USA, 2026, science fiction, director: Craig Gillespie, starring: Millie Alcock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley.
I was never a big fan of Superman stories and watched them mostly because my son liked them. Superman always seemed too correct to me - an almost flawless hero, and such characters rarely fascinate me. I also didn’t expect anything special from “Supergirl”. And that’s why I was pleasantly surprised when the film suddenly touched me.
Not only because the main character is a girl. It’s just that, unlike Superman, she is not at all perfect. She has a complex character, she is not always friendly and is in no hurry to save everyone around her. She is tired, confused, sometimes even indifferent. She has depression, her own traumas and the feeling that she is lost in a vast universe. It is such heroes - with mistakes, pain and a difficult past - that often seem much more alive.
So, our heroine celebrates her birthday not among friends or fans, but in a bar on a planet under the Red Sun, where her superpowers do not work. Her only company is her faithful dog Krypto. Superman also calls to read her another moral - and, it seems, annoys her no less than me.
But Supergirl's calm self-destruction is interrupted by an unexpected guest - a girl Ruthie, whose family was brutally killed by a space pirate. She comes to ask for help in revenge. However, the heroine is not ready to play the role of a savior - she has enough problems of her own. But when an enemy poisons Krypto, personal pain changes everything. The two girls set off on a journey across the galaxy, having different reasons for this journey, but one common enemy.
This is a space adventure where the heroes do not race on shiny ships of the future, but fly on old, rusty space “buses” - a kind of intergalactic minibuses that resemble old technology from the past more than the majestic ships of superheroes. And this is precisely the special charm of the film: its universe does not seem sterile and ideal, but alive, strange and a little chaotic. Here, aliens can behave like ordinary people, and space jokes are often based on the fact that even in a distant galaxy everyone has their own strange habits, problems and complexes.
The film asks simple but important questions: does revenge bring real relief? Can alcohol replace escape from pain? Can you learn to live with loss, and not just hide from it? Each of the girls comes out of this journey different.
“Supergirl” is sometimes funny, sometimes surprising, and sometimes amazing with details from the heroine’s past and an unusual look at the familiar superhero world. This is not a story about the perfect savior, but about a person trying to get herself together. And, oddly enough, that’s why I liked this movie even more than “Superman.”
The text was originally written in Ukrainian translated with the help of Google Translate
