Supergirl Is a Messy, Imperfect Hero. Unfortunately, Her Movie Is Too

This review contains spoilers.

One of last year’s most loved movies was Superman, becoming the 10th highest-grossing movie of 2025, according to IMDb. With its bright colors and earnest, feel-good tone, fans were in agreement that superhero movies were “so back,” and frankly, it was a joy to step out of the theater and believe that something was finally out there to challenge Marvel Studios, which released three movies that year.

It was even more exciting to be introduced to Supergirl (Milly Alcock) at the end of Superman, vocal-fried and inebriated to the gods. In December 2025, DC Studios released the trailer for Supergirl, directed by Craig Gillespie. And on June 24, the movie was released in Philippine cinemas.

Supergirl could have been DC Studios’ victory lap after the success of Superman. But instead, the movie occasionally trips up on itself.

It kicks off with Supergirl, or Kara Zor-El, hopping between planets and getting drunk for her 23rd birthday, with her dog Krypto in tow. She’s still grieving the loss of her planet, Krypton, her people, and her family, and copes by drinking. When we met her in Superman, the drunkenness was funny. But in Supergirl, it’s really sad.

She then meets a young girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley, a British actress of Filipino descent), who invites her on a quest for vengeance against the Brigands. Led by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), the space pirates had killed Ruthye’s entire family, including her father, a blacksmith.

Kara declines, more keen to continue her bender, until the Brigands hijack her ship. In the skirmish, Krem shoots Krypto with a poison dart, setting off Kara’s own mission: to retrieve the antidote from Krem. The two girls team up to find the Brigands, Kara motivated by Krypto’s looming death and Ruthye by revenge.

Along the way, they also learn that the Brigands have been kidnapping girls to make wives out of, but freeing these child-brides is only secondary to our heroes’ motivations. But maybe heroes don’t need to be noble; they only need to be good. This was Kara’s mother’s dying wish for her.

In flashbacks, we see our hero grow up on Argo, a chunk of a city that her father Zor-El (David Krumholtz) had separated from Krypton during its destruction. The separation from Krypton exposed the Kryptonite underground, slowly killing citizens, including Kara’s mother, Alura (Emily Beecham), via radiation. To save her one last time, Zor-El sends Kara and Krypton to Earth, where she meets her cousin, Kal-El, or Superman (David Corenswet).

Back in the present, the hunt for Brigands leads the heroines to a planet where the green sun weakens Supergirl (because Krytonians are allergic to Kryptonite), and Ruthye is kidnapped by the pirates. But the latter manages to escape through will and wit, and Kara regains her strength when the yellow sun rises and shines on her. In the end, Supergirl frees the brides from the Brigands and saves Ruthye from becoming a sad, vengeful monster by killing Krem herself instead. To my great relief, she also saves Krypto.

After spending the rest of her birthday week with Krypto and Ruthye, she returns to Earth, telling Superman it’s her home now.

Does ‘Supergirl’ Suffer from Bad Writing?

Variety’s review argues that the writing is a little flat because of Kara’s motivations and, at one point, weirdly fixates on Alcock’s appearance. But I think there’s a depth to her that isn’t even hard to miss when you look beyond the looks (which somehow only matters whenever the story is female-led).

She is not motivated by some grand sense of justice at first, but by a very human desire to hold on to the one thing she has left of her past, Krypto. I like that she starts out like this — a young woman who is lost and trying to outrun and outdrink her pain — and finds something to live for beyond herself in the end. There’s a solipsism to what she does that doesn’t make her noble like her Superman, but which makes her a more realistic 20-something.

Naturally, in the lead-up to Supergirl’s release, incels waited on the movie’s downfall for sexist reasons, but Kara is so far from being the Mary Sue that haters (not critics) want her to be. Supergirl spends most of the movie kicking ass in a Blondie shirt and a coat. She’s untouchable, but she is also flawed and still crumples when exposed to Kryptonite. She is an imperfect but lovable hero.

The problem is that while the movie offers us the whys of Kara Zor-El, it doesn’t give that same complexity to most of the people around her. Krem and the Brigands are, without a doubt, evil. But the lack of depth to this evil is what makes the writing feel weaker, because there’s nothing to match or challenge the complexity of Kara’s character.

This isn’t to say the movie needed to humanize Krem. Some villains can simply be villains. The kidnapping of the girls and turning them into wives has a disturbing connotation, and I can understand why the DC Universe would hesitate to go deeper into that territory if it wants to maintain the lighter tone established by Superman. But the result is that the movie introduces a horrifying evil without fully explaining what purpose it serves. A longer runtime could have helped flesh this out and given Kara a more compelling force to push against.

Another disappointment is Lobo (Jason Momoa), who feels deeply underused. Styled after Gene Simmons, he pops up every now and then to do his work as a bounty hunter, inadvertently helping Kara and Ruthye even as he’s reluctant to do so. But with the little time he spends onscreen, Momoa feels wasted, especially as someone returning to the DC Universe after his run as Aquaman.

The movie’s action sequences also don’t help. The fight scenes are fast-paced to the point of nausea, with fists thrown in a CGI blur that lacks impact. There’s a sequence where Ruthye and Supergirl fight back-to-back while surrounded by Brigands and clouds of sand, and I was a little bored.

Despite these things, Alcock shines as the movie’s lead role and captures Kara’s nuances. She delivers a girlishness to the character that dwarves her when put against her own colossal grief, and also embodies the strength and spunkiness needed to overcome that pain. Supergirl, at least, got its hero and lead actress right.