Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow had the right stuff for a screen adaptation, in that it was a good idea and a decent story weighed down by some flaws that could be easily edited out. It was a high-concept twist on Charles Portis’ True Grit, with Kara Zor-El serving as Rooster Cogburn, an intriguing reinterpretation that weaponized the character’s iconography in a way that distinguished her from her big blue boy scout cousin. Evely’s art was above reproach, but King’s languid prose, adapting Portis’ high-falutin’ precociousness in a particularly precious way, weighed down the entire endeavor in a way that I didn’t particularly care for. I’ve got to emphasize my reaction there, given how many readers responded to it, and this was something that a transition to the screen could fix. Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl jettisons that aspect and retains the plot framework, but it’s a rougher than its source, to say nothing of how it suffers in comparison to DC Studios head honcho James Gunn’s Superman. It’s a Supergirl story that is fundamentally not about her, and attempts to rejigger it to make Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) more central to the narrative rob it of most of its dramatic power. If Superman was a warm hug, Supergirl, much like its protagonist, wants to keep you at arm’s length while it gets plastered.
That, in short, describes Kara’s day-to-day existence, trekking from red sun-lit bar to red-sun lit bar with her dog Krypto (Krypto), where the liquor can do its job right (remember, she’s only super when she’s under a yellow sun — put her under a red giant, and she’s capable of getting shitfaced as well as your average Thirsty Thursday frat boy). Who can really blame its heroine for descending into drink and debauchery when she grew up in a city carved out of Krypton’s shattered crust, floating in the void, watching everyone around her die of radiation poisoning from the now-exposed and activated Kryptonite beneath the brush? Her cousin, Clark (David Corenswet), can’t, though he does his best to stay in touch, hoping she’ll come back to visit on Earth. She’s never felt at home there, much as she tried, and would rather get shitfaced on backwater planets than try. But trouble always finds people with superhero costumes in their space-RV, and that trouble looks like a little girl with a big, silver sword.
Enter our Maddie Ross analogue, Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a young woman who watched her family die at the hands of the Brigands, a sect of marauders with a particularly bad set of tenets. Her father was a swordsmith, and the sword she wields is the last bit of his handiwork she has left. What she wants, more than anything, is vengeance on their leader, Krem (Matthias Schoenarts), the food-obsessed AliExpress Immortan Joe with their blood on his hands. She’s committed enough to walk into a bar filled with tough customers and ask for help, and naïve enough to walk into a bar filled with tough customers to ask for help. Kara bails her out of that jam with some fisticuffs and a mallet, and, impressed, the girl begins to follow her around, begging her for assistance. She wants no part in this drama, but Krem’s got other plans. He and his gang steal her ship and, worse, they poison Krypto. In the words of one other Rooster Cogburn in one of his more iconic roles, “that rug really tied the room together.” Oops! I meant “this aggression will not stand, man.”
With a 72-hour time clock until Krypto goes to that big farm upstate to chase rabbits, Kara and Ruthye set about the dark corners of the galaxy, in search of the Brigands. These dark corners look an awful lot like the ones Rocket Raccoon and Groot ventured through in the Guardians of the Galaxy films, and, of course, Kara’s got her own iPod full of tracks that correspond well to the ongoing action. The ethos governing this style is more error-strewn and distant — it lacks the personal touch that Gunn brought to the enterprise — but it’s not a bad riff, as derivatives go. What it really needs is the strong characterization that defined those films, and Ana Noguera’s screenplay can’t seem to replicate it here, even with Gunn as producer. Alcock’s caught between competing visions of her character as both a tough warrior badass and deeply wounded malcontent, and though she does a decent job, the writing keeps her from uniting them as a cohesive whole. Likewise, Schoenarts is asked to portray a generic villain, whose most notable trait is that he apparently knows the same craft services people that kept Brad Pitt well fed in Ocean’s 11. But, hey, at least Jason Momoa finally got to play the all-too-’90s grizzled biker “bastich” Lobo, which is grafted on here as a vestigial element from King’s earlier pitch for the Woman of Tomorrow comic. Good things come to those who do dead-in-the-water Aquaman sequels.
