As I write this introduction, it’s the morning before I go see the new Supergirl movie and I’ve been extremely excited for it so what follows will be my immediate reactions after leaving the theatre and I’ll probably do a more thorough look at the movie in a couple months, probably once the Blu-Ray is released. I did of course show up to the movie in costume (pictured above). I did initially plan on sewing a pocket into the cape since the skirt doesn’t have pockets however I ran out of time to do so. As a backup plan, I instead brought my Super Hero Girls purse so I would still be on brand.
At the theatre I was able to pick up a couple bits of merch, first is the freebie comic that is a reprint of Woman of Tomorrow #1 with a new cover by Bilquis Evely based on the movie and I also got the cup with the not ideally designed coat accent, I went for the Supergirl topper aside although Lobo and Krypto were also options.
From here on out this is my thoughts on the movie so tread carefully if you’re worried about spoilers. Right away, I gotta say I did enjoy the movie, while it does follow the story of Woman of Tomorrow, it does deviate quite a bit and in my opinion it addressed a lot of the issues I had with the source material. If you’d like a refresher on my thoughts of the comic this is based on, check out my post about it here.
To start with I want to bring up one of planets being named “Bilquis”. This is of course a reference to the artist of the Woman of ,Tomorrow miniseries Bilquis Evely and assuming the movie pronounced it right, gave me a much better idea of how to pronounce her name.
Probably the most surprising change I noticed in the movie, was that for the first time in over 20 years we’re not dealing with an origin where Kara is (technically) older than Superman. This origin is most notably shown in the Supergirl TV series, although all the comics since 2004 have also had some version of Kara being born before Kal and being stuck in some sort of stasis for a dozen or so years before finally making her way to earth. Here were clearly shown a Kara that was born and raised on Argo for her entire childhood before being rocketed to earth.
The Krypton element of Supergirl’s origin was something I was curious about specifically in reference to last year’s Superman movie. The Jor-El depiction in that movie has a bit of a nefarious reason for sending Kal to earth, and it’s nice to see that Zor-El and Alura don’t share those ideas. This means that either Jor-El was an outlier in his mindset on Krypton and not all Kryptonians are d-bags, or the trauma of living on Argo for over a decade changed the minds of those Kryptonians.
There was a running theme throughout the movie with sayings like “you don’t have to be nice but you have to be kind” and Ruthye even tells Supergirl “you’re not perfect, but you’re good” and I think that’s a great message that the movie explores and I personally liked supergirl having a more grey mantra as opposed to the clear black/white good vs evil mindset that her cousin has. The only one of these lines that didn’t really track for me was “he sees the good in everyone. I see the truth” which was also present in the trailer. That line just didn’t really make sense in the grand scheme of the movie.
There is a good chunk of the movie that is spent exploring the Brigands as sex traffickers and I think it helps enforce the idea of Supergirl seeing a girl in need and saving her which is a big part of both this movie and the comic with the Ruthye character. So in my opinion it’s a welcome addition that also makes the Brigands even scummier.
Lobo of course was not in the book at all, but his inclusion in the movie seemed perfectly fine and was a reasonable addition to the story without overstepping. I feel it also adds a bit more star power to the movie and allows for more thorough ties to the wider DC Studios movie universe.
Before I just continue going into all the differences, which I’ll probably cover in a future post, I’m going to address my main problems with the book and how the movie addressed them. Ruthye never once calls Kara Supergirl, from the moment she learns her friend’s name it’s always “Kara” and nothing else, a welcome change to Ruthye only calling her Supergirl in the book. Placing this story at the beginning of Supergirl’s career as opposed to the middle as it was in the comics helps maintain the heroic status of the girl of steel and puts this more as a stepping stone for her on her path to becoming a great hero. I also much preferred how Ruthye was shown in this movie and it’s probably because we didn’t have to deal with mountains of narration boxes from her. Also the horse isn’t in the movie but I think that’s my own personal bias and shouldn’t be a mark against the book.
There is one major change that the movie made that I didn’t like, and that was Kara killing Krem. I felt like it did a lot of disservice to the character and it worries me a bit that we might be going down a Man of Steel neck snap road, but hopefully we’re able to address it more in upcoming Supergirl adventures as part of the DC Studios line.
To close out, I will say that this is not a perfect movie, but I really enjoyed it and would recommend it. To paraphrase Ruthye’s line “it wasn’t perfect, but it was good”. I will be going to see the movie again in theatres at least once more, and I do think everyone should go see it.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 