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Ron and Mon: “Up, up, and away!” 

Ron: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Stereo Geeks, a bi-weekly pop culture podcast, and weekly newsletter. Today, we’re reviewing Supergirl. I’m one of your hosts, Ron, a pop culture critic and managing editor at Women Write About Comics, now on hiatus.

Mon: And I’m Mon, your other host, an entertainment writer with bylines in Bam Smack Pow and Huffpost, to name a few. This episode will have spoilers but we’ll let you know when they start.

Ron: Before we start our episode, we would like to acknowledge that the land we are recording on is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. It is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.

Mon: While we are making this land acknowledgement, we understand that this is not enough and that positive action is required by the people of Canada to make substantive change for the Indigenous nations and communities whose lands we now reside on.

[Music]

Ron: The 2026 Supergirl film is based on Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s 2021 comic run, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. The film is directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Ana Nogueira. It largely adheres to the source material.

Mon: Milly Alcock plays Kryptonian Kara Zor-El/Supergirl. She’s joined by Eve Ridley as Ruthye Knoll. Matthias Schoenaerts plays the antagonist, Krem of the Yellow Hills. David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham play Kara’s parents, Zor-El and Alura Zor-El. 

Ron: David Corenswet reprises his role from 2025’s Superman film as Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman, and Jason Momoa takes on another DC character, playing Lobo. Momoa had earlier played Arthur Curry/Aquaman.

Mon: We should probably give a little history of our relationship with Supergirl. As children, we loved the 1984 Supergirl starring Helen Slater. Of course, we only saw that film in the 90s because everything reached India late.

Ron: ‘Loved’ is an understatement. We were obsessed with that film. Every time it was on TV, you and I were glued. Apparently, it wasn’t a good film but we did not care. We couldn’t stop watching. We loved it more than the Christopher Reeve Superman films, even though those are universally loved.

Mon: But our relationship with Supergirl strengthened with the 2015 CW show which existed in the Arrowverse. We adored that show and Melissa Benoist’s Kara. The show also created a sister for Kara, Alex, played by Chyler Leigh, and that bond was one of the best things we’ve seen on TV.

Ron: The CW Supergirl was all about hope, joy, partnership, and that sisterly bond. It had the most darling characters. Plus, we got incredible queer representation with Alex and her partner, Azie Tesfai’s Kelly Olsen. We got Nicole Maines as Nia Nal/Dreamer, the first live-action trans superhero. This show was everything. Not just for us, but for so many people.

Mon: I will forever miss and love the CW’s Supergirl. It was bold when genre fare was not. It had representation that we had always wanted and never imagined we’d get. The show set a high bar for me for what a superhero property should do with the power that it has. I wrote an appreciation piece about Supergirl back when I wrote for Collider.com. We’ll link to it in the show notes. 

Ron: At WWAC, we were all huge CW Supergirl fans. There was a lot of appreciation for what that show did for queer representation.

Mon: Which is why, when we learned that this Supergirl film would be based on Tom King’s comic, we were disappointed. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow was an annoying read for me. Kara was a passenger in her own story. A fighting machine with a contrived backstory. There was no emotion, motivation, or characterization. She wasn’t a person, just a being. Tom King can’t write female characters, and that was proven in this run. 

Ron: Yeah, I did not like that comic. It was so self-serious and wasn’t about Supergirl at all. The book was a vehicle to introduce an original character, which, can you imagine a woman writer doing that? She’d immediately be accused of creating a Mary Sue. But Tom King does it and he’s applauded and given all the awards. 

Mon: Yes, but what annoyed me even more is that this original character was essentially added just to make Kara into a nurturing mommy figure. Because Krypton forbid that a female character just be a person and not a mother. 

Ron: I also thought the book was just too gory and dark. I was very worried about the movie, because my tolerance for gore has gone to zero over the last few years.

Mon: Gore for the sake of it and without commentary makes no sense to me. This book just wanted to bask in evil, not comment on the wrong of it. 

Ron: Despite a woman being the writer on Supergirl, there are a lot of men involved in this film. James Gunn is now the head of DC. This is a man who got a second chance at a career even though horrifying tweets he wrote in the past surfaced online. The way everyone went to bat for this white man. Yikes. 

Mon: Truly outrageous. And let’s be honest here, the sensibilities of problematic people always seeps into their work. It’s no different with the state of DC Studios now. 

Ron: His Guardians of the Galaxy movies went from bad to worse when he got rid of his co-writer on the first film, Nicole Perlman. He then took all the credit and the following films became ever-more intolerable. We couldn’t stand 2025’s Superman.

