It’s not really a stretch to say that superhero movies haven’t been as satisfying in the past five or six years. In fact, post-Endgame, there’s been a noticeable decline from both Marvel and DC, with a few bright spots here and there. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and last year’s Superman seemed to capture a bit of the old magic, but the general output from all the major studios has fallen somewhere between mildly enjoyable and utterly forgettable. 

Of course, when it comes to female-led superhero flicks, the conversation is almost never about general trends in cinematic storytelling and tends to result in the same tired central thesis from salty men on YouTube: girl superhero movies are bad. It’s a ridiculous oversimplification, motivated by a bad-faith push to rage against anything deemed “woke” by certain sects of the internet, and it discounts any actual criticism of mediocre movies.

And let’s not get it twisted, Supergirl is very much a mediocre movie, but it’s not a mediocre movie because it’s a female-led superhero flick. It’s a mediocre movie because it’s got a weak screenplay, bland visuals, and it feels like a messy, by-committee adaptation of a beloved comic book storyline. 

Milly Alcock is Kara Zor-El. She’s a rebellious mess, bar-hopping her way across the galaxy from red sun to red sun in an effort to drown her trauma in alcohol. Her only companion is her unruly dog, Krypto, the last remnant of her now-extinct Kryptonian society. She could hang out on Earth, but she doesn’t really relate to her do-gooder cousin, Superman (David Corenswet), so she’s chosen a loner lifestyle in space. 

Kara encounters Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a sort of Arya Stark/Lyanna Mormont hybrid who’s on a quest to avenge her family after they were all murdered by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), a Brigand pirate and human trafficker. Ruthye is stoic, serious, and believes in justice, but she needs someone strong to help her, so she tries her best to convince Kara to step out of her drunken stupor and start caring—basically True Grit—which doesn’t work until Krypto is poisoned by the Brigands and Kara must track down Krem to get the antidote. 

So we’ve got our hero refusing the call, but suddenly finding the motivation when the threat becomes personal, we’ve got a cute animal in peril, which automatically spurs the audience to empathize with Kara, and we’ve got our main character growing from a pessimistic party girl to realizing her heroic potential. 

Unfortunately, we’ve also got a subplot about human trafficking because Hollywood loves a strong female character who saves women from sexual abuse. We’ve got FaceTime calls with Superman to remind us of a much better movie. We’ve got enough weird aliens to fill the Star Wars cantina, and we’ve got Jason Momoa as Lobo, because apparently, boys need a muscle man on a motorcycle to be able to engage with this story. 

There are A-plots and B-plots in every movie, but it just doesn’t feel like male-led superhero films fill their scripts with quite as many distractions. Momoa, in particular, seems determined to pull focus with his Beetlejuice-inspired performance—and temporary British accent that only lasts for one scene. Every time Lobo enters the story, it feels like a boardroom of people mandated it out of fear that the audience would lose interest in a story about a woman learning to be heroic in her own way.

The lack of confidence is extra unwarranted here because Alcock’s Kara is one of the few highlights in this soft-serve Mad Max and Guardians of the Galaxy mashup. The film is the strongest when we’re allowed to get to know Kara, to learn about her past on Krypton, her family life, and why Krypto feels like so much more than just a pet to her. Alcock handles the weight on Kara’s shoulders and the transformation from apathy to action—at least when the screenplay allows her to be the star of her own movie.

The most frustrating part of Supergirl’s lackluster story—and what will almost certainly be similarly disastrous box office performance—is that this is not actually a reflection on the failure of female superheroes, but rather the failure of studios to give us great superhero stories on screen in recent times. But rather than commenting on the first-draft vibe of Ana Nogueira’s screenplay or the sauceless direction from Craig Gillespie, the discourse is filled with comments about Supergirl serving as the nail in the coffin for female superhero cinema. Just saying, I didn’t hear anyone saying men shouldn’t lead superhero movies after Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.