As a superhero movie-loving teenager, I had to be content with the fact that not many of my favorite films featured women in top billing. The closest I got during the early 2010s was Black Widow in Iron Man 2, who was a great hero, but felt very catered to the male gaze in that black catsuit…
Don't get me wrong, I still loved watching Iron Man, Captain America, and the Avengers movies. But something always felt missing: where was my version of a kick-ass hero? And where was one who wasn't in a skin-tight suit – and who wasn't constantly being asked in the press about losing weight to fit into said skin-tight suit, for that matter?
Things have started to shift in the past decade, with the release of Wonder Woman, Black Widow's standalone movie, Birds of Prey, and the Captain Marvel films. However, for me, nothing has quite captured my imagination in the way that the DCU's new Supergirl has.
Blasting onto the theater screen in a Blondie T-shirt to an incredible soundtrack, Milly Alcock's new take on Kara Zor-El has immediately become one of my favorite superheroes – and the fact she fronts such a female-led genre movie has healed something in my inner teenager.
Flawed and funny
Written by Ana Nogueira, Supergirl is based on Tom King's comic book run 'Woman of Tomorrow' and tells the story of a young girl called Ruthye whose whole family is killed by villain Krem. This sets her on a mission of revenge and she recruits Kara Zor-El along the way after her dog Krypto is caught in the crossfire and poisoned by Krem.
The premise sets up what those involved have called a "road movie", starring two women as the co-leads and focusing almost exclusively on their story. They're complex characters too, especially Alcock's Kara. Sick of living in the shadow of her "nerd" cousin Superman, we first meet her partying her life away on planets with red suns.
She doesn't have much figured out and she has a lot of trauma from her planet's destruction that she hasn't yet dealt with. As the movie's director Craig Gillespie told us in a recent interview, "She's complex, she's flawed, she's an anti-hero that's rebellious, and she's been through trauma – and that's bizarrely such human traits that you can recognize within yourself."
Alcock brings a lot of heart to the character, embodying all of these things pitch-perfectly, while also being, quite frankly, extremely cool. Not only does she have some awesome powers, but she's more often than not rocking up to a great soundtrack and proving to the many aliens she encounters that they're wrong to underestimate her.
Through her relationship with the young Ruthye, she also really grows throughout the film. Their dynamic forces her to recognise different character traits that she's been holding onto and allows her to navigate her own traumatic past a little better. By giving her someone to care for, she also relates a bit more to her well-meaning cousin, too, setting up a new dynamic with Clark Kent going forward in the DCU.
It's a complex arc and one that is handled thoroughly and satisfyingly by Alcock and Nogueira's script. There are male characters – most notably Matthias Schoenaerts' Krem and Jason Momoa's Lobo – but they are secondary to the story, and thankfully there is not even a whiff of a romantic storyline to be found in Supergirl.
Instead, the meat of the movie is all about its female leads, and even the subplots tackle feminist issues. There's a nasty underlying threat when the pair arrive on Bilquis where young girls are being trafficked as brides for the Brigands, giving extra weight to Kara and Ruthye's fight against Krem.
A new era
There's something to be said about the fact that the second film release in James Gunn and Peter Safran's hugely anticipated DCU is a female-led story. There have been little to no conversations about whether this is a risky strategy or what it could mean for the box office from the co-CEOs, as they have instead fully embraced the importance of women in the creation of their new superhero world.
Not only this, but the investment is already there in Alcock. Aside from her solo movie, she's already signed up for two more movies. As producer Lars P. Winther told The Hollywood Reporter: "So we have Man of Tomorrow, and we already know what the next movie’s going to be after that, and she’s a big part of that."
It feels like what Gunn and Safran are doing with the DCU is righting the wrongs that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had to claw its way out of in more recent years. Female-led stories and interesting female characters are being woven into this new universe right from the beginning, not as an afterthought.
This all makes me so excited for young superhero-loving women today who get to grow up feeling part of these universes right from the start. I hope that Supergirl's ascent heralds a new era for this on-screen and based on the upcoming slate for the DCU, which features a new story for Wonder Woman on the roster, it's looking positive.
Supergirl is out now. For more, check out our Supergirl review as well as our breakdown of how to watch the DC movies in order and all the upcoming DC movies and shows you need to know about.
