‘Supergirl’ squanders Milly Alcock and its source material

Hey there, Popculturology pals. Welcome to the Friday newsletter. Can you believe this is the last one of June? The year is already half over, but the summer movie season is getting into full swing with Supergirl ...

Welcome to Popculturology!

This publication is a free newsletter, but it’s fueled by readers like you. Support independent news, reviews and more for just $5 a month.

Upgrade to Paid

Includes full access to Snackology and The Cold Open.

Supergirl makes some ... interesting choices

I’m writing this section of the newsletter roughly an hour after I got out of a Thursday screening of Supergirl, and I’m still trying to sort through many of the baffling changes made as DC Studios adapted the phenomenal Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow graphic novel into this movie.

Before we dive into a “but in the book” conversation, I gotta give credit to Milly Alcock and anyone who was involved with casting her as Kara Zor-El. She’s fantastic. I want to see how her take on the character evolves and grows as the DCU moves forward.

But, wow, did screenwriter Ana Nogueira and director Craig Gillespie make some bizarre choices when it came to turning Tom King, Bilquis Evely and Matheus Lopes’s comics into a movie. The Supergirl of Woman of Tomorrow is stoic. A protector. She’s only 21 at the beginning of the book, but she arrives a fully formed legend. The comics that formed the basis for this movie are told through narration by Ruthye, the character played in the film by Eve Ridley. She is in awe of Supergirl.

“Her power was great, greater than you can imagine,” Ruthye says of Supergirl in the book. “But it was not just in terms of the pull of her muscle, the cool of her breath and the heat of her eyes. No, her power was derived from a whole life dedicated to kindness.”

Supergirl tells us that its version of Supergirl is this very character — but it never earns it.