Chris Kavan's Movie Review of Supergirl (2026)

Super-Meh
Chris Kavan - wrote on 07/04/26

Supergirl doesn't deserve all the hate it's been getting, but neither does it deliver much of a punch. It's a perfectly fine superhero film - Milly Alcock (Supergirl) and Jason Momoa (as Lobo) are the standouts but they are let down by an incredibly weak villain (Matthias Schoenaerts) and a derivative story (revenge - how quaint) and temu James Gunn in Craig Gillespie who really tries to capture that essence but continually falls flat.

The main crux of the story is that space pirate Krem (Schoenaerts) who looks like Pinhead if someone found a really good hammer murders the family of master swordsmakers leaving young Ruthye (Eve Ridley) to vow revenge. She happens to find a bar where Kara/Supergirl is on another bender but manages to save her. The next day Ruthye tracks her down - but so does Krem, who not only steals her ship but also shoots poort Krypto the dog with a slow-acting poison that will paralyze and ultimately kill the manic pooch. With just three days to get the antidote, which just so happens to hang around Krem's neck, the duo set off to find him.

You would think a Kryptonian taking on a pirated - even one as somewhat beefed-up as Krem, would be small potatoes, but the movie throws in things like a red sun (which makes Kryptonian into normies) and even a green sun (which, like Kryptonite itself, weakens and can even kill our girl) to even things out. Lobo (Momoa) shows up from time to time to quip and be angry. I loved the performance, but it barely registers with, oh, about 10 minutes or so of screen time. David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham also make brief appearances in a too-short flashback as Kara's parents, who manage to survive Krypton's destruction by breaking a chunk off - only to find they also managed to bring some unwanted Kryptonite with them leading to, well, more death.

The action beats are fine, the needle drops range from welcome (I'll never disparage Wet Leg and Catch These Fists is pretty spot on) to bizarre (that final one - it's been thrown around to death) the dialogue questionable the editing much too frantic. In the end all the elements make for a bog-standard superhero film - not the worst, far from the best and hopefully not indicative of Gunn's future DC plans. I'll stick around but I'm certainly hoping for better going forward.