While Supergirl attempts to drink away bad memories on an alien planet, she runs into a teen girl who’s seeking revenge for her family’s murder. Supergirl comes with strong messages about helping others, making wise choices and striving to do good. But the movie has a rather dark Mad Max feel about it. And the violence, drinking and language will be intense for younger cape-wearing fans.
Kara Zor-El has just turned 23. But as she wakes bleary eyed after yet another night of drunken booze-swilling on some red-sunned planet, she feels so, so much older.
Kara may be known back on Earth as the cousin of Superman—you know, the guy who fights for truth, justice and all that junk—but out here she’s just another creature from some distant planet. Leave her alone and let her get blitzed, night after night.
Of course, Kara’s cousin, Clark, may regularly call and encourage her to finish up her birthday celebration and head on “home,” but that’s the rub for Kara. Earth isn’t her home.
Kara’s home was destroyed. She watched the only people she ever cared about die from kryptonite poisoning. Kara saw it all before her father sent her rocketing off to follow in Clark’s path. And her pain and loss doesn’t fade, no matter how “super” she may be under Earth’s yellow sun.
So out here, a red sun reduces Kara’s ability to leap a tall building with a single bound. It keeps her grounded. It lets her get drunk enough to forget. Well, if not forget, it lets Kara numb herself at the very least.
Then the girl shows up. This teen stomps into the grimy space pub where Kara is drinking and declares that she is Ruthye Marye Knoll and she seeks revenge on one Krem of the Yellow Hills, a murderous brigand who killed my family! Kara couldn’t care less about brigands or local tragedies. “Not my monkeys, not my circus,” Kara mumbles to her ever-faithful dog, Krypto.
But then some huge alien thug slaps the girl aside and takes the finely crafted sword that she’s offering as payment for her revenge quest. And that just feels rude. So Kara gets up and, after some, uh, discussion, she pulps the muscular alien’s face and gives the slapped-down girl her sword back.
Back to the drinking.
However, Ruthye Marye Knoll isn’t so easily dissuaded. It seems that she has decided upon her champion: the valiant woman with gold, tangled hair who’s about to vomit over in the corner.
Does Kara have even the slightest inkling to help this long-winded girl? Nope. Does Kara feel sorry for her? Not much. But after a turn of events where this “Krem of the Yellow Hills” ends up poisoning Krypto and stealing Kara’s ship, well, it looks like she and Ruthye are heading in the same direction anyway.
Besides, this kid is bound to get herself killed while waving that sword around and calling for revenge. So Kara decides she should take this girl under her wing long enough to keep her alive—and get her to pipe down.
I mean, it’s not following truth and justice or anything, but it seems like the right thing to do at the moment. Kara just needs to stay sober for a little while.
(Belch.) At least she can try.
Kara does sober up. And as she and Ruthye begin traveling together, they form a bond. Kara even finds herself caring for the young girl. And when Kara finds herself in more vulnerable situations, Ruthye stands up to protect Kara and keep evil men away from her.
Kara repeatedly talks to Ruthye about turning away from revenge. Kara speaks of her own loss, her own pain. And she tells the girl that killing Krem won’t take any pain away; it will only add to it. “Your heart is still good and open,” Kara tells Ruthye. “Your family is with you. Your life will be your revenge.”
Eventually Kara is able to convince the girl to reach for good things in life. In flashback, we see Kara’s dying mother asking her to make the same choice for “good.”
Kara doesn’t always make the same upright “good” choices. But she does ultimately declare that her heavy-drinking, club-hopping days are behind her. She decides to return to Earth and join her cousin.
In flashback, we see Kara as a girl and a young woman. Her father creates a ship to save her from the deadly effects of kryptonite poisoning. Kara doesn’t want to leave, but her father tells her, “You are your mother’s life, my life.” He tells her to live on for them. And Kara’s mother makes her promise to be good. “That doesn’t mean that you can’t be tough. It doesn’t mean that you need to always be nice,” her mother declares. “Just be good.”
Kara and Ruthye cross paths with a large self-focused interstellar mercenary named Lobo who is said to be an “immortal with a god complex.”
Kara says, “Krypton didn’t die in a day. The gods are not that kind.” We see some elaborate Kryptonian funeral processions, but Kryptonians don’t seem to have a great sense of, or belief in, an afterlife. When Kara pleads to stay with her mother and father to the very end, she tells them that she wants to lay beside both of them in the ground.
When Kara turns Ruthye away from murder for revenge, Krem scoffs at Kara’s attempt to “save her soul.”
We see a group of muscular, bare-chested brigands fighting one another. The storyline also revolves around a galactic trafficking ring, which we’ll go into more detail below.
We don’t see a lot of bloodiness, but death and destruction are a regular part of the Supergirl action. In fact, the film often has a growlingly violent and darkly destructive Mad Max feel about it at times. And one core story element feels especially dark and distressing, especially in the context of a PG-13 film.
Krem and his brigands kidnap and cage women and girls to sell to a group that wants to “continue an all-male race.” Sexual interactions with the girls aren’t seen or openly spoken of, and it seems that most are rescued in transit. But the implications are deeply disturbing.
Krem and his thugs kill plenty of other innocent people in their quest to kidnap these girls and women. Krem, for instance, murders Ruthye’s family members—hitting the girl’s brother with a thrown knife, smashing her mother into the wall, running her father through with a sword—he then steals their valuables and burns their house to the ground. We also see this metal-stud covered man murder a mother and father in front of another teen girl before killing her in an alleyway.