Mon: We gave up on doing a review episode of the film because we disliked it so much.

Ron: And then there’s director Craig Gillespie. We haven’t enjoyed his work, though other people have. Cruella was a bit boring. I, Tonya was straight up sexist. What the hell was that?

Mon: Is that his oeuvre then? They couldn’t find any women to direct this film? Or did they all say no? I’m genuinely curious.

Ron: I’m curious about that too. I’m also not sure how much Gillespie brought to this film. While watching Supergirl, all I could think was, Gillespie may be credited as the director, but I’m watching a James Gunn movie. His stamp is all over it. And not in a good way. The shots, the framing, it looked like Gunn.

Mon: You took the words right out of my mouth. But first, let’s get into what Supergirl is about. It’s Kara Zor-El’s birthday, and she’s going to spend it the only way that the male writer of the original source material could think an angry, depressed lonely woman could – by drinking herself silly. 

Ron: Look, that’s the source material, so I wasn’t surprised that Supergirl had Kara going down the alcoholic route. There’s only so much one can change. But it was lazy writing in the comic, and it didn’t feel any less lazy in the film.

Mon: I felt the same way. On one of her adventures, Kara finds herself on a red sun planet, so she’s actually able to get drunk. Unfortunately for her, this is also the planet where a young girl, Ruthye, witnesses a brigand kill her family. She wants vengeance, and lo and behold, she crosses paths with Kara, who is super-strong, and kicks ass.

Ron: Kara and Ruthye end up on the same mission for different reasons, and along the way, they head off on several sidequests that involve fighting, more fighting, flashbacks to Kara’s past, and some more fighting. There is some saving and justice, but that takes a backseat. 

Ron: Not everyone has had time to see Supergirl so we’ll share our non-spoiler thoughts first before launching into spoilers. I didn’t hate this film as much as I thought I would. I definitely liked it better than 2025’s Superman film, which was painfully cringey and, honestly, felt amateurish. Gunn’s immature humour really ruined that experience.

Mon: Agreed. I also liked this one more than Superman, but that’s a low bar. 

Ron: I liked Milly Alcock as Kara and Supergirl. She looks very young, which is consistent with the source material. But she also manages to capture the hauntedness that comes with trauma. She has a much darker personality than Melissa Benoist in the CW show, which is hard for me. But that’s the story she’s been given.

Mon: I loved Milly Alcock in this. I’ve never seen anything with her before, unfortunately. But she was amazing! I will always, always love Melissa’s version of Kara, but this isn’t a comparison. They both exist, and I’m happy about that.

Ron: That’s true; every era gets the Supergirl that they need. When we were watching Benoist, she was bringing us joy and hope, because it was a time of relative peace. Now, we’re living in the worst timeline, and we need a Supergirl who is as disgruntled with Earth and life as we are. That’s what Alcock brings to the table, and she does it extremely well.

Mon: Alcock is wonderfully expressive. She’s very effective during the emotional scenes, even when the script and direction were doing her no favours. She carries Kara’s tragic past so well – a great mix of snarky, angry, indignant, irreverent. She also has fantastic screen presence. That’s such an annoying thing about actors these days, but here is Alcock just capturing the frame. I really enjoyed her performance. She’s the only reason I endured the film. That and I paid money to see it. 

Ron: I did think Supergirl was a bit more gross than it needed to be. I was very tense about that. I will say, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but still, more than I cared for. There were a few too many aliens, which must have skewed the budget, but I didn’t think we needed that many. I found them distracting. Let’s just focus on Kara and Ruthye.

Mon: I knew that was going to happen. For once, I was glad the Cineplex screen was too dark. This goes back to what you said earlier, Craig Gillespie may be the credited director, but the aesthetics are James Gunn. Purposefully gross visuals, lazy camera angles, no sense of emotional pacing. Just story beat after story beat. And hideous to look at. 

Ron: Did you think the CGI looked off? 

Mon: Yes!

Ron: Actually, all the action scenes were poorly executed. I couldn’t follow what was happening. All that zipping in and out. The editing left much to be desired. But the big action sequence at the end, the CGI was awful. One of the worst scenes since Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness. I don’t remember Superman having such issues.

Mon: Yes, and yes. I absolutely felt all that. I could not concentrate. As much as I want to blame the dark Cineplex screen, the CGI was bad, and the fight scenes were chaotic instead of being frenetic. The motion was so bad. Like so bad. Even with Supergirl’s flying, it was so obvious she was waiting to be pulled up by the invisible strings. The editing really left a lot to be desired in this film.

