Supergirl Takes a Different Flight Path
Craig Gillespie's Supergirl is something of a quirky oddity compared to bigger blockbuster outings, yet it provides a first real indication of the kind of universe James Gunn intends to build. While Gunn's Superman was the major make-or-break moment for DC's latest cinematic reboot, Supergirl suggests that DC's greatest strength may lie not just in trying to out-Marvel Marvel.
This Is Not Superman with Longer Hair
Gunn's Superman gave us an optimistic Kal-El who subscribes to the basic tenets of Kryptonian decency: protect the weak, see off the bad guys, and leave the universe better than he found it. His cousin Kara Zor-El couldn't be more different. While Supes arrived as a baby on Earth and sees his superpowers as a gift, Kara spent her early years on the Kryptonian exo-city of Argo, watching everyone around her being slowly poisoned by kryptonite radiation. Perhaps this is why she spends most of her time traveling to red sun planets just to get drunk.
Kara doesn't behave like a superhero at all. When the orphaned Ruthye Marye Knoll begs for her help to avenge the deaths of her family at the hands of nefarious brigand leader Krem of the Yellow Hills, Kara just carries on drinking. It is only when her beloved mutt Krypto is poisoned with a dart from Krem's personal arsenal – and the villain steals her ship – that she decides to set out after him in search of the antidote.
A Whole Wide Universe Out There
The film expands the sense of scale. While the previous DC Extended Universe mainly saw aliens as an occasional threat to Earth, Supergirl imagines a functioning intergalactic community populated by sentient humanoid and non-humanoid species alike. As she journeys from planet to planet, there's a sense that this DC universe has more in common with Star Wars or Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy than Man of Steel or Justice League. There's a definite space-western feel to proceedings, even if it's hard to reconcile the improbably orderly cosmic bus stop Kara uses to hop between worlds with the otherwise lawless frontier beyond.
Not Quite a Saturday Morning Cartoon
Once Supergirl arrives on Bilquis, it becomes apparent that this isn't just a colorful interstellar chase. The old DC films might have had Krem and his Brigands bent on galactic domination; in this one they are kidnapping young women from isolated frontier settlements and murdering anyone who stands in their way. There are shades of Mad Max: Fury Road and Unforgiven, in the abiding sense that this is a universe where technology may have advanced at light speed, but gender equality still travels by horse and cart.
This is also where the film begins to ask whether someone with Kara's powers can keep pretending the suffering around her is none of her business. Obtaining the antidote to cure Krypto and reclaiming her ship might still be her first priorities, but when the universe out there is this dark and twisted, Supergirl starts to realize that looking the other way is just another way of choosing a side.
A Change from the Page
In the original comic book by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, Kara persuades Ruthye that killing Krem will not mend her broken soul, and ultimately imprisons him in the phantom zone. In the film, Supergirl herself executes the horrible space pirate. This is a fundamental shift from the eight-issue miniseries' moral position, that revenge offers no lasting peace, to a perspective that is more ambiguous in tone. Screenwriter Ana Nogueira's comments certainly point to a decision that Kara's journey from nihilistic party girl to cape-wearing cosmic saint was too neat in print. This felt like fair frontier justice, even if Superman might not have been too impressed.
Different Powers Under Different Suns
As in the comic book, Kara loses her powers under a red sun, regains them in the glow of yellow, and experiences something akin to kryptonite poisoning when the light turns green. It's a canny way to break up her journey across the galaxy, but also stores up issues for the future of Gunn's DC universe. With easy travel between planets, what's to stop red sun aliens from traveling to Earth and taking over? Earth has only a handful of metahumans to defend it, including two Kryptonians. It would presumably only take a saloon full of low-level baddies to decide they fancied the look of Earth for trouble to brew.
Not Every DC Movie Has to End with the Apocalypse
By the time the movie ends, all Kara has really done is take down one particularly despicable alien bad guy and help one grieving girl step back from the brink. On the grand scale, this is not Crisis on Infinite Earths. But perhaps it's part of a wider trend toward lower-stakes drama in blockbuster genre films. The most recent Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu, came in for criticism because no planets were destroyed and the fate of the entire galaxy wasn't perpetually hanging by a thread. Supergirl feels like the DC equivalent. Kara doesn't fight off alien invasions, and the film never inflates its story into yet another cosmic emergency simply because it has access to a galaxy full of populated planets.
Whether audiences and critics are ready for smaller, stranger superhero stories that rely on character, texture, and tone rather than apocalyptic spectacle remains to be seen; the movie's mixed reception suggests not. But if comic book movies are to survive as a medium, there will at some point be a need for the quirky little frontier tale of grief and redemption in among the multiversal, reality-shattering pile-ups. If superhero films really are the new westerns, they can't all be High Noon. Some will need to be True Grit in a cape.
