypto the Super-Dog.
I'm going to try and not compare Supergirl to the comic source material very much - one, it's not a fair fight, and two, Supergirl is so different from the source material that it qualifies as an Eragon, Artemis Fowl, or Last Airbender-level failure of an adaptation. The bigger question is if Supergirl can stand on its own two legs as a sci-fi adventure, emotional revenge story, and satisfyingly fulfill Kara's unlikely hero's journey.
The short answer is no, no it cannot. Supergirl is actually pretty terrible. While some movies like Madame Web can still be enjoyable as an iconically bad movie, Supergirl is just a forgettably bad movie. You've seen every character dynamic before, you know exactly how scenes will end once they start, there are no notable themes or moments of humour, and they apparently forgot to render the entire third act. On top of it all is the ugly, oppressive, demeaning stink of the colors brown, tan, and yellow.
There are a lot of problems with the Supergirl movie, but perhaps my single biggest issue is just how ugly it is. This very well could be the ugliest movie ever made. I don't know who is specifically responsible for the color grading, but Supergirl is the kind of movie that should get cinematographer Rob Hardy blacklisted from Hollywood. Despite visiting an array of alien planets and encountering eclectic alien puppets, every single scene in Supergirl drowns under the murky, dingy, dusty atmosphere. The problem is further compounded by the lighting team deciding that being backlit is the single coolest thing a movie can be, so a lot of the acting is hardly visible. I remember watching Gladiator a few weeks ago and being impressed by how visible all the night scenes were; Supergirl is the sort of movie that makes Gladiator's night scenes look impressive.
All of this poop-stain color comes to a head for a viscerally ugly final fight that might trigger fight-or-flight reflexes in audience members. The setting is ripped from The Flash and the graphic work from Black Widow, both of which are placed in a blender to produce a truly baffling finale that has the worst needle-drop since "Just A Girl" in Captain Marvel. Physics, visual effects, character motivations, and thematic strength all go out the window for a finale that takes visual cues from the namesake twisters in Twisters.
To that end, the sets and alien designs are equally ugly and unimpressive. There are a few space pirates that look like aborted Star Trek: The Original Series extras and every non-humanoid alien looks like every bug-eyed creature in Mos Eisley smooshed into one. I remember commending The Mandalorian & Grogu for its extensive puppetry - I think I need to learn more about puppets, because whatever Supergirl was doing did not work.
The humour was not hit-or-miss; it was a constant miss. I watched this with a full audience who laughed only when Seth Rogen or David Corenswet were onscreen, everything else was met with a profound silence (although the finale's needle-drop did earn a few unintentional chuckles and hysterical laughter from at least one audience member). Every comedic attempt to make Kara a quirky anti-hero or Ruthye an inexperienced liability or Lobo an energetic scene stealer fell flat on their faces. Especially terrible were the lines of "witty" back-and-forth "banter" between Lobo and Supergirl during fight scenes, ungodly banal dialogue that wouldn't have even made it into Superfriends.
Supergirl is a movie that includes not one, not two, but three scenes where people pee, making sure to cover the audience quadrants of dog, woman, and man. While I appreciate that screenwriter Ana Nogueira stuck to the rule of three, I'm fairly certain it's supposed to feel impactful the third time and not just "why is this happening again." There's also some gross-out humour (although it's unclear if it's supposed to be funny) where characters will steal or swap food. Kara shares Lucky Charms with Krypto, Krem takes Kara's dirty bowl from the sink and drinks the leftover milk out of it (gross), and he later drinks out of the same milk vial as she did. It's small character choices like these that made Krem a truly terrible villain.
I have heard many a commentator say (or imply) that Krem is bland in this movie because he's bland in the comic - I take issue with that statement, but I'm not comparing Supergirl to the comic yet. In the self referential context of the film, he's just a boring and less-than-generic obstacle for Supergirl to punch. He's said to have the strength of a thousand men, although we don't know why and he never uses it. In the same way a cartoon villain steals a lollipop from a baby, Krem shoots a dog and murders a child for no other reason than because "he's a bad guy." His clique, the Brigands, raid the galaxy to kidnap and rape underage girls (It's never called rape in the movie, just "marrying"), a topic so dark that Supergirl can't do anything other than awkwardly grimace every time it gets mentioned. His design is a far departure from the comic's red-headed elf man, looking like a generic cross between Taserface and the Reavers.
