Supergirl has a clear idea of what makes Kara Zor-El different from her cousin. Superman looks at the world and sees people worth saving. Kara has lived long enough to see how often the world fails them.
That distinction gives the second film in James Gunn’s new DCU its strongest material. Kara is not introduced as a polished symbol of hope, or even as someone particularly interested in heroism. She is 23, stranded emotionally as much as physically, drinking herself numb on red-sun worlds where her powers are weakened enough for pain to feel ordinary. Milly Alcock plays her with a jagged mix of grief, impatience and reluctant decency. The performance does much of the heavy lifting, but it is good enough to make the film feel alive whenever its script begins to coast.
Directed by Craig Gillespie and adapted by Ana Nogueira from Tom King’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the film follows Kara as she crosses paths with Ruthye Marye Knoll, a teenager hunting Krem of the Yellow Hills, the man who murdered her family. Kara initially wants nothing to do with the girl’s revenge mission. Then Krem poisons Krypto and steals Kara’s ship, turning an unwanted moral obligation into a race across hostile planets.
The setup is effective because it gives Kara a reason to move while keeping her emotionally guarded. She does not become a different person overnight. She protects Ruthye because she cannot stand by and watch a child be swallowed by the same kind of loss that defined her own life. Alcock handles that tension well. Kara can be funny, sharp and careless, then suddenly reveal the weight underneath it all without turning every scene into a speech about trauma.
Ruthye, played by Eve Ridley, is arguably given the cleaner arc. Her need for revenge is simple, but the film understands that grief can make simple desires dangerous. Kara’s role in that story is less about teaching Ruthye to be gentle than showing her what rage costs when it becomes the only thing holding a person together. The best scenes between them are not the action scenes. They are the quieter moments where Kara tries, awkwardly and imperfectly, to stop Ruthye from becoming another version of herself.
Visually, Supergirl has genuine character. Gillespie and his design team build a grubby, hostile corner of the DCU filled with battered spacecraft, scavenger settlements and strange alien faces that look made rather than rendered. The practical makeup, prosthetics and costuming are often more persuasive than the digital environments around them. There is a clear debt to Mad Max, Star Wars cantinas and the dusty frontier logic of True Grit. The film is at its best when it lets those influences create a rough, lived-in atmosphere rather than merely signal them.
That is where the problems begin. Supergirl has plenty of good ingredients, but it often struggles to turn them into a film with real momentum. The journey from planet to planet starts to feel repetitive, and the story relies on familiar devices to weaken Kara enough for each fight to matter. Wrong suns, poison, kryptonite and physical exhaustion keep the action grounded, but eventually they begin to feel like mechanical solutions rather than escalating dramatic stakes.
Matthias Schoenaerts cuts an imposing figure as Krem. The beads in his face, the machinery attached to his body and his worn-out raider look make him immediately memorable. Yet the screenplay gives him too little beyond menace and cruelty. Krem is supposed to feel like a nightmare emerging from a dead world, but he rarely develops into a villain with a point of view or a presence equal to his appearance. The film’s trafficking storyline gives his crimes disturbing weight, though it is also handled in such a blunt way that it can feel imported to make the story darker rather than woven into its moral centre.
Jason Momoa’s Lobo has the opposite problem. He is entertaining almost immediately, with the right amount of swagger, violence and absurdity. Momoa looks completely at home in the role. Yet Lobo’s presence feels more like an announcement for the future of the DCU than a necessary part of Kara’s story. He adds energy, a few sharp lines and some welcome chaos, but the film never fully justifies why he needs to be here.
David Corenswet’s Superman appears only briefly, but those scenes matter. Kara and Clark have a dynamic worth returning to because neither one cancels out the other. Clark represents the family Kara might still choose. Kara represents the part of Krypton he never knew. The film is smarter when it treats their contrast as emotional history rather than a debate over who is the better kind of hero.
Supergirl does not always find the rhythm it needs. It can be visually striking, then oddly flat. It can be funny, then force a song cue or a piece of attitude too hard. Its plot has the bones of a strong revenge western in space, but the result is often more scattered than elemental.
Still, there is enough here to make Kara’s future feel promising. Milly Alcock gives the character a bruised, restless humanity that separates her from the familiar superhero template. This Supergirl is not a substitute for Superman, and the film understands that. She is a survivor trying to decide whether survival can become something more useful than pain.
That is not a complete victory. It is, however, a foundation worth building on.
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