Supergirl isn’t without its charms, though. Gillespie’s a better filmmaker than many think, with strong fundamentals and a detail-oriented skill set that’s primed for both mass-market entertainment and, as is the case here, franchise work. That last bit isn’t to damn him with faint praise – to make something as interesting out of Cruella is a feat in itself, especially with the Mouse breathing down his neck presumably about every Vivianne Westwood reference — and he does well enough when he’s working with his design team. The sets are quite nice, with one dilapidated world recalling the kind of large, textured and well-constructed sets you’d see regularly in the ‘90s, such as in Paul W.S. Anderson’s Soldier. It’s weird to be nostalgic about that, but, well, here we are. The practical VFX work is impressive as well, and there may be no better justification for a high budget than a scene in which Supergirl and her charge are… forced to take a cross-galaxy bus filled with aliens, presumably on their way to the Mos Eisley Cantina for a pint. It’s a fun place to spend a few minutes, though it’s almost immediately undercut by the aspects of big-budget superhero action that Gillespie (and the medium at large) struggles with.
That, sadly, happens to be the action. Aside from one fun speed-ramped fight scene near the end (which also happens to be set to a cover version of Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle”), in which Kara tears her way through a Fury Road convoy, the fight scenes are chopped up and difficult to follow. Larger set-pieces are even worse, with so many moving parts that Gillespie, let alone the audience, has trouble making sense of what’s happening. Add a too-dark lighting scheme, and some rushed digital effects to this mixture, and you wind up with a picture that’s fundamentally unsatisfying, not to mention the Gunn-imposed “intense struggle until ultimate triumph” narrative, which sees Kara brought down to Earth each time she tries to, you know, kick ass. This works when you have something to build towards, either as catharsis (Krypto beating the hell out of Lex Luthor) or thematically (that wonderful Iggy Pop resolution), but Gillespie’s been dealt a poor hand. All he can build towards is a shrug that hints at potential conflict to come, primarily because he’s been written into a corner.
Noguera’s screenplay is ultimately what sinks Supergirl, and its biggest mistake comes quickly in how it adapts King’s writing for the screen. True Grit, as a novel or a film, would not work if Rooster Cogburn were the main character (Hollywood tried that with John Wayne’s iteration of the character, and it became a generic Wayne western, with the main difference being the Duke having an eyepatch on). King understood this, and as much as I disliked his imitation of Portis’ writing, the story rightly centers on Ruthye and her quest to avenge her family’s deaths – and whether or not it would be right to make the perpetrator pay for his misdeeds in blood. Her shifting perception of Kara and the growth of their friendship give the story meaning and resonance, and, for all the issues I had with it, Woman of Tomorrow ends on a lovely note that affirms the lasting nature of that bond and its effect on both women. By jettisoning most of the detail and shifting to Kara’s perspective, Noguera effectively strips the tale of its impact – this is a battle-of-the-week for her, whereas for Ruthye, this is the most important 72 hours of her life. The resolution is as frustrating as it is flippant, casually bringing us back to the “do as I say, not as I do” school of superheroics that Gunn tried to jettison with Superman.
This brings us to the part of the review in which I try to predict, for those who care, what effect this might have on the DCU’s future, and, honestly, I don’t think it’ll be catastrophic if it underperforms critically and financially. It’s a handy improvement on the Helen Slater Supergirl from the ‘80s, though Peter O’Toole is sorely missed, and its position in the shared-universe construction project means it’s not load-bearing, much like how Kenneth Branagh’s Thor didn’t lead to the collapse of the MCU. But none of that really matters while you’re watching Supergirl struggle and fail to bring what could have been a slam-dunk adaptation to the screen, and it’s hard to recommend even for Krypto-watching purposes. The dude’s convalescing for most of the runtime, and, man, what a bummer.