Krem’s brigands—all riddled with metal studs and piercings themselves—are just as brutish. They grab women and girls, slap them to the ground, they drag them around and manhandle the screaming teen girls roughly into cages. We also see the men bash and kill residents in a small town.
When Supergirl and the super-strong mercenary Lobo enter the fray, the destruction expands to a scenery-ripping frenzy. Lobo smashes through crowds on his motorcycle-like vehicle, swinging a large spiked club and latching onto foes via a hook on the end of a long chain. (He declares that he kills for money, not for sport.) And Supergirl flies at high speed into crowds of thugs, bashing them with her fists, obliterating them with large objects and sending them screeching in pain with her blazing heat vision.
Supergirl also enters into some mano-a-mano battles while in a weakened state from poison or under a red sun. These battles can feel more visceral as the large men and aliens batter the smallish woman savagely, smashing her through windows and walls. She’s shot several times with kryptonite-infused arrows, weakening her. (She’s poisoned elsewhere, too.) A green sun makes her incredibly sick, and we see black veins underneath her pale skin. At one point, she pulls a shard of something out of her thigh.
A huge alien’s wrist is snapped backward, snapping the bones. A guard is choked and may be killed (off camera) by a poisonous spike on a cage. Krem shoots a dog with a poisoned arrow, sending the animal skidding to the ground in obvious pain. (We learn the poison will kill the dog in three days without an antidote.) We see Kara’s parents suffering and dying from kryptonite poisoning. Ruthye is regularly thumped around and knocked unconscious, too.
In the midst of this ongoing decimation, spaceships crash and get torn apart in fiery eruptions. Buildings are smashed and left burning. Ships also hit Supergirl with laser blasts and bombs. Someone is ejected into space where they freeze solid. We see aliens hit with electrode shocks that render them unconscious. Supergirl torments captive space pirates with her heat vision in an attempt to get information, threatening to sever their spines. Krypto bites a large alien attacker in the crotch. Buildings crumble on a dying planet.
[Spoiler Warning] Supergirl kills a foe slowly and painfully, pushing a blade into his prone body and watching him die.
Kara spits out “frickin” three times and we hear some 15 exclamations of the s-word along with one or two uses of “a–,” “ballsy,” “b–ch” and “b–tard.” Kara displays an offensive hand gesture.
As mentioned, Kara drinks heavily. Ruthye declares that she doesn’t want to be like Kara—”someone who’s always drinking herself into a stupor.” We see empty and near-empty booze bottles scattered around Kara’s ship (Krypto noses one over, spilling it). Aliens drink in the alien bar/clubs.
Lobo lights and puffs on a large, glowing tipped cigar. One alien smokes a hookah-like device.
Krypto lifts his leg and urinates on a newspaper article about Superman. We also see Kara in a bathroom and hear her urinate and, later, a brigand pees just outside the camera’s view. We see Krem’s crew and a group of female space pirates attacking various ships and groups of people to steal valuables.
Various people and aliens vomit on screen. An alien bug creature defecates a small popcorn-like substance that people scoop up and eat. Ruthye spits in someone’s face.
In his restructuring of the DC Cinematic Universe, producer/director James Gunn stated that he was shaping his vision of Supergirl based on a 2021 graphic novel called Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. And when he revealed the character in his Superman film, he depicted her, much to the surprise of many fans, as something of a drunken party girl who staggers in for a brief scene.
The newly released Supergirl gives us a much more fleshed out perspective on Clark Kent’s cousin and what makes her tick. This pic shows us Supergirl’s origin story and lets us see her reluctantly embark on a protective quest that, ultimately, helps the young Kryptonian decide who she is and who she wants to be.
Of course, you may be wondering who this character is, too, before you take the kids to see her. After all, there have been several online conversations swirling about this movie well before it ever saw the light of the marquee.
For instance, during the movie’s press tour, star Milly Alcock was asked if her version of Kara Zor-El identifies as LGBT. Alcock opined that the character “doesn’t live inside the binary” and would “probably go both ways.”
So, will parents need to discuss Supergirl’s sexuality if they gather the kids with a bucket of popcorn? No. Let me assure you that the topic never comes up. There are no romantic leanings in any of the movie’s scenes.
However, that doesn’t mean that Supergirl is all high-flying and trouble-free.
Superman gained his moral and ethical ideals from the downhome Kansas farmer parents who raised him. Supergirl’s rather cynical philosophy was shaped by painful experiences that happened well before she ever rocketed toward Earth.
“My cousin and I have very different ideas about what it means to be a hero,” Supergirl notes in the film. “He sees the good in everyone … and I see the truth.”
That translates to: Superman may do everything he can to spare a life, but Supergirl isn’t so particular.
Milly Alcock is great in her role, but the story feels like a blending of a Mad Max film with a space-going version of True Grit. There are metal-studded baddies battering the populace and trafficking young girls for implied sexual purposes. Supergirl’s teen charge, Ruthye, is always right on the verge of being grabbed and thrown in a cage by some huge alien thug. The violence may be mostly bloodless, but it’s explosive and deadly.
On top of that, the often drunk hero swills quite a bit of booze, and the film’s rough language feels plucked out of a much more adult film.
All of that is to say that while the acting is solid, the action is high and there are some good choices made here, the film’s lessons aren’t always so positive and uplifting, and our heroes don’t always act so heroic. This pic will feel dark and intense for any young fan who shows up wearing their favorite cape.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