Ron: I don’t know whether they weren’t able to render the backgrounds for the action scenes because it was all mostly in space. But I was really shocked at the poor CGI.

Ron: While the CGI may have been bad, the makeup and costumes were pretty good. I do want to ask you about Krem’s facial piercings. What did you think about that choice? Because in the book, we don’t really see Krem properly.

Mon: Going back to Gunn’s aesthetics’ issue, and thereby the curse upon all of DC now, Krem’s piercings were just shy of triggering my trypophobia. But 100% some folks are going to get triggered.

Ron: I was worried about that. I’m surprised that I wasn’t triggered. I wonder if it’s because Matthias Schoenaerts is a familiar face to us?

Mon: I did hang on to my love for The Old Guard, which he’s in, to survive this film. But I’m going to thank the dark Cineplex screen, it may have helped avoid the trypophobia.

Ron: Oh okay, Cineplex’s dark screen and dodgy sound system saved us.

Mon: Honestly, Krem was the least of my problems. There was so much other gross stuff and gross alien designs. Again, it would probably have been a lot worse on a non-dark screen. I just hate watching DC stuff now because of the aesthetics. 

Ron: Krem was very cookie cutter as a villain. Anybody complaining about Dar-Benn in The Marvels had better not have anything nice to say about Krem the boring.

Mon: It was a stupid role, and poor choices were made for his affectations. Who’s to blame? I don’t know. But it was a boring, tired villain role. Schoenaerts deserved better. 

Ron: Agreed. Even Ruthye was just there. Like, she wasn’t adding much. She was the damsel. Eve Ridley was lovely and her chemistry with Alcock was excellent but she didn’t have anything to do, poor kid.

Mon: I thought Ridley was great in the role too. I like that Alcock and Ridley have a friendly chemistry, instead of the mother-daughter one that the book writes them as. But it was another boring, trope-y role.

Ron: Now that I’ve seen Supergirl, I am unsure why Lobo was in this film. Jason Momoa looks great; he looks like he stepped off the comic page. But Lobo is completely unnecessary to the plot. Remove him, and the story doesn’t change. Oh wait, yes it does. Because Lobo saves the day. Twice. Why can’t we have a female character save herself? This is so infuriating to me! These men in power in entertainment cannot, will not, allow female characters to own the screen. They’ve got to insert a man somewhere. No hate to Momoa, but he didn’t need to be here.

Mon: Lobo is fan-service, but he detracts greatly from Kara’s screen-time. I was like, if this is a cameo, I’m good. But no, he kept coming back like a bad rash. Again, no hate to Momoa. Good for you, buddy. But we need a lot less Lobo.

Ron: Honestly, the best thing about this film is Alcock. She’s really quite wonderful in it.

Mon: Oh, absolutely. Thoughts on the story? They tightened it up a bit from the source material. They also made the stakes of what the brigands are doing a little more personal. But it wasn’t told well. I’m not going to blame the script as much as the direction though. There was just no sense of flow or the ability to tell a cohesive story visually.

Ron: Did they tighten it up? Because I felt like they needlessly changed the stakes. Instead of focusing on one main mission, they had this other sub-plot that was, how do I say this? It just felt like they made it fit a story with female heroes. This wouldn’t be the story if it was Superman’s movie.

Mon: This is true. I can’t figure out how I feel about the sub-plot change. I think about Black Widow, a movie you and I adore. Part of that is about the specific experiences and stakes for women. 

Ron: I definitely know I didn’t like the sub-plot. And yes, I couldn’t stop thinking about Black Widow, which was more subtle about it, and felt more realistic.

Mon: Aye. I’m glad the film didn’t get lewd and leery, despite it all. 

Ron: Now we’re going to move into spoilers. If you haven’t seen Supergirl yet, please return to us after watching the film.

Ron: I want to start with the one thing I absolutely loved about this film. The Krypton sequence. I loved it. I loved it so much. I thought the Krypton story in Man of Steel was excellent. I loved the Krypton flashbacks in the Supergirl TV show. And here, as well, I thought it was an absolute breath of fresh air. The CGI was good, simple. Krypton looked like that futuristic industrial planet that we always see it as. No need to change that. And then Argo’s breakaway from the dying planet. Kara growing up, relatively happy, loved by her parents. A few years of peace followed by the news that Argo’s break has activated Kryptonite, which is slowly killing everyone.

Mon: I liked it, yeah. I preferred the aesthetics on Krypton and Argo to the rest of the film. I didn’t think David Krumholtz brought his A-game as Kara’s dad though. That was a dampener for me. 

Ron: I thought Krumholtz and Beecham were fine as the parents. Better than what we got in the Superman film.