Unfortunately, Kara doesn't fare much better as the film's protagonist. The reluctant/unlikely/begrudging/kind-of-a-mess hero with a chip on their shoulder has been done before, and the movie doesn't have any interesting ways to challenge her god-like abilities. She plays like a messy Star-Lord more than anything else, complete with a retro headset, vintage tunes, dirty spaceship, plucky attitude, and overcoat (but, instead of Star-Lord's red, it's brown. Again with the brown). But while Star-Lord was never actually cool, Supergirl tries reaaaaalllllly hard to convince you that Kara is too cool for school.
This isn't a critique of the kryptonite darts, poison, or red and green sun elements in the film that temporarily depower Kara, but believe me when I say that Supergirl is constantly being nerfed in order to allow Krem to escape. She either doesn't fully utilize her powers, forgets she has them at all, or plays crowd control instead of neutralizing the immediate threat. Kara and Ruthye's inevitable mid-movie fall-out is as clichéd as it is predictable, and their eventual reunion one scene later makes the entire thing weightless.
On that end, Supergirl is a movie full of plotholes. It's not often that I find myself thinking about logical fallacies in movies, but Supergirl just kept 'em coming at a relentless pace. I really hope that How It Should Have Ended has a fan-written HISHE, because I have a few notes:
- Why didn't Supergirl use her x-ray vision or superhearing to locate Krem on the second planet they visit?
- Why didn't the brigands move their ship continually towards the green side of the planet? They knew that Supergirl was on the same planet as them, but instead they confront her in broad yellow daylight.
- Everyone at the bar heard about the sword and most of them had guns. Someone definitely could have taken out a drunken, de-powered Kara.
- Why didn't Krem kill Ruthye alongside the rest of her family? Why did he take none of her father's swords?
- Ruthye gains teleportation abilities, once into a ceiling vent and once several meters across a very long field.
- What is the point of preserving Ruthye's innocence when she already murdered that one dude to escape her prison cell?
- Supergirl uses her laser beams to punch a hole in the ship that's, like, twenty feet high and wide. She's not Cyclops, y'all, the laser beam doesn't get that big.
- If the Brigands have a poison powerful enough to kill super-people, why don't they use that more often?
Overall, I give Supergirl a 2/10. "If the best part of your Supergirl movie is Superman, you failed on a fundamental level."
Fanboy Problems
Now, on a far more niche level of comparison, it is truly amazing how badly Supergirl fumbled the Woman of Tomorrow ball. Now, full disclosure, Woman of Tomorrow is my favorite comic book of all time. It has one of my favorite comic issues ever (#3), the art is amazing, there are so many character-defining moments, every planet is exotic and new, it's ridiculously clever, emotionally resonant, the medieval-fantasy stuff is really cool in space, and the overall message and theme of the series are extraordinary. It's the definitive Supergirl story and has been wildly successful among fans. I've lent my personal copy to at least five different people, all of whom came back raving about it. In short, it is nothing short of spectacular.
If I were personally to adapt Woman of Tomorrow, I'd take my keyboard and click ctrl c + ctrl v and try to match the book exactly. Maybe alter some things - Comet might be a bit too much for the audience - but everything else? Yeah, a 1:1 replica. I mean, if the source material is critically acclaimed and fans have already given audience feedback as to what works for them, it sounds like a pretty easy slam dunk. Just take everything that worked and adapt it! I truly don't understand why Hollywood doesn't do this more often. Project Hail Mary was extremely faithful to the book and was universally adored by audiences! As was Harry Potter! And The Lord of the Rings! Even Twilight! And then you look at what bombs and it's stuff like Eragon, Artemis Fowl, and, yes, Supergirl.
Supergirl isn't a Batman movie taking visual cues from Year One or The Long Halloween, this was announced, developed, and created as a clear adaptation of Woman of Tomorrow, to the point that the movie originally had that subtitle. The final product baffles me greatly, the most baffling part of which is how screenwriter Ana Nogueira took every single thing that was interesting or unique about the comic and made it generic and derivative.
For example, the comic has the same premise; Krem shoots Krypto the Super-Dog and only he knows the antidote, so Supergirl has to team up with Ruthye to find him and save the dog (Since Supergirl was blackout drunk when this happened, she needs Ruthye because she remembers Krem's face). But at the end of the comic it's revealed that Krypto has been just fine this whole time! She took him to a vet on Earth and he's a-okay. Why she actually took Ruthye on this intergalactic adventure was to teach her that revenge is not the answer and that vengeance isn't resolution. After defeating the Brigands, Supergirl reaches a breaking point and is ready to kill Krem, saying to Ruthye:
"You weren't going to learn that killing is wrong just by me saying it. You were going to waste the rest of your life chasing this ****, dreaming about this worthless ****. Like I would dream about Krypton. I had to show you. I took you with me, hoping you'd learn about... I don't know... something. But... But you didn't learn, did you? Which makes all the sense in the world, because I couldn't teach you. Because... I still dream of Krypton."
