Blasting Movie lands on Supergirl with a split verdict: Milly Alcock gets praised for giving Kara Zor-El an appealingly punky edge, while Craig Gillespie’s film is called a leaden attempt to revive Superman’s cousin as a hero. The Hollywood Reporter published that review on Friday, June 26, and the cleanest takeaway for viewers is that the performance lands harder than the movie around it.
Milly Alcock and Kara Zor-El
“Milly Alcock’s hard-edged performance making her an appealingly punky protagonist.” That is the review’s sharpest compliment, and it points to the one thing the film does not flatten: Alcock’s turn gives Kara a charge the script does not consistently sustain. For anyone deciding whether to buy a ticket, that means the lead may be the reason to go even if the overall package is less persuasive.
“I wish I could say I had even half as good a time at Craig Gillespie’s leaden attempt to resuscitate Superman’s cousin as a viable hero in her own interstellar ruckus.” The line captures the critic’s full position without much room for misreading. Gillespie is not getting credit here for structure or momentum; the review treats the movie as a stalled machine with a strong central part.
Krypton and Argo City
The review says the strongest material comes in flashbacks to Kara’s final months on the dying home planet Krypton, where teenage Kara fights her parents’ decision to send her to Earth. Those scenes move to Argo City, a floating colony headed for destruction, and they give the story a clearer emotional and visual shape than the present-day material. David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham play Kara’s parents, while the uncle who sent Kal-El to Earth a couple decades earlier remains part of the family frame.
That flashback structure matters because it gives the critic a version of the movie that feels more direct than the main heroic push. The review’s complaint is not that the film lacks story; it is that the story in motion does less work than the one told in memory, with the film’s best energy trapped in the past rather than driving the present.
The 1984 contrast
The review also reaches back to the Jeannot Swarc Supergirl, which was critically dismissed in 1984 before becoming a camp classic across the queer spectrum and beyond. That comparison is doing more than nostalgia work: it reminds readers that the franchise has already lived through one hard critical reset and later found a different audience. This new version does not get the benefit of that historical patience on day one.
At 1 hour 47 minutes and rated PG-13, Supergirl now has a straightforward audience choice in front of it: follow Alcock’s performance into a film the critic finds inert, or wait for stronger word of mouth elsewhere. The review gives one clear verdict on the creative split, and it lands on the side of the actor rather than the machine around her.
