Supergirl (2026): Binge Drinking on Red Suns and Regret

Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, joins forces with an unlikely companion on an interstellar journey of vengeance and justice when an unexpected adversary strikes too close to home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1-pfiVMKAs

So DC finally hands us Supergirl – and boy, does it come with a side of turbulence. The new movie stars Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor-El (the young House of the Dragon star’s first solo superhero gig) and Eve Ridley as her scrappy new sidekick, Ruthye. Yes, Superman (David Corenswet) even drops by to give his little cousin a pep talk. The official synopsis lays it out plainly: when a ruthless adversary strikes “too close to home,” Supergirl grudgingly embarks on an epic, interstellar quest for vengeance and justice. It’s based on the Woman of Tomorrow comic saga, but be warned: the filmmakers took liberties. So if you went in expecting a page-for-page comic retelling, prepare to be disappointed.

I’m not going to spoil the movie’s twists, but here’s the gist from official sources: Kara’s been partying across planets with red suns (so her Kryptonian powers are muted enough for a real buzz). That wild lifestyle abruptly halts when a vengeance-driven farm girl named Ruthye (Ridley) turns up on her doorstep seeking help. The villain, Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts, in full-space-pirate mode), kills Ruthye’s family and then does something truly despicable: he poisons Supergirl’s beloved dog Krypto. Suddenly Kara has only three days to save her last family member from dying. Cue the galactic road trip: two women bound by rage and grief, hurtling through star systems on the trail of a madman.

The movie’s story (credited to Ana Nogueira, from King’s novel) has a solid premise on paper. A reluctant hero forced back into action by a ticking-clock crisis is a classic setup. In practice, though, the sequel never quite capitalizes on this promise. The first acts skimp on building an emotional foundation, and by the time the big payoff arrives, it asks us to feel a transformation we never earned.

Unlike Clark, who was shipped to Earth as a baby, Kara lived long enough to remember Krypton’s destruction. That grief is supposed to give her depth. The film at least uses this – Supergirl is now a jaded, hard-drinking cynic who never pretends to feel okay. DC Studio boss James Gunn says they wanted a “flawed hero”, and Alcock plays her as exactly that: a punk-faced, cigarette-tossing Kryptonian whose vulnerabilities leak out through every snarky comment.

We get flashbacks to Kara’s past (including a very on-the-nose memory of her parents sending her away like Kal-El’s). Meanwhile, Superman drops by via video call asking when his “kid sister” will be home. It’s a sweet moment, but a lot of the Superman stuff feels tacked on. He’s basically Big Bro in the background – barely present and hardly necessary for Kara’s story.

What is a bit odd is the movie’s early jab at the whole Superman/Supergirl naming convention. There’s a scene where a little girl asks why Kara isn’t called “Superwoman,” and it wanders off into Nietzsche jokes and copyright law before anyone answers. It’s a setup that never pays off, a tiny comedic tease that fizzles. Basically the movie flirts with woke-girl humor (“we’re not called superWOMAN?!”) but then abandons it. In short: the jokes on identity here are weak, and the film’s attempt at clever social commentary barely registers.

Look, I flew into this theater expecting Kryptonite but found a few glints of gold. When Supergirl cruises through actual real sets, the visuals are kinda nice. Rob Hardy – the same cinematographer from Ex Machina and Annihilation – clearly had fun with the color palette. In particular, the “Red Sun” worlds have a mad, desert-like beauty that feels intriguingly alien. Those scenes almost justify pretending there’s no green screen. And when they showed off classic spandex flying, some of the action shots were actually pretty slick – brief moments where Kryptonian flight looks massive and awesome (punching through a throne room in zero-G did give me goosebumps).

Surprisingly, some of the space VFX aren’t a total train wreck. Not every starship explosion is a pixelated blob. It’s just sporadic – a few isolated hits in a sea of misses. For example, the cinematography isn’t consistently bad. When the lighting gels, Hardy’s framing is thoughtful. But there’s a weird recurring problem: he often lit shots against a bright sun behind the action, leaving actors’ faces in total shadow. It’s like a perpetual lens flare festival – pretty for about two seconds, then suddenly Supergirl’s head becomes a silhouette in every scene. Yikes.