Mon: Please, why would you remind me of that crap?

Ron: Apologies. Let’s move on. I particularly adored the scene where Zor-El tells Kara his plan to send her away, like Jor-El did for her cousin. And Alcock is exceptional in that scene.

Mon: Yes, it was beautiful. The best part of the script, and beautifully performed by Alcock. Honestly, during the whole film, the Argo bits were the only parts where I actually cared about the story. It’s so much better written than the contrived stuff in the book.

Ron: Yes, in that scene, they’re speaking in Kryptonian but there is so much emotion. The way she says she doesn’t want to leave her only home. That she’d rather die of the radiation. She’s only one life, why does she get to be saved? And what got me completely in my feels was Zor-El telling Kara that she is so much more–she’s her mother’s entire soul. She’s his whole soul. And Kara realises she will have to find a way to live without them. That really got me. I loved it.

Mon: Awwwww. It was lovely, wasn’t it?

Ron: Sadly, that’s all we really loved about the film.

Mon: Yeah. My biggest grouse is Lobo. Sorry Momoa. But he sucked the air out of every scene he was in. But, beyond that. Why did he have to save Supergirl? Just why!

Ron: I agree with you. Momoa brings a lot of energy and hilarity to his roles, but this, Lobo? It does nothing. He’s just grouchy and rude. Guess what, Kara is rightfully grouchy and rude. So why do we need Lobo? And him saving Supergirl bothered the hell out of me. Let women run their own films–we don’t need stupid male characters saving them.

Mon: The third act had a lot of problems, because they forgot this is Kara’s film. She is taken to a Green and Yellow sun planet, which almost kills Kara. The whole point of this plotline in the book is that Kara keeps telling Ruthye that when something similar happened to Clark, he barely made it like 10 minutes before being saved. So we have that urgency and worry about Kara. No one’s going to rescue her. She has to last the entire night till the yellow sun dawns. 

Ron: And in the book, while she’s incapacitated and dying, she still fights off monsters and keeps Ruthye safe. 

Mon: Yes. Here, Kara’s just dying. Even one line about Clark would have immediately shown us her resolve to save Krypto, and protect Ruthye. We don’t get that here. But worse. When she’s back up and running, she gets hit by Kryptonite. Instead of figuring out a way to save herself, or Ruthye finally being useful, Lobo saves Kara. I was so mad!

Ron: Yes, agreed. It would have been a great moment to give Ruthye something to do. But instead of that, they took the easy way out and had a man save the day.

Mon: We also need to talk about the ending. In the book, the story takes place in Supergirl’s past. Ruthye decides not to kill Krem, and he gets banished to the Phantom Zone. Decades later, he’s released for good behaviour and returns to Ruthye’s planet to ask her forgiveness. Instead, old Ruthye kills him. It left me wondering whether Supergirl had been wrong throughout the book because Ruthye obviously never let go of her hate and need for vengeance. Which, you know, undermines the point of the whole story.

Ron: Yes, it felt like a copout ending because everything Supergirl had told Ruthye meant nothing. Ruthye seemed to be happy with her decision to live out the rest of her days as a murderer. But in the film? I hated the ending here too. Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. 

Mon: In the film, Supergirl stops Ruthye from killing Krem, essentially telling her that killing him will mean he’ll be part of Ruthye’s life forever. But then Kara kills Krem herself!

Ron: Why would Supergirl kill Krem? Why would that even be something she considers? I can’t believe this terrible choice. Why wouldn’t she take him to prison somewhere? This is the laziest decision. And I’m 100% certain the writer had nothing to do with that choice. Upper management probably thought they were being edgy.

Mon: I’m trying to figure it out as well. Did she kill him to put a definite end to his trafficking? But then we needed some understanding of how the universe wasn’t protecting, and wasn’t interested in protecting, these girls either. Otherwise, why couldn’t he have just been sent to jail?

Ron: Yeah, because won’t someone else just step in to fill that void? Instead, having Krem punished would send a stronger message.

Mon: Right?

Ron: Can we talk about the sex trafficking sub-plot? They wrote that in because it was a female superhero, didn’t they? Because that’s not in the comic book.

Mon: See, this is why I’m confused. We have a female writer – Ana Nogueira – so she’s obviously trying to reorient the story to fit the female experience. But this wasn’t the right choice. I mean, why do female characters always have to worry about these things in entertainment? It’s not escapism for the audience then is it?

Ron: Exactly. Why do female viewers have to endure a sex trafficking storyline in their entertainment. Male audiences don’t have to deal with that. And, of course, Ruthye and Kara are threatened with sexual assault. Yuck.

