"Supergirl": Portrait of a Modern Hero
SJW chic meets the world's longest Mötley Crüe video in a mystifying summer blockbuster
Box office analysts on Sunday noted an uncomfortable truth: Female-led superhero movies have been rejected almost uniformly over the past five years or so, perhaps reflecting a resurgent misogyny among the core fan base, which is largely male.
— The New York Times, “Supergirl’ falters at box office, testing DC studios reboot”
Supergirl opens on the planet Holzherr, which orbits a red sun. Since Kryptonians derive their superpowers from the yellow sun, the atmosphere dulls the heroine’s constitution to the point where she can get drunk. Nightly, the titular character played by slackerish Australian Milly Alcock crawls bars and passes out in an interstellar space trailer.
Early, a Bane-like villain named Krem who has dieselpunk face studs shoots her superdog Krypto with poison. A shawl-wearing “Healer” with huge eyes who gives off an Alien Susan Sarandon vibe tells her Krypto has three days to live, and she must chase after Krem, who alone carries the antidote. Supergirl is forced to leave Planet Substance Abuse on a space bus, and soon learns news of Krem might be on a frontier planet called Bilquis.
Supergirl is fine until she reaches Bilquis. Not good, or even coherent — it’s not clear why she’s so miserable being a beautiful superhero, why her head doesn’t explode when pushed into space without her powers (even she thought she needed a helmet), or why Supergirl is 23 but her sexual radar signature is zero — but until Bilquis, Supergirl is a normal, cliché-filled action movie. After… It’s hard to put into words. Remember the remake of The Fly, when Jeff Goldblum tries for the first time to send a live baboon through his teleportation device?
Splat! That’s what happens to the script of Supergirl fifteen minutes in. See if you can follow this:
