Remember that period of time somewhere between 2008 and 2019 where Hollywood could release just about absolutely anything and as long as it had a Marvel or DC Studios label attached, it’d cross a billion dollars at the box office? Yeah, that was a while ago wasn’t it. It’s been a few years since the likes of Captain Marvel and Aquaman were topping the moviegoing charts, and thank god for it…
https://x.com/FilmUpdates/status/2071256752616874492?s=20
In the year of 2026, we’ve seen a new wave of cinema dominate the zeitgeist. The likes of Backrooms, Iron Lung and Obsession have paved an all-new path for filmmakers making the journey from YouTube creator to box office star, whilst superhero movies — and established franchise flicks at large (I’m looking at YOU as well Star Wars) — have been replaced by the business’ latest obsession: the video game adaptation. This year’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie — which is the year’s first and, thus far, only billion dollar blockbuster — picked up where 2025's A Minecraft Movie left off. A trail that looks to be continuing to be walked through upcoming adaptations of Elden Ring, Battlefield and Call of Duty just to name a few. And hey, even semi-original blockbusters like Project Hail Mary are succeeding (yes, it’s based on a novel, but such has been the comic book-dominated blockbuster space over the past some 20 years that this managed to feel so fresh) — with the Lord and Miller-directed Rocky charm fest raking in a huge $683,355,577 worldwide, outgrossing last year’s Superman, Thunderbolts, Captain America: Brave New World, and Fantastic Four: First Steps — almostcertain to put to shame Supergirl, too.
If this tells us anything, it’s that audiences have finally become tired of the type of movie that dominated the previous decade, and unfortunately for the James Gunn-helmed DCU’s second feature instalment, Supergirl, I think it might just have gotten the memo a few years too late. With the film’s uninspired visual style, clunky CGI, underdeveloped villain and unpolished script simply no longer sufficient in a movie landscape that’s moved on from this relic of the 2010s. And whilst there’s obviously an awful lot wrong with Supergirl from a technical filmmaking standpoint — as has tended to be the case with this genre over the years — it’s the movie’s inability to position its titular character as an individual of any note whatsoever that raises the most questions, with the one most prominently at the forefront of my mind: why can this genre simply not figure out the answer to the female superhero question?
The movie that I thought about the most whilst watching Supergirl was Captain Marvel — a project that similarly failed to connect with audiences on a wider scale and stalled in its attempts to strap the rocket to its shiny new female lead. But what I came to realise is that beyond these two movies there seems to be a problem within the genre at large, as the likes of Black Widow, Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman 1984, and TV efforts She Hulk and Ms. Marvel ran into similar hurdles. Why is this?
Each of the women at the forefront of these projects (except you Gal Gadot) are talented and charismatic enough to lead a franchise to the moon, and yet, the material they’re given is almost always setting them up to implode upon lift-off. In 2026, seven years on from the release of Captain Marvel, and even over 20 years on from the Halle Berry-starring disaster that was Catwoman, it’s nothing short of pathetic that this genre continues to falter at this junction. It’s time to do better, and it would be a start to find a woman to direct your Supergirl movie, not a middle-aged Australian man.
As I alluded to earlier, beyond the messy Ana Nogueira-penned script, which fails to successfully platform its lead performer, the filmmaking on display can only be described, in the kindest possible words, as entirely without merit. The movie is often barely visible, the visual effects are simply just unacceptable, it’s incredibly obvious that the project ran through three composers, and the less said about that needle drop you’ve heard so much about the better. With the talent involved, it’s truly just baffling stuff all around. Are we sure the same guy that shot Mission: Impossible — Fallout shot this movie? Are we sure the same guy that directed I, Tonya and Lars and the Real Girl directed this movie? I’m simply not.
Alcock herself is doing the absolute best she can, and comes out as the movie’s clear winner, whilst Jason Momoa, David Krumholtz, Eve Ridley and the always brilliant David Corenswet as Superman come out relatively unscathed too, though it remains unclear why Momoa’s Lobo features in the movie at all aside from literally stopping Alcock’s Kara from being beheaded — that’s right, she needs a man to save her. God this is bad.
Ultimately, I’m just left confused over who, aside from some young women and perhaps the odd twentysomething reminiscing on their high school superhero fan days, will get anything out of this movie. The story is uninteresting, the characters are underdeveloped, the visual experience is unpleasant, the humour is non-existent, and there’s nothing present that hasn’t been done not only countless times before, but almost always better.
It’s a real disaster of a movie, and whilst I’m not naive enough to think that this nightmarish era of movies is totally over — I’m sure both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday will both clear a billion dollars at the box office — *Supergirl’*s failure certainly indicates something about where this genre is headed if the quality fails to improve. Audiences are hungrier than ever to be challenged, and whatever this was did anything but that. Here’s to hoping that the DCU’s next endeavour, Clayface, can make good on James Gunn’s promise of delivering a cinematic comic book universe that can subvert what we’ve come to expect from these worlds.
