James Gunn’s DC Studios is rolling with their second feature.
Forget Superman for a sec. We are looking at Kara. Milly Alcock is stepping into boots that have mostly belonged to small screen heroines since the CW era. But this isn’t that show. It isn’t Metropolis bright. It lives in the Guardians dirt.
Analog. Gritty. Tactile.
Kara vibes with Star-Lord in the best possible way. The headphones, the attitude, the way she masks her trauma with sardonic banter. Except Peter Quill built a found family. Kara just has her cousin, who she politely calls “nerdy,” and Krypto.
And Krypto is about to die.
A solid entry into the expanding DCU universe.
The dog is the plot engine.
Kara goes galaxy-hopping to save her four-legged best friend from Ruthye’s vengeance mission. Eve Ridley plays young Ruthye with a fury that anchors the emotional side of the film. Meanwhile, the bad guy is Krem. Matthias Schoenaerts plays him.
Spoiler: He has no mustache.
If you read Woman of Tomorrow, the names ring a bell. If you don’t, it hardly matters. The movie borrows the bones but dances to its own tune. David Corenswet shows up as Clark enough to remind us he exists. But this is Alcock’s ride. And the stakes are personal.
Kindness was Superman’s punk rock. What is Kara’s anthem?
Just be good. In a world that tries its damn best to be otherwise.
We see flashbacks of Krypton. Not as a baby launch site for Kal-El but as a childhood lost in fire. She watched her home die. That trauma shapes everything. It shapes why Krypto matters so much. He is her living tether to the only planet she ever really called home.
Three days.
She has three days to fix this. She travels on a clunky space bus. She fights alongside Lobo. Jason Momoa. Let’s just say Momoa is having the time of his life as Lobo.
And then there’s the plot point that feels less “comic book adaptation” and more “homage exercise.”
Krem’s crew kidnaps women. To breed. An all-male species trying to replicate. If that sounds like Mad Max: Fury Road, you are not imagining things. The parallels are heavy. Some will call it original. I call it familiar.
Alcock sells it, though. She carries the weight without breaking her stride. We start with her drunk on a barstool in space. Aiming nothing. Ending with her ready to punch things with purpose.
Schoenaerts leans into the villain role with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It’s camp. It’s Christopher Plummer in Star Trek VI but louder, more feral, and lacking Shakespearean poetry. I didn’t mind. It fits the genre. But it doesn’t hide the fact that the film feels assembled rather than organically grown.
Gillespie directs with competence, but there is a random clunkiness in the script.
Gunn’s pop-scored fights keep the energy high, even if the plot points feel recycled.
I checked out a few times. Not because the movie was bad. It is entertaining. The pacing is good. The needle drops land. But it doesn’t sit as comfortably in the protagonist’s skin as last year’s Superman.
That’s fine. It’s allowed to be slightly uneven.
My one complaint is structural.
Give me more Lobo. Seriously.
Every time Momoa leaves the frame, I want to follow him into the editing bay. A standalone movie needs to happen. Until then, Supergirl does enough to keep you happy. It just doesn’t quite feel like it belongs entirely to itself.
Maybe it finds its footing later.
Maybe not.