Ruthye, of course, implores her not to kill Krem and screams that she did learn her lesson, cites every time Supergirl showed kindness, and eventually Supergirl relents. It's a beautiul, beautiful, beautiful moment.
In the movie, this is instantly thrown out the window when Krypto is hit by a venom dart that gives him three days to live. Krem carries the antidote on his person (because the script says so), meaning Supergirl and Ruthye are on a time crunch to find this guy. In ten minutes they destroyed the entire theme, moral, and best reveal of the original comic. Now it's just a standard revenge story.
Krem is also changed a ton. A lot of people have said that Krem in the comic is uninteresting, but what I think they mean is that he's not very complex. He's simply a very vain man who killed Ruthye's dad after a spat, got involved with genocidal maniacs for funsies, and then at the end is completely unrepentant of the fact that he murdered Ruthye's honourable father. It's how gleefully evil he is, how much he delights in murder, and how disgusted Ruthye and Kara are by him that make him such a fearsome foe, whilst the Krem in the movie doesn't seem to feel anything. He just does things because the character description is "evil" and the script says he should stab a child. And so he does. Additionally, his comic design of a traditionally handsome redhead adds to the appeal - the things he does are so atrocious because he seems normal. All of this is lost in the movie's dominatrix Krem design.
It's representing all that is evil vs. being just... evil.
The things that do make it into the movie are perplexing. The fact that Kara's mom watches a tree from her window means that somebody read issue #6, where the tree is distinctly described as having red and blue leaves. In the movie it only has red... and yes, this is a legitimate complaint that I have. I'm stupefied that they would go through the effort of animating a CGI tree as a quick reference for the fans, but then fail to do the reference properly. Why not the blue? Did they only do red because that's closer to brown?
The same goes for the green sun, which in the comic is made of Kryptonite and illuminates a world full of dinosaurs that was designed as a trap to kill Superman. That particular issue gave Ruthye a chance to meaningfully aide Supergirl and give her the battle experience she needs to kill Krem; meanwhilst in the movie, the green sun is included, but it's not made of kryptonite. I guess Kryptonians are just allergic to the color green like the Lanterns are to yellow. Instead of giving Ruthye a chance to protect Kara and validate herself in the story, she immediately gets kidnapped by the Brigands and Supergirl just has to thug the green sun out. What does that mean? It means that the movie just invented a way to delay Kara from destroying the Brigand ship and killing Krem. Her and Ruthye surviving the green sun doesn't do anything for the plot. It doesn't aide in the characterization, it doesn't further endear anyone to anything, it's just an invention of the writer to extend the story.
I also disliked the change to Supergirl's origin - in the comic, she watches Krypton explode and then watches Argos slowly die, meaning she watches her entire world crash and burn twice. The movie changes this to being born on Argos, which apparently survived for 2+ decades in space before the kryptonite found it. Again, instead of having the more interesting route of a heroine who watched her entire world die twice despite actively fighting to save it both times, we change it (for no good reason) to her passively watching it die once.
As another example, on the Knight Bus in issue #2, Supergirl and Ruthye run into an intergalactic space dragon that's trying to eat their vehicle. This is changed to be Star Trek-looking pirates in the movie. Would the dragon have been too expensive? I dunno, but apparently Supergirl had a $170 million budget, so I should hope not. Maybe it was too colorful! The blue and purple weren't what they were going for! But again, you have a super interesting, exciting, and unique concept (giant purple space dragon made of flames) overhauled for the Wish equivalent (three pirates).
The next issue is also one I have with the world. I think a lot of people are really misunderstanding Supergirl as a direct result of this movie and poor interpretations of the Woman of Tomorrow comic. In the comic, she turns 21 and goes to a red sun planet to get blackout drunk. She's still Supergirl, she's just celebrating her 21st - an unconventional introduction for Superman's angelic cousin, and thus one sure to grab people's attentions.