For a movie supposedly about cosmic heroines, this one spends two full hours in high school detention. Kara and Ruthye have all the tears, defiance, and eye-rolls of a bad teen drama – minus the subtlety. I’m talking major Gothic-teen-angst: every scene is drenched in voiceover lamenting tragedy, every cigarette drag drenched in ennui. (Honestly, some of the backgrounds in this film look more like mom & pop rocket shops than battlefields. Are we sure she’s an adult?). It’s like watching a moody music video lengthened into a feature.

The humor is similarly absent. When the film tries for humor, it lands with a dull thud. The one joke that got a chuckle was Lobo learning feminism from a teenager (the Guardian called that “the movie’s one clear feminist moment”). Otherwise, it’s more mockery-worthy than hilarious. Tony Stark this is not. The jokes feel cliched or just flat – even DC’s stalwart sarcasm register is on the fritz here. Don’t expect any punchlines; at best there are a few snarky quips, but nothing that will trend on Twitter.

Oh man, the CGI. Remember how Watchmen had a dog and nailed it? Well, Supergirl’s puppy, Krypto, missed the memo. Critics wasted no time roasting this film for its lackluster effects. Ebert’s reviewer pointed out that even Krypto looks like cartoon fur pasted on a toy – literally “Krypto, her CGI dog, that looks… extremely CGI”. I’ll attest to this: when Krypto appears, you know immediately he’s not real. His sullen puppy eyes are as convincing as early 2000s DreamWorks, which is awkward in a drama. This is a dog who was supposed to tug heartstrings, yet his pixelated expression does the exact opposite.

And it’s not just the dog. The movie’s VFX work seems rushed. Several green-screen shots look unfinished – the kind of CGI mistakes you’d expect in a late-night sci-fi TV show, not a tentpole. Backgrounds flicker, ships glow like neon clams, and in fight scenes it’s sometimes obvious they spun the camera around to hide the wonky effects. It’s like DC thought if they spin the screen fast enough, nobody will notice cheap CGI. Unfortunately, we notice. The standards set by Marvel and earlier DC classics (looking at you, Wonder Woman) are higher than what Supergirl delivers. Many audience members actually audibly groaned at some effects.

Jason Momoa’s Lobo was hyped as a big gun – a heavy-metal bounty hunter riding a chopper across the cosmos. Expectations were sky-high: Lobo is a beloved character, after all. Instead, the result is… divisive. I have to side with the cynics: Lobo barges in, does a lame prison-break scene with Ruthye (hey, women teaching a man the ropes? yay), then vanishes. He’s wasted, honestly – a muscle-bound cameo that adds flavor but no real substance. Great DC character, squandered by a rote performance and even worse writing.

Now, let’s talk about kryptonite rules. If you know anything about Superman lore, you’d expect certain ironclad laws: yellow sun = superpowers, red sun = kryptonite effects, etc. Here…things get murky. Supergirl spends much of the film deliberately dodging yellow suns (so she can get blackout drunk under red suns). Fine, clever twist. But then she rapidly hops between planets, sometimes forgetting her power gaps, and it feels inconsistent. Some fans joked it’s like Kara conveniently “forgot” laser vision every time the plot needed her weak. The movie does touch on this: in one scene she lands on Earth speaking Kryptonian, since she just arrived and has no translators. After that, however, everyone speaks English like a space Esperanto. I guess in the DC universe, Earth’s main lingua franca is Terran English? It’s goofy – one minute she’s swearing in alien tongues, the next they’re all chatting like this is Star Trek: Universal Dub. Let’s call it a suspension of disbelief: real aliens have subtitles, ours just roll with it.

All this adds up to a film that’s shockingly not as bad as I was predicting…yet still disappointing. I went in expecting the worst (after all, DC comics films have been known to crash and burn), and I came out thinking, “Well, that wasn’t a nightmare…just a mild brain freeze.”

If I learned one lesson, it’s this: when Kara Zor-El says “I have nothing left to lose,” the movie follows suit. In the end, Supergirl is slightly better than my expectations (those were in the gutter), but still far below where it should be. It’s entertaining in fits and starts, mostly when it leans into action or those little sparks of design flair. If you’re a die-hard DC fan, sure, see it once and enjoy Milly’s performance. But don’t expect a masterpiece – or your girlfriend to smirk at its feminist one-liners.

Score: 5.8/10 (Just Super Enough)