Mon: It is yuck. It was not as overt as I’d expected it to be, but still yuck.

Ron: And what was the message? Because Kara and Ruthye get in each other’s way and that entire family gets killed! So, the same thing that happened to them, they enabled Krem to do that to others.

Mon: I hated that part. It was so stupid how that family – noticeably, a rare Black family in the film – were all killed off because Supergirl decided to grab Ruthye and let Krem get away.

Ron: The lack of people of colour in the film did not escape me. And yes, the way they were murdered, and how quickly the story moves on from that. Horrendous.

Mon: But hang on. Aren’t we being hypocritical here? We freaking love, like we’re besotted with, Birds of Prey. That has very overt attempted assault and sleazy scenes. Why are we hating on this film?

Ron: But here’s the thing. It’s about the gaze. Who made Birds of Prey? We had Cathy Yan directing, and she never took a sleazy approach to shooting the female characters, and she didn’t linger on the threat of sexual assault. There’s a complete difference here, because the gaze is different.

Mon: I’m just trying to make sure we’re not being unnecessarily critical. But the sex trafficking sub-plot in this film definitely made me uncomfortable. It felt like a knock-off version of the Fury Road plot, which was really well done in that film. Here, it felt tacked on. Maybe because it wasn’t in the book, it’s bothering us more. Genocide is no better a sub-plot, though. Which is what the film version replaced.

Ron: No, I don’t think we are being hypocritical. It felt derivative and, while it is a very real problem, I think Supergirl trying to stop a genocidal maniac across space makes a more relevant plot considering she’s already lost all her people. And it shows what huge stakes Supergirl is up against.

Mon: DC execs probably started crying at another genocide plot, following Superman. Not that that film was in anyway a comment on the actual genocide taking place in the real world.

Ron: Superman was a disaster. I still can’t believe people were applauding the film’s take on the Israel-Palestine conflict. What a joke.

Mon: I love how Gunn just distanced himself from something that would have made Superman better. DC is a joke now. I’ll also say, the other reason the trafficking plot doesn’t work is because neither Kara nor Ruthye really react to the situation. They don’t hide themselves, they don’t disguise themselves. They’re just there, presenting themselves as obvious bait. 

Ron: That’s true. Nothing really changes. Another thing that bothered me was when Ruthye and Lobo are in the brigand prison. Was there a scene that got cut? It was very messily edited. Because Ruthye goes from spending the majority of the film unable to fight, and then, suddenly, she’s taking down this huge, hulking brigand by herself. And then she promptly goes back to being a damsel. Was that sequence weird to you?

Mon: The whole third act was weird. I was happy to see Ruthye do something for once, but then they undermined all that two minutes later. 

Mon: One last criticism. I hated the soundtrack. I didn’t clock the score that much. But the song choices were awful. So boring. No energy. Ugh.

Ron: Right. So, what are our final thoughts on Supergirl?

Mon: I knew I wasn’t going to like Supergirl much, because the DC films and shows under the new regime have really terrible taste, sensibilities, and aesthetics. The trailer made those things obvious, as well. But, I was won over by Milly Alcock. She is superb. She plays Kara as understandably messy, angry, passionate and emotional. 

Ron: I loved Milly Alcock. I loved the Krypton scenes. But the story felt like it didn’t know what to do with female characters. Lobo didn’t fit the story, at all. The CGI was horrendous. This Supergirl film, and Alcock, deserve so much better than they got. It feels like DC put all their effort into Superman and gave Supergirl short shrift. The behind-the-scenes meddling of James Gunn is too obvious.

Mon: Everything else in the film? It simply didn’t work. They chose poor source material for Supergirl’s big screen return, made poor story choices; the direction was confused, chaotic, and the visuals were pathetic. It’s all in line with how DC Studios is going these days. So not a surprise. But I want to love DC shows and films. DC is the reason we fell in love with pop culture in the first place. But that’s not going to happen till there’s a change in management. Which probably won’t happen any time soon. You deserve so much better, Kara!

Ron: We hoped for better, but alas. That’s it for our review of Supergirl.

Mon: Join us next time for our preview of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4.

Ron: You can listen to Stereo Geeks on stereogeeks.ca, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Don’t forget to rate us, and leave us a review; it helps other listeners find us.

Mon: And, get more exclusive content when you subscribe to our newsletter on our website, and follow us on Instagram, @stereogeeks_podcast. Plus, we’re also on BlueSky, @stereogeekspodcast.bsky.social. 

Ron: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. Our music is courtesy Audionautix. 

Mon: See you next time.