In the movie she is a certified intergalactic party girl who is going on week-long benders to distract herself from Argos' destruction. It's a valid change (No way Milly Alcock could pass as 21), but it changes Supergirl's compelling inner turmoil and grief into a very brazen, very generically outward "messy." It's odd that people praise this interpretation of Supergirl as more realistic or natural when it gives me major Zack Snyder's Superman vibes combined with an smarmy Jack Sparrow smarm - wandering around aimlessly, doesn't know if saving people is really worth it, gets terrible parental advice, and is a reluctant hero until personally threatened. The only thing it was missing was Kara snapping Krem's neck and screaming in anguish - instead, Kara just straight-up stabs Krem twice and he dies.
What was all that about, anyway? Remember that beautiful theme I talked about earlier where Supergirl went on the adventure to teach Ruthye that murder is wrong and revenge is not fulfilling? In the movie she gives a nod of approval to the "brides" that escape and kill the Brigands, but frequently prevents Ruthye from killing Krem. Then at the end of the final fight she herself kills Krem. It's the literal exact opposite of the entire point of the comic and at a direct contrast with what the movie itself was promoting. Once again, baffling.
Additionally, her defeating (killing) Krem isn't at all related to her deciding that Earth is a good place to settle down or helping her overcome Krypton-related trauma. She just ends up on Earth because she decided to off-screen, because none of what happened in the movie should convince her that Earth is cool. Even the movie's final message of telling Ruthye to settle down and live past her trauma is completely undone by a throwaway gag. If anything, Supergirl found a 13 year-old drinking buddy to get hammered with.
Perhaps the most devastating loss is the beauty of the comic.
There are two types of beauty in the Woman of Tomorrow comic: The first is how very much "punk rock" the comic is. More than any of the plot details, the things I wanted to see in the movie were Supergirl teaching Ruthye how to wash her hands, helping an old man dig graves for his deceased loved ones, feeding soup to one of Krem's victims, being disturbed and horrified by the evil potential of man, and in general being a nice person. In fact, I'd argue that the comic Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is just as much a hopecore work as the 2025 Superman is, if not more so. While Supergirl is angrier and more sarcastic than her cousin, she's still kind and gentle when she needs to be, an element that the movie completely leaves out.
The other beauty is just how beautiful the comic is. Bilquis Evely's artwork and Mat Lopes's coloring are absolutely stunning in the comic and were universally acclaimed. In fact, I think that if you asked fans in 2023 what they expected from this movie, a lot of the answers would have to do with how drop-dead gorgeous the visuals should be in order to do the comic justice. This makes the commitment to brown, yellow, and tan all the more disturbing.
My Personal Beef with Variety
I'd also like to disagree with the Variety article that said Supergirl's abysmal box office indicates a trend where audiences will reject lesser-known comic book protagonists; I'm calling that out as pure b.s. First, they list Captain America as a lesser-known character and Deadpool as a marquee Marvel character (objectively false on both accounts), and second, I think Supergirl is actually one of DC's better known protagonists - if she doesn't qualify, well, I guess future Nightwing, Green Arrow, and Zatanna movies are all screwed. Supergirl literally starred in her own CW show last decade, is currently starring in the critically acclaimed My Adventures with Superman, and was explicitly teased at the end of Superman. People are aware of Supergirl.
Like, who does DC even have that's more well-known than Supergirl? Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Joker, Harley Quinn, and maybe Green Lantern and Aquaman? That's ridiculous. She's arguably in DC's top 10 most well-known characters, and it's blatantly hypocritical to say Supergirl isn't popular enough and then look forward to Clayface and ask for a Lobo spin-off. And while I get that it's not the genre's heyday anymore, let's not forget that two of the most successful superhero projects post-COVID have been Shang-Chi and Peacemaker. It doesn't matter how niche the concept or character is as long as the movie is actually good.
I think that's been the big lesson of 2026 that Ryan Gosling kicked off when he prophetically said, "Here we are, we’re all back in theaters. It’s not your job to keep them open, it’s our job to make things that make it worth you coming out.” Movies like Project Hail Mary, Hoppers, The Drama, The Sheep Detectives, Obsession, and Backrooms have all broken records whilst big budget franchise movies like Mando & Grogu, Supergirl, and (probably) Moana are crashing and burning.
The lesson? Make a good movie and people will come, or make a sucky movie and play the russian roulette that it pulls Michael numbers and not Supergirl numbers. Evidently DC wasn't very lucky this time; all we can do is hope Clayface does better.
And hope that Woman of Tomorrow gets an animated HBOMax series to make up for this colossal failure.
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