Supergirl: Direction. Script. Whatever.
Yes, “Truth. Justice. Whatever.” is this film’s tagline, but whereas the first film had James Gunn on both of the two main duties for Superman 2025, and this one replaces them, respectively, with Craig Gillespie (2023’s superb Dumb Money, and 2016’s Chris Pine time-travel drama The Finest Hours) and Ana Nogueira (on her movie script debut, only ever having written a short film before… so, why her?), make no mistake. All of what’s going on here is Gunn’s vision. He will have the final say. He is basically the Russell T Davies of all this. And we all know how that turned out last year…
After the poor caped crusader reboot last year, James Gunn’s betting the farm with his second DC Universe film in the girlboss figure, portrayed by Milly Alcock (Upright). I like her as an actress, but the much-delayed Ballerinashowed that as good as Ana de Armas was, cinema audiences just DON’T go for girlboss figures, these days. And that film flopped, taking just $140m based upon a $90m production budget. Add in the promotion costs, and it’s sunk.
Still, Gunn might be wishing for such revenues with this movie, because after its opening weekend, it’s only achieved $68m on a £186m budget, and it’s going to require at least $450m to break even, which isn’t going to happen. Even Superman only managed $619m, and that had a $225m budget with a break-even point of around $500m. His next attempts will be Clayface in October, and another Supes film, Man of Tomorrow, in 2027.
Given that the John Cena Peacemaker series seems to the thing that people want, why not just make a few movies out of that?
And since it’s money that Gunn needs, he could’ve had a fiver out of me had I known in advance that Supergirl expands to 1.90:1 for 70 minutes in IMAX, but when I was looking things like that up, everything pointed to 2.39:1 throughout. As it turns out, the extra scenes aren’t actually shot on IMAX film anyway – they’re just shot flat (usually 1.85:1) – so whether I go back for a second bite of Supergirl‘s cherry will depend on how good/bad the film was, since I expect the expanded ratio will show up on home formats later, as was the case with Superman’s slightly-wider 1.90:1 version, and given that I understood this film to be shot in 2.39:1 throughout, the picture composition looked perfectly fine throughout… even though I was watching it on a 1.85:1 screen!
Even 3D versions of this film were initially added to the line-up when ticket sales began – albeit NOT IMAX 3D which seemed odd, given that Superman had IMAX 3D. However, like Supergirl‘s chances of turning a profit, those screenings were also gone by the time the release date came round. No loss, really, since far too much of the film feels like it was shot in the dark; and 3D glasses would make it even darker.
So, for want of a storyline, Kara Zor-el – the real name of the titular character – is a scruff and always drunk. She swears a lot, unnecessarily for a family-orientated film, and doesn’t mind if Krypto urinates all over the floor, rather than on a newspaper, even if it does have her cousin’s face on there.
Then we’re in for another John Wick-style link, as evil Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts – The Old Guard 2) turns up, shoots and poisons Krypto, kills young Ruthye’s (Eve Ridley) Mum, Dad and brother – the parents somehow having bothered to craft weapons for him, given how this is usually how he repays people – and of course, this baddie makes the typically-stupid mistake of letting a family member survive, since they ALWAYS come back for revenge, and that’s what a girl wants, even if Christina Aguilera never sang about it.
Jason Momoa (A Minecraft Movie) is obviously having fun, as he turns up as Lobo – a character with which I’m not familiar, so just felt like I was watching Gene Simmons from Kiss punch people, then ride around on a motorbike. But beyond that and the visuals, it’s also the storyline that’s dark. Even worse, the fights are VERY generic and boring.
Overall, Supergirl is a terrible film, it does nothing new that we’ve not seen before, it shouldn’t have left the drawing board, and deserves zero marks. However, Milly is cute, so I’ll give her one.
I actually enjoyed Momoa’s last DCEU (DC Extended Universe) film, Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, but by then, that series was ended because superhero fatigue had long set in. Even still, given how I like time-travel movies, I loved The Flash!
And a particularly stupid thing at the end, which I’ll put behind a spoiler header, in case you’re planning to watch it…
NOTE: There are no mid- nor post-credits scenes. So, even less effort made.
Supergirl is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 141 minutes
Release date: June 3rd 2026
Studio: Amazon MGM Studios
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (Anamorphic ALFA Scope, Anamorphic Apollo Scope, X-OCN XT (8.6K))
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 1/10
Director: Craig Gillespie
Producers: James Gunn, Peter Safran
Screenplay: Ana Nogueira
Music: Claudia Sarne
Cast:
Supergirl: Milly Alcock
Superman: David Corenswet
Ruthye: Eve Ridley
Krem: Matthias Schoenaerts
Lobo: Jason Momoa
Drom Baxton: Diarmaid Murtagh
Elias Knoll: Ferdinand Kingsley
Delilah Knoll: Emily Piggford
Emond Knoll: Bruce Lennox
Zor-El: David Krumholtz
Alura Zor-El: Emily Beecham
Young Kara: Imogen Turner
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.