I admit that I was not eager for the Supergirl movie to come out. the last Superman movie ended with a glimpse of Supergirl stumbling into the Fortress of Solitude still drunk from some interstellar party. Supergirl?! This was not Supergirl. What were they doing with Supergirl. Was this some director deciding to “make the character dark, just because, you know, that’s cool?” or worse yet, “let’s make the character dark to show that I’m cool”?
No.
This was someone finally taking the character and her story seriously, thinking through the implications of it, and using it as the foundation for a beautifully crafted story.
Supergirl’s story, however, starts with Superman, of course. Superman is the last son of Krypton, put in a space capsule as an infant and launched towards Earth just as Krypton exploded, destroying everyone else. The baby Kal-el landed in Kansas and was raised by the Kents. Eventually, inevitably, he discovered his origin, and the fact that he is the only Kryptonian left, something explored well in the last Superman movie. Although Kal-el was from Krypton, Clark Kent was raised on Earth. Ma and Pa Kent are the only parents he has ever known. Earth is his home.
But when DC wanted to expand the Superman universe back in the 1960s with a female version, this story posed a problem. How to have another Super-being when all of Krypton died. In the end, they came up with a cheat, a little foot-note everyone had overlooked: when Krypton exploded, not everyone died. Scientist Zor-el (brother to Superman’s father Jor-el) created a force field which protected his home of Argo City. Everyone there survived and this little pocket of Krypton lived on. For a while. But the Kryptonite formed by the explosion slowly poisoned the city. The population died. Desperate Zor-el built a space capsule and sent his daughter Kara (a pre-teen in the original stories, a teen-ager in this version) off to the safety of Earth. She arrived, by amazing coincidence right, on Superman’s door-step and the long-separated cousins reunited. Problem solved. On with the fun.
But when we look closer at that origin, as some combination of producer James Gunn, Director Craig Gillespie, and writer Ana Nogueira did, there is more to it. Unlike Superman, Kara actually grew up on Krypton (or at least a piece of it). For Superman, Krypton and its fate is essentially abstract, when he mourns the loss of Krypton, he is not mourning a place he ever knew or even remembers. Clark grew up on Earth; Earth is his home. Earth is where his family and friends all are. Not so with Kara Zor-el. She grew up on Krypton, with Kryptonian family and friends, all of whom she watched die, while she alone survived. Kara’s home was Krypton. Earth just happens to be where she landed. These two perspectives are nicely captured in a short exchange between Clark and Kara early in the movie. They are on a video call while Kara is on her interstellar pub-crawl, and Clark is urging her to come back to Earth, to spend more time here. “I’m just worried that you will never find your people,” he says (I am paraphrasing from memory.) And she answers, “That’s the thing, Clark. I don’t have any people.” (Millie Alcock, who plays Kara, delivers this line in a simple, straight-forward tone that instantly makes clear all the pain and loneliness lurking in the background.)
But this is not just a more thoughtful approach to Supergirl’s backstory. The creators build on this, making it the foundation of the whole story. The question of whether Kara can move beyond her guilt and grief becomes the engine driving the movie. Everything ties back into that story.
Two specific events kick off the action that will provide Kara the opportunity to grow beyond her pain and loneliness. First, she encounters Ruthye (Eve Ridley,) a younger girl on a quest for revenge. Ruthye watched the interstellar brigand Krem slaughter her family. The Brigands showed up to steal the high quality swords Ruthye’s father crafted, slaughtered the family and made off with many of the weapons. Now Ruthye, armed with her father’s best sword seeks revenge on Krem. While Kara understands, even sympathizes with this desire, she is refuses to help Ruthye carry it out. She knows killing Krem will irrevocably tear Ruthye’s soul, and she is not willing to let Ruthye harm herself for the momentary pleasure of revenge. Ruthye, however, has other ideas, decides that Kara will be her mentor and her guide to revenge. Kara’s futile attempts to avoid this provide much of the movie’s humor. The reason Ruthye knows that Kara will lead her to Krem is that Kara has her own reasons for pursuing the brigand leader. Krem shot Krypto, Kara’s childhood pet from Argo City and hence the only link to the life she lost. Krem shot Krypto with a nasty, slow-acting poison, then steals Kara’s ship (this happens on a planet with a red sun, so she has no superpowers and can’t just fly after him.) Kara has three days to track down Krem and retrieve the antidote to the poison before Krypto dies. And she has to do this while keeping Ruthye from committing a murder that will forever scar her.
The fate of Earth does not depend on Kara’s quest. The Galaxy/Universe is not in peril. The very existence of the entirety of the multiverse and every time-line ever conceived does not hang in the balance. The stakes in this movie are simple and small: Kara’s grief, Ruthye’s soul, and the life of a dog. Of course, simple does not mean not important. All of this is vitally important to Kara, and to us. These small stakes establish a story far more compelling than the latest multiverse spanning epic. The movie is a great example of what I call Stine’s Law, coined by Hank Stine, the editor of Galaxy Magazine for just a few issues in 1979. (He may have had a different name for the concept.) In an editorial that has stuck with me ever since, Stine argued that the size of the stakes in a story (particularly speculative fiction) is in inverse proportion to the ability of the writer. Poor writers go big, because they have no other way of convincing the reader to stick with the story. Good writers don’t need big stakes; a good writer can make the reader care about small stakes. In this story, we care about what Kara will do with her life. And in the end, when she… but no, I won’t spoil it. See it for yourself.
But saying the stakes are small, is not the same as saying the movie is small. Kara Zor-el is, after all, Supergirl, one of the two mightiest beings in the DC Universe. The movie is filled with action, including a couple of fights obviously inspired by the action of Fury Road. The action, however, is also designed to further the central story of Kara’s journey to possible redemption. The first time Kara goes into action, she confronts a big bruiser right out of the seedier parts of Star Wars who has just stolen Ruthye’s sword. Kara insists he return the little girl’s sword, and when he refuses, Kara easily takes him out. The fight is short and the bruiser highly outclassed, despite the fact that they are on a planet with a red sun, so Kara has no super-powers, and so is more than half drunk. Right there we know that Kara is a force to be reckoned with, powers or not. (Kara’s recovery of the sword is also what convinces Ruthye that Kara will be her ticket to Krem – and her unwilling mentor.) In another fight, we see Kara delight in taking out a couple dozen laser-wielding bounty hunters. She obviously enjoys the fight, while also taking care to shield Ruthye from harm. The fights are not just action for the sake of action. Like everything else in the movie, they are rooted in the character and story.
With its thoughtful approach to the character, to the effects of her origin story on her and on those around her, this is my favorite version of Supergirl yet. And it is easily the best written super-hero movie to come along in years.
Alan Irvine's Story Stuff 