Last year, Superman (2025) was undoubtedly the film of the summer. While the competition was a bit steeper for summer blockbusters this year with the much-anticipated releases of Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) and The Odyssey (2026), I still placed Supergirl (2026) at number three on my list of the top five most anticipated summer movies of 2026.
I’ve been pretty excited to see House of the Dragon (2022- ) star Milly Alcock don the cape since her casting was announced. What really sold me on her character was her introduction in the final scene of last year’s Superman (2025).
At the finale of Superman (2025), we’re given a sneak peek of the stark contrast between David Corenswet’s Clark Kent/Superman and Alcock’s Kara Zor-El/Supergirl.
The differences are apparent. Supergirl (2026), directed by Craig Gillespie, was going to explain why.
The budget and fan excitement were there. Yet, with a reported $170 million budget according to IndieWire, the film only grossed $126,466,532, as reported by Box Office Mojo. I’m not a mathematician, but those numbers don’t seem great.
Early critic reviews also began to spell disaster for the newly revamped James Gunn DC Universe as only its second feature film to be released under Gunn’s leadership.
Truthfully, I was fully ready to experience this film on the big screen. However, I even found myself hesitant to spend the money after hearing some of the negative critic reviews and fan hate.
Plus, if I’m being honest, I was not in a place where I could take any plot or watch any media that could involve a sad dog scene. I know how well Gunn can pull heartstrings, especially after what we saw with Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023). While Gunn wasn’t credited as a main writer or director on this film, I still expected some of his flair to show up.
After watching the film recently, I understand the criticism it received, but ultimately, if I had to describe it with one word: over-hated.
A brief overview
Celebrating her birthday (or drinking away her sorrows), Kara takes off on an intergalactic bar crawl cut short.
Her festivities end when a young girl named Ruthye, played by Eve Ridley, arrives at the bar asking for help to avenge her family from Krem of the Yellow Hills, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, who took down her entire family, ravaged her father’s supply of hand-made weaponry, and took off in search of a way off the planet. Inebriated, Kara finds herself getting involved.
Shortly thereafter, Krem makes an attempt to take off in Kara’s ship. When Krypto moves in to defend, he’s hit with a poison, and only Krem’s all-male race of Brigands carries the antidote. The two then take off after the band of Brigands with only three days to save poor Krypto. The journey takes them from planet to planet and into some of the darkest parts of the universe.
Along the way, the audience learns more about Krypton’s destruction, Clark’s journey to Earth, and Kara’s dark past. The flashback scenes are where we witness the heart of the film and where Alcock’s talent truly shines. Unfortunately, those scenes aren’t the full movie.
Why the hate?
As always, let’s start with some of the negatives.
The dialogue in this movie is its weakest point. Unfortunately, for most movies, dialogue tends to be pretty important!
Multiple times throughout the film, I thought to myself: “People don’t talk like that.” It was always a funny occurrence to me when a high-budget, big studio film struggles with something as simple as the dialogue. Do writers not interact with real people? Do directors not hear a line and think, “Well, that sounded off”?
In any case, the dialogue isn’t all bad all the time, but it happens enough of the time at critical points in the film where the audience is guided toward paying close attention to the dialogue only for the line to be a bad joke or cliché delivery that audiences haven’t heard in a film since the 80s.
People also criticize the film for being campy and corny. Meanwhile, Gunn’s Superman (2025) featured CGI monkeys as internet trolls and a CGI alien baby being rescued from a flood of pixels.
One thing I will say, however, about Gunn’s Superman (2025) and Gilespie’s Supergirl (2026) in terms of comic book corniness: Gunn’s film had more redeeming scenes, which I say as much in my review of that film when it came out.
Corenswet’s cheesy Clark Kent lines like “oh geeze” aren’t necessarily delivered better or worse than Aclott’s “girl power” lines, but it just felt like they really wanted to make sure they got across how different she is.
She’s edgy, she’s cool, and she’s scrappy. We get it, but she doesn’t have to make quippy asides and grunts in every fight to get that across. When it came to dialogue, that was my largest complaint. Stop making the dialogue try to tell me she’s cool. Watching her relentlessly use her laser vision to push a villain deep into the crust of the planet will do that. If you want me to believe she’s edgy and relentless, all you needed to do was make her fight that way. We don’t need the quippy dialogue to achieve a quirky female character.
Personally, I also thought the CGI was a tad lacking with all of the extraterrestrial scenery, and I feel that the film really would have benefitted from more practical effects, though I essentially say that for every film that relies on CGI these days.
