I Saw Supergirl - It Needed a Script Doctor and a Better-Suited Director
TL;DR: I loved the goofy space aesthetic and thought Alcock and Momoa were good, but the movie needed clearer power rules, fewer competing emotional arcs, and more consistency. There are the bones of a good movie here, but it needed another pass on the script and stronger direction. 3.5/10.
Like Fantastic Four: First Steps, this had the bones of some good ideas. I enjoyed seeing the characters, but I felt like the script needed a tune-up and the better direction needed to bring the underlying ideas to life. I thought it was worth seeing, but mostly because (a) I'm a huge Super-family fan, and (b) it was really hot outside and I needed something to do in air conditioning.
What I liked
- I enjoy James Gunn's goofy vision of space culture. I like the design aesthetic and just enjoy seeing things like the space bus, Lobo, and the space shanty towns.
- I thought Alcock and Momoa both gave good performances.
Where it fell short
1. The depowering needed better rules.
This is a problem in almost every Super-family movie, but they needed a better solution than constantly depowering Kara to create stakes. Depending on the scene, I found myself asking either, "Why isn't Kara dead?" or "Why are the Brigands still standing?"
My suggestion would be to return to the old idea that Kryptonians store yellow-sun energy. They can still use that reserve under a red sun, but once the tank is empty, it's empty. If done consistently, every time Kara used her powers, the audience would know she's burning through a limited resource, creating tension.
2. The movie needed more exposition and consistent power scaling.
Why isn't Kara dead after the first fight over the sword? Does she still have some powers under the red sun? If so, which ones?
Krem throws a tank. Does that mean all the Brigands have super strength? How much?
How does Krem know so much about Kryptonians if only two have ever left their planet and both live on Earth?
The movie could probably explain all of these things - it just doesn't.
3. There were too many emotional storylines.
The movie should have picked two or three of these:
- Clark gives Kara a supersuit and wants her to become a hero, but she thinks it's stupid, then eventually embraces it.
- Kara is angry over the destruction of Krypton and Argo City, but learns that she can form meaningful relationships and help other people.
- She reluctantly develops a big-sister relationship with Ruthye and realizes how much Ruthye means to her.
- She decides she has to protect Ruthye from the consequences of revenge, but believes she herself is morally compromised enough to bear those consequences.
- She learns the meaning of her mother's advice that it's essential to be good, but that doesn't necessarily mean being nice.
- The Brigands are a species whose survival depends on widespread s-x slavery.
Maybe a genius could weave together more than two or three of those, but I didn't think this movie took the time to earn any of them. I would have much preferred a slower, deeper development of just a few of the themes.
Two of these underdeveloped themes are particularly difficult.
First, the storyline where Kara protects Ruthye from revenge, then apparently decides she's morally compromised enough to carry out that revenge herself, is lifted straight out of True Grit and other Westerns like The Searchers and Shane. The difference is that those protagonists are adults with long histories of violence. Kara is a traumatized party girl with survivor’s guilt after the fall of Krypton and Argo City. Those aren't the same thing. If you want her to fill that Western antihero role, then earn it. Give me a flashback where she kills people and has to live with the consequences that explains where she apparently is emotionally at the time of the movie.
Second, I would not have made the Brigands an interplanetary society of r-pists and s-x slavers. But if you're going to go there, then live with the implications.
First, it makes Kara's decision not to get involved seem astonishingly selfish. Them killing Ruthiye’s parents is the LEAST of the reasons she should power up and deal with them! She speaks space languages, knows all about tech pirates and space bus schedules, but she's never heard of these guys? Or she has heard of them and simply doesn't care?
Second, once you've established that this group are space r-pists, they would never kill Kara or abandon her in the half-green-sun desert hoping she dies. To them, she would be the single most valuable woman in the galaxy. Lock her up on a red-sun world, and every child she has would be half-Kryptonian.
So, like I said, I think there's a good movie buried in here. Give the script to a great script doctor and the movie to a director more suited to it, and I think it could have been something pretty good. It probably still would have lost a lot of money, but it could have been good.