Let me start by saying I did not hate this film. Overall, I’m pretty ambivalent about it. It’s trying to be a mixture of Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars, but doesn’t do either well. There are elements here that work well enough on their own. Too bad they’re attached to a dud.
The editing by Fred Raskin and Tatiana S. Riegel is a jumbled, god-awful, convoluted, non-sensical mess. The screenplay by Ana Nogueira doesn’t fare much better. She gives us zero reason to get invested in either of the two main plot lines. There are great, meaningful messages that land with a thud due to the film they’re attached to not being very good. There are also contrivances and conveniences aplenty. I honestly was expecting a multitude of people to be credited for the screenplay with how poor and messy it turned out.
Matthias Schoenaerts is the worst offender of the actors as main villain, Krem. He’s a space bully who is more annoying than he is threatening, intimidating, or memorable. Krem is about on the same level of bad as many First Phase MCU villains, if not worse. I farfanooging hated him.
Eve Ridley as Ruthye is not good. She is a more annoying version of Athena from Tomorrowland, but with far less to do. Ruthye had her family butchered in front of her by Krem, and Kara had Krypto shot with a slow-acting poison by Krem. This is what binds our two heroines together and sets the plot into motion.
Milly Alcock as Supergirl, Jason Momoa as Lobo (who only gets around 15 minutes of screen time), David Corenswet as Superman, and David Krumholtz as Zor-El are the stand-outs acting and character wise. Jason Momoa is letting loose and having fun as Lobo, a bounty hunter with a real devil-may-care attitude. He’s a lot of fun but isn’t of much import to the proceedings. Maybe one day he’ll get his own movie. I’d say he deserves one (so long as the talent behind the camera is of higher quality than the crew we have here).
David Corenswet continues to prove he’s perfect as Superman in his few all-too-brief scenes. Milly Alcock as Supergirl does great (the scattered scenes of her backstory are certainly better than most of the rest of the film). Kara is essentially the female version of Star-Lord. Her development is very well done and it’s appreciated that she is heavily flawed.
It’s a shame that the film bearing Supergirl’s name doesn’t live up to her character. She deserves a better movie than this. I can only hope she has roles to play in upcoming films, maybe then she can truly fly. There is no unified, creative vision for this movie. It feels like Craig Gillespie did not have full creative control (studio meddling?).
Supergirl, unlike its main lead, lacks personality and a unique identity. I genuinely don’t know who to blame for this one. Did James Gunn or the studio take too much of a hands on approach? Does Ana Noguiera deserve to take most of the blame for her poor screenwriting skills and lack of vision for the product she churned out? Did editors Fred Raskin and Tatiana S. Riegel kneecap the movie with their choppy, confusing, and scattershot job? Maybe it’s all three? Either way, the end result is the same: a disappointing, unexciting superhero flop that sinks instead of soars.
2 STARS
Craig Gillespie recently confirmed there is a 3 hour HARD R cut of the film that Gunn forced him to cut down, so maybe it really IS Gunn's fault this film is lacking!