A welcome tone shift
After the success of Gunn’s Superman (2025), he spoke publicly about how the films of the new DC would feature different tones and “flavors” for every project. He certainly wasn’t lying.
At the start of the film, it feels as though the minds behind the movie were trying to recapture the space-worthy magic of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. But incorporating tons of mainstream music, a bright galaxy, and some quippy one-liners isn’t the key to making a good space movie.
However, unlike films such as Disney’s Haunted Mansion (2023), this movie actually does get better and improves in all areas as the film goes on instead of starting strong and fizzling out.
Though it starts off light, this movie has a serious tone shift that greatly differs from what we saw in Superman (2025), which I appreciated because it also resembles the differences between Clark and Kara.
Clark is a symbol of hope; a beacon of light always shining at the end of every tunnel. And it makes sense. Despite not knowing his birth parents, he was safely cared for by his adoptive parents and shown a life of love and gratitude. Meanwhile, Kara had to watch as she lost everything. Of course she isn’t the same lucky-going Kryptonian. Why would she be?
It’s not only the tone that differs between the two films. Kara’s antagonist not only hurt her dog, her only real piece of family that she has left, considering she barely knows Clark, but his entire group of Brigands survives by pillaging and plundering every town and planet they come across, stealing weapons, food, and young girls to take as brides. He’s rotten to the core, and the tone of the film reflects those darker themes.
We also see Jason Momoa as Lobo, which is a fun character but whose presence feels a bit inconsequential in this film. I also had this complaint about Gunn’s Superman (2025). We meet many characters who feel like they will be important, but they simply aren’t important yet, and there is no guarantee that they will be later on.
Great action sequences
While the dialogue distracts at times, personally, I thought this film has some really great fight scenes and action sequences. One that stands out is the cinematography for the bar fight, where we witness much of the thrashing Kara is giving through reflections, or it is seen slightly out of frame. Instead, we watch the reaction of Ruthye. It was a risky move, but I thought this offered some of the most creative visuals of the movie.
The other fighting sequence that I thought was great was the final battle in the film’s finale. Yes, that scene.
For those who haven’t watched the film yet, the movie received criticism over the choice of song for the final, climactic scene, which is very, very deserved.
This action scene is so great, and the fighting looks so impressive, and the entire scene becomes a joke because the song chosen was entirely wrong.
I wrote previously that unconventional song choices can really improve a scene, taking it from great to iconic. However, it’s also a major risk because the wrong song can also destroy a scene, which is exactly what happened in this movie. If you mute your TV during this part of the film, you’ll probably enjoy it more.
Still, I think the action lived up to the expectations and isn’t something to complain about when it comes to this movie.
Moving forward
I’m not saying loving this movie makes you a feminist while hating it makes you a misogynist. But I do think that certain portions of the superhero fanbase are less open-minded to seeing female heroes and go into movies like this ready to hate it when the simplest answer is simply this: don’t spend money to see a film you’re not interested in if you were going to bash it regardless of quality.
For little girls and even adult fans like myself, it’s so refreshing to see a hero that we can relate to without it needing to be a guy. When I was a kid, I would have killed to see more of Supergirl, Ghost-Spider, or even Captain Marvel on screen. I didn’t get much of it then, so I’m glad it exists now.
I would hate for DC’s response to this film to be to limit Alcock’s Kara, which current rumors suggest is happening. Gunn, don’t be such a coward!
This film didn’t “fail” because it had a bad message, a bad actress, or the “wrong superhero.” First, saying this movie failed isn’t entirely accurate when fan reviews continue to rise now that the film is available to stream, as seen on Rotten Tomatoes.
DC says it’s worried about capturing the male audience. How about the female audience? Attend a comic con, scroll through TikTok, take a look at the creators talking about this content. It’s no longer just men.
Women have long been a part of nerdy fandoms that have never catered to their needs. If you want these female-led superhero films to do well, take the time to put the right people behind them. Any movie with bad dialogue, corny jokes, and lackluster CGI is going to get bad reviews and a poor box office score. Stop blaming a poor performance on the wrong metrics.
Supergirl (2026) isn’t a film for everyone in the same way that any superhero film isn’t for everyone. I had my critiques about Superman (2025), and many of them translate to this film as well, with slight variations.
At the end of the day, it’s a fun, campy superhero movie like the majority of them are when you embrace the comic book side of these films. If that isn’t your cup of tea, don’t watch it. At the same time, don’t assume you’re going to hate it because internet trolls told you to. I really went into this movie expecting to be extremely critical because of how the internet reacted, and I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed watching it.
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