Supergirl Movie Review

I guess James Gunn didn't know that Supergirl was going to be the next movie after Superman, but it was, quote, an incredible script. Really? This was an incredible script? So Supergirl is DC's follow-up to last year's Superman. Long story short, as we saw at the end of Superman, Kara likes to go out there to Red Sun's solar system so she could get drunk. Then a forgettable bad guy poisons her dog with a dart. That same forgettable bad guy killed a family in which the surviving girl of that family is on a revenge quest to kill that super forgettable villain. The two of them are looking for the same person, this one for revenge, this one to get the antidote for her poisoned dog. They team up, they're on the adventure. That's the long story short. All right, out the gate, this movie does play up an angle that is, it's kind of a trope at this point. Put the cute dog in danger and now the audience is along for the ride. As for the rest of the movie, not gonna lie to you, it's a pretty generic, boring sci-fi mess. There is something compelling, even emotionally deep about the theme in here. Frustratingly, they don't stick the landing on it, but it's in here. As the conversation of Superman being basically comic book Jesus has been around for as long as I can remember, the story of the prodigal son here, or daughter, strictly speaking cousin, the prodigal out there running away, wasting their life, hopefully will then come back, it's deep, it's relevant, it's thematic, it's also buried under a ton of sci-fi nonsense. Which, I love sci-fi, I'm just saying when it feels uninspired, this. A big problem in the movie is I didn't find Kara to be particularly likable for a lot of it. She's the basic hot mess crash out disaster that's posturing herself as the paragon of morality for the situation. To be fair, yeah, that tracks. And granted, that is her character arc in the movie, of course, but even by the end, I didn't feel the ending was earned. If you don't stick the emotional landing at the end for an arc of someone stepping up to be the person they're supposed to be, you know, to be a hero, the whole thing feels forced. You're just left feeling unfulfilled. Would I like the best part of this Supergirl movie? Jason Momoa as Lobo. Is it ironic that the best part of Supergirl is the main man? Sure, but here we are. I mean, Jason Momoa as Lobo is an absolute and total layup, even back when he was cast as Aquaman. When I heard Jason Momoa was gonna play a DC comic book character, I was like, yeah, yeah, Lobo. That's who he's gonna be. He's gonna be Lobo. What can I say? What I got can't be taught. Or, we all thought the same thing because it's that obvious. It's that, why wasn't he Lobo all along? I'm 50-50 as to whether or not Jason Momoa even knew he was being filmed. An absolute and total wild card, which is fun to watch. But it does still feel like someone at some studio level was like, I feel like this movie's gonna be boring. Fans are really clamoring to have Jason Momoa come in as Lobo. Let's just make that happen. I am interested in seeing more of Jason Momoa as Lobo going forward. Maybe a standalone Bounty Hunter movie following Lobo. Be kind of like Mandalorian and Grogu, but minus the Grogu, and hopefully better. The movie doesn't feel like it has its own identity, to be honest with you. There's so many scenes, planets, moments, where you could be like, what movie is this? And people could be like, DC Universe? DCEU? MCU? Guardians? Predator Badlands? I don't know. It kind of feels like they pulled from everything cool right now and put it in a blender. A big thing in this movie that bothered me has nothing to do with the characters. It's the lighting. I don't know if they want to have the talking point of, and we didn't use lighting kits. All the light is natural in this studio on a green screen. But there were scenes where lights were in the background, and they were really bright, but the camera's in front of the characters, and it didn't seem to have a light in front of the characters. So the characters were really dark, but the lights behind them were bright. Like, hi, I'm in Supergirl. This probably looks horrible on screen, though. It's not just one scene, it's a multitude of scenes. Did someone set the camera on auto, and the ISO's like, eh, dammit, the light. Okay, the light's more manageable now. I don't know, it wasn't there, the movie did look like muddy ----. Kara seems to forget her powers a lot of the time. She's looking for the bad guy. She lost him. Apparently she forgot she could look through walls. There's one scene in this movie, it's completely ridiculous. I guess it's in the comic books, but it's one of those moments where when you're adapting something from a comic book, you have to make that judgment call of, is that going to play well in the movie? I get it, we're dealing with super powered aliens, but there has to be a light. And even if you can make the leap and go, okay, I accept it, it's fine. It still does come across as a convenience in the name of dealing with a Kryptonian lead in the movie. And that's a problem with Superman movies, now Supergirl movies. They are so overpowered, you have to continually think of villains to put them up against that can take them on, or you just got to continually nerf them. This movie continually nerfs, to a comedic degree. Oh, I almost forgot to talk about the villain. Why would I not forget to talk about the villain? Why would I remember to talk about the villain? The villain in this movie is the most forgettable generic antagonist I've... hold on. In terms of cinematic universe, comic book villains, we'll say from Iron Man 1 on, because Iron Man 1 kind of changed the game, and now everyone's chasing that cinematic universe dragon. It's kind of a splice point. Yeah, this has got to be the weakest villain I've seen in a superhero film. I really liked the quotable lines from the villain, such as, and when he looks surprised and looks like he's doing a bad Robert De Niro impersonation. Yeah, it was awful. This movie has all the beats on paper to get the audience behind hating the villain, which, I mean, he isn't likable, he's just not memorable. He's a shitty human who kidnaps girls to make them wives, like a Morton Jo. He hurts the dog, which is kind of becoming played out now, but there's that. Right, but it doesn't feel inspired. It feels like AI was like, these are cliches, but in all probability, we'll get the audience to hate the villain, though they still won't remember him for ----. This dude is so interchangeable from the rest of his goons, sometimes I was like, okay, is that the guy, or is that one of the guy's guys? I don't know, they kind of look like Mad Max ripoffs, which I didn't see for the longest time. I mean, granted, they do look like they worship Slaanesh to some degree, but it wasn't until they were hauling ass in their motorcycles and their fast tanks kicking up dust behind them, I was like, oh, that's Mad Max for sure. We've recently been blessed with some imaginative, inspired, creative cinema from some real up-and-comers. Supergirl, on the other hand, is big studio schlock that feels more AI than soul. So that's it, boiled down, Supergirl's a generic sci-fi buddy fetch quest with bad lighting. Look at the end, I didn't hate the whole movie. Lobo was pretty fun. Jason Momoa as Lobo is the only thing that raises this movie up to being the kind of movie I'm not going to remember in Yep, already forgot. This was the incredible script that was apparently, by implication, better than the rest. This was pretty rough. I'm pulling for lanterns though. All right, so Supergirl, have you seen it? What did you think about it? Or what is the worst comic book villain of the past 20 years? I mean, if you do all time, you're going to go back to some really cheesy villains from back in the day. I think 20 is fair. Whoever it is, whatever you think, comment below, let me know. And as always, if you like what you've seen here and you want to see more, click right here to see more.