Courtney Howard // Film Critic
Though we’ve seen a handful of versions of Supergirl in previous films and TV shows, we’ve never seen one quite like the super gal Milly Alcock (HOUSE OF THE DRAGON) played in last summer’s SUPERMAN. Kara Zor-El rebranded as acerbic, drunk party girl earned our instant endearment and attention. It also stoked our curiosity over her standalone film, SUPERGIRL, based on the “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” graphic novel by Tom King, Bilquis Evely and Matheus Lopes.
Director Craig Gillespie and writer Ana Nogueira’s adaptation is about the 23-year-old reluctant hero escorting young charge Ruthye (Eve Ridley) on a vengeful journey. Think TRUE GRIT but set in a DC Comics hero universe.
Pretty f*ckin’ rad, right?! It’s a stroke of genius uing Blondie’s “Call Me” to set the stage for the punk rock space fantasy-western where our anti-heroine’s journey is centered on “answering the call” to become the hero she’s meant to be?! Perfection. No Notes. It’s nice to see Krypto is back in bad dog action. We also get a sneak peek at Lobo (Jason Momoa), villain Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenhaerts), a few fight sequences, big action set pieces, badassery, as well as the narrative’s humor and heart.
At the film’s recent global, virtual teaser trailer release event, Alcock, Gillespie and Gunn shared a few details with us journalists about the making of and what to expect from this version of the titular hero, or rather, anti-hero.
Ana Nogueira’s script was perfectly suited to their sensibilities, they instantly gave the project the greenlight. Producer James Gunn says, “I was very interested in making it, when Peter [Safran] and I were kind of talking about taking over DC, but hadn’t decided yet. I told him what an interesting take on Supergirl it was. It’s sort of a rock n’ roll Supergirl.” Gillespie adds, “Ana’s script was so good…the tone of it. I could understand what to do with it. Milly had already been cast. The script goes to some very dark and hard places for the character. I felt like you guys [ Gunn and Alcock] would double down on that. She’s got vulnerability, a sense of humor and strength and acerbic nature built into her DNA.”
Alcock’s prime research tool for her character was Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s graphic novel. She states, “It was the closest version of this character that we were telling, so I read that book a lot.”
The first two scenes in SUPERGIRL is what sold Gillespie on directing the film. He says, “The extremes of what is happening in those first two scenes, you get the whole… it sort of encompasses the whole movie. I was in immediately. The script goes to some difficult places for the character and for the audience and really has a lot of soul-searching involved. It surprises you in the dark places that it ends up landing in. I was excited we could lean into that from a performance standpoint, character standpoint and the ambiguity of where [Milly’s] character is in her life.” He later adds, “She took the Tom King book to a different place.”
This Kara Zor-El is more punk and cynical than Superman and also previous iterations of this character. Alcock states, “Compared to Superman, she’s had a different upbringing. She was brought up on a planet that was dying – everyone she’s ever known and loved is dead. That creates a tough… she doesn’t trust a lot of people. She’s got a wall up and she’s very skeptical of people. Clark is very overtly trusting. He expects the good in people. He’s had a very sheltered life – and he’s also pretending. Kara never pretends. She doesn’t have a façade. She’s very flawed and I think we need a flawed hero. She leans so beautifully into her flaws. Kara doesn’t want to be a hero, but has to be the hero of her own story.”
Gillespie, who has experience capturing flawed female antiheroes in films like CRUELLA and I, TONYA, adds, “She’s an anti-hero. She doesn’t want the role. When we meet her, she’s, in very hard way, running away from it. She gets dragged reluctantly into the world of being a superhero. She’s got a lot of armor and she uses her humor and cynicism to protect herself. She’s got some serious baggage that she’s dealing with. Milly embraced all of it with a certain sense of compassion underneath. You can feel the fractures in what she’s struggling with, but she still has a toughness to her. It’s a tricky dance, tonally.”
Alcock’s first day on set was freezing and required her to speak Kryptonian. She says, “It was with Superman and I wasn’t in the suit. I was speaking a different language. That day was really hard. It was like 2 degrees.” Gillespie adds, “The whole scene was in Kryptonian, for you.”
Bilquis Evely’s art was an inspiration for this adaptation’s aesthetics. Gunn says, “It’s equally as important as Tom King is to that book.”
SUPERGIRL marks Gillespie’s most action and stunt-heavy production yet. He states, “We had about 6 or 7 weeks that were all stunts. It was a lot to do. My stunt coordinator came over to me and was like, ‘We have 8 miles of cable on the stage for all the ratchetings. I’ve never had remotely that much cabling.’ There was a lot going on. In each case, it was always a little different; whether she had full power, no power, on a Red planet. Where she is emotionally in the story dictated how these fight sequences go. She’s in a very angry place. It’s gonna be a much more frenetically camera, messy, aggressive camerawork. If she’s in the zone, the camerawork gets more fluid.”
The entire film takes place in outer space. As to the differences between SUPERMAN and SUPERGIRL, their universes are radically different. Gunn elucidates, “The outer space this is a big part of it, because it is a space fantasy.” Gillespie adds, “So right there, we’re creating a whole new set piece.”
SUPERGIRL opens in theaters on June 26, 2026.
