Supergirl (2026)
Directed by Craig Gillespie
When an unexpected and ruthless adversary strikes too close to home, Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, reluctantly joins forces with an unlikely companion on an epic, interstellar journey of vengeance and justice.
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60 films that influenced Supergirl
What critics say influenced Supergirl
Director
George Miller
Critics invoke Miller by name, and compare Supergirl to 2 of Miller’s films.
Visuals
On Miller, rather than any one film
…one unexpected inspiration seems to be George Miller’s Mad Max saga…
Ana Nogueira adapted The Woman of Tomorrow comics for the screen, which feels like a mashup of the Guardians of the Galaxy and Mad Max.
…leader of a gang of Mad Max-inspired space pirates called the Brigands…
Jason Momoa plays Lobo, a cigar-smoking mercenary that appears to have ridden in from the background of a Mad Max film…
Supergirl earns its Guardians of the Galaxy and Mad Max comparisons with a surprisingly dark (and sometimes downright gross) space adventure about revenge and finding your home.
A Mad Max influence is just as obvious in the grimy, lifeless terrains and dying worlds on which most of the movie takes place, planets where people scratch for survival.
…there is the bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa), who looks like Beetlejuice if he were a cigar-chomping biker from "Mad Max"…
Some of the set pieces remind me of Mad Max: Fury Road, but this feels more like a cheap knockoff of that epic action western.
Fury Road carries Max's name but it's as much Furiosa's film as the one that bears hers.
Structurally, it feels less like Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), where everyone is driven purely by survival instinct beyond notions of good and evil, and more like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), where heroes, villains, and scoundrels all converge.
Gillespie’s vision of the cosmos sits somewhere between Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
In fact, a surprising amount of the plot revolves around young girls being abducted into sexual slavery, which brings Mad Max: Fury Road to mind (the girls are even called "the brides" by the brigands).
With his “bedazzled” face, he looks as though he took a wrong exit off “Fury Road”.
…has as much in common with the legendary Western "True Grit"…
…a pedestrian mainframe narrative that’s basically True Grit meets John Wick meets Mad Max: Fury Road…
The plot draws heavily from the comic miniseries Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow, but while one pitch for this film apparently drew from True Grit and there's precedent for superheroic retellings in Shane-influenced Logan there's a screen early on showing Casablanca.
Structurally, it’s a science-fiction western, a cosmic riff on True Grit in which a deeply disillusioned Supergirl begrudgingly becomes the protector and traveling companion of an idealistic young girl.
A cosmic retelling of “True Grit” with DC Comics’ Maid of Might in the Rooster Cogburn role…
…smartly places Kara second fiddle to Ruthye, making her the Rooster Cogburn of it all…
…grotesque creatures that look like they were refused admission to the Mos Eisley Cantina in the original Star Wars movie…
The movie frequently feels like the Mos Eisley Cantine scene from “Star Wars” writ large across many bars and a bus and more.
But the old, reliable Mos Eisley Cantina should get a shout-out as well. The alien design and practical makeup FX and costuming throughout the movie are genuinely top shelf, and clearly the customers in Star Wars’ most wretched hive were on the filmmakers’ minds.
…unlike the “Star Wars” franchise, she seems to be well versed in speaking most alien languages…
…giving everything a muddy look, rather than the “lived-in” STAR WARS aesthetic…
The orphaning and planet hopping and vast array of aliens don't only recall "Guardians," but "Star Wars" with their sheer diversity and tendency to hang out in bars.
And it’s far less political than James Gunn’s Superman.
I actually enjoyed a lot of Supergirl and thought it was better than Superman 2025…
…there’s a real story being told that works in both contrast and complimentary to “Superman” (2025).
In James Gunn’s Superman there was a delightful scene where its protagonist argued that he was a little – in his words – ‘punk rock’.
DC's recent "Superman" was a pleasant surprise. This followup less so. But we have yet to see these two cousins working together…
With Superman, it’s easy to find hope.
…not to mention the carefree pleasures of Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy trilogy…
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…a now-legendary women-only screening of the recently released Supergirl…
…in Supergirl’s first solo outing since 1984…
…the character suffered a notorious screen flop with the 1984 movie starring Helen Slater…