We Need To Talk About Kara Zor-El.

Film  Just briefly.  There are typically two indicators that I'm not really enjoying a movie: either (a) I fall asleep, or (b) my film studies brain cells kick in and start looking for flaws. Supergirl (2026) currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 57%, which, even given what's about to appear below, still seems like a particularly rough score. It's six percent below The Marvels, a score that should arguably be 73%, given that you generally have to automatically add 10% to any RT aggregate if it's an action feature with a female protagonist, as the predominantly male review corps doesn't tend to like that sort of thing. Ballerina is an 85%, Salt is a 71%, and Cleaner is 61% (which is still too low). This makes Supergirl a 67% picture, which seems about right.

As I suggested on the socials, unlike some other similar releases, it's not one from which I left punching the air. I tried, I wanted to, but as a few reviewers have noted, it begins well yet eventually becomes an unsurprising, generic mess of sci-fi tropes of the kind I usually enjoy but somehow fails to resonate. Perhaps it's the deeply average, one-note villain. Perhaps it's the clichéd approach to the outback universe, where everywhere is a shithole planet full of miscreants. Could it be that in creating a story around a pretty much invincible character, it spends much of the runtime finding ingenious ways of physically de-skilling her when, much like Superman, she has enough mental scars to hold her back? Or is it the sense that we're watching a sub-par Guardians of the Galaxy featuring only Star-Lord?

I think the most damaging aspect, and this is where my analytical side takes over, is that after a while, Supergirl stops being the protagonist of her own movie and lacks agency in many of her scenes leading up to that point. The most obvious examples happen in the flashbacks, particularly the key moment when she lands on Earth and meets her cousin. She can't speak "standard" yet, but the whole scene is played from Clark's POV as he shambles about trying to make her feel welcome. Shouldn't we be seeing her perspective on suddenly being on a planet where she doesn't understand the language or what is happening in general? We shouldn't be able to understand what Superman is saying in these scenes; David Corenswet's dialogue should be gibberish.

However, it's the back half of the film when the structure really becomes unstuck. In the comic that inspired the project, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, much of the story is told from the perspective of a new character, Ruthye Marye Knoll. This is repeated in this loose adaptation, where she fills the role you might find for a Doctor Who companion. On screen, she cuts a very Arya Stark figure, even if she only has one name on her list. Whereas the comic was part of a continuum of Supergirl stories in which stylistic shifts add depth, it's very odd that in Kara's screen debut, they've chosen to distance the audience from her for much of the second half while this other girl's struggles move to the forefront. Supergirl is lying in a cave, waiting for a different coloured sun to rise.

The biggest mistake for me is perhaps in the final shot of the film.  Apparently a reference to the Superman and Lois conversation in Superman (2025), which had the Justice Gang fighting a kaiju in the background, Kara sits opposite Clark and gives him the news that she's remaining on Earth for now, trying to make her home there.  Again, the scene is mostly played from her cousin's perspective and the final beat is Clark running off screen to deal with Krypto and it's he who has the final line.  It's admittedly very funny, because everything Krypto does is funny, but it's extremely odd that we don't then have a close-up of Kara relaxing into her new home, happy that she's completed her journey.  But it feels redolent of a film in which the title character's feelings aren't always at the forefront.