WINNER: Milly Alcock
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Nearly every Supergirl review says the former House of the Dragon star is terrific and fun as Kara Zor-El (“effortlessly shifting between [being a] fiercely menacing cosmic force, a genuinely funny protagonist, and a deeply vulnerable young woman” as one critic put it). This is particularly gratifying given the absurd and cruel trolling the young actress received from the toxic corners of internet fandom leading up to the film’s release.
Yet the praise for Alcock feels like watching a plane crash and seeing just one person get miraculously thrown clear of the wreckage without a scratch. The film’s reviews range from negative to tepid praise (averaging a 58 percent Rotten Tomatoes score). Many point fingers at the film’s script, with Variety‘s line — “a comic-book movie with the worst script I can remember” — going viral. That’s surely hyperbolic (Madame Web, for starters, was Showgirls-level mockable). But the criticism is ironic given DC Studios’ co-chief James Gunn‘s famous pledge of taking a script-first approach to franchise management. Gunn knows precisely what strong writing looks like, so one wonders if his company’s eagerness to get Supergirl out one year after Superman resulted in some “we’ll fix it as we go” thinking without Kevin Feige‘s “we’ll fix it as we go” results. Box office tracking puts Supergirl at a $50 million opening weekend, and that’s the most optimistic projection.
