TYG is not a superhero fan like I am so I didn’t ask her to SUPERGIRL (2026) and it vanished from the theater before I had time to go solo. Given the poor box office and lukewarm reviews, I was delighted to catch it streaming recently and discover it was way better than I’d feard.
Based on the Woman of Tomorrow miniseries, this has Kara (Milly Alcock) and Krypto celebrating Kara’s 23rd birthday by getting drunk on a red sun world. Ruthye (Eve Ridley), who’s family have been killed by the Brigands (I deduct a point for having a band of brigands who just call themselves The Brigands) wants someone to help her hunt down the band and kill them. Kara’s not into killing but she gets entangled anyway.
I worried we were going to end up with Supergirl as some variation on the Hot Mess stereotype but no. Even under a red sun, Kara’s very competent and capable and her drinking is less about being a screw-up and more about the trauma she’s been through. Where David Corenswet’s Superman (who cameos) grew up a Kansas boy, Kara grew up Kryptonian, then saw her parents and her city destroyed. To save her, her father sent her to the planet where her cousin lived but it’s not her home the way it is Clark’s.
The movie did have some weak points. In the comics, the brigands trapping Kara under a depowering green sun worked well; here it’s just a pointless deathtrap and easily evaded. I’m also curious, given Superman established Jor-El and Lara as ruthless colonialists, why Supergirl has none of that in her backstory. Were Clark’s parents ultra-right wing Kryptonian? Was Argo City some kind of hippy enclave that rejected Kryptonian imperialism? Perhaps we’ll find out eventually.
A third point was that given Supergirl’s warnings to Ruthye about revenge, the ending worked a lot less well than the comics version. Overall, though, this was a winner. “Krypton didn’t die in a day — the gods are not that kind.”
A CANTERBURY TALE (1944) has an American GI, a British GI and land girl Sheila Sim wind up in WW II Canterbury for various reasons and cope with loneliness, cantakerous locals and the mysterious Glue Man hurling glue on women’s hair before all of them get miraculously happy endings (Sim’s Dead In The War boyfriend turns up alive, for instance). This is an aimless movie with no real plot or character arc, just pretty pictures of England, Still Free — and the Glue Man’s explanation he wants to scare women out of flirting with Yank GIs now sounds creepily sexist. This DVD includes the framing sequence shot for American release which frames everything as the American telling his new bride about Canterbury. It didn’t improve things any. “I must open a window — the caravan is full of moths!”
Cover by Curt Swan, all rights to image remain with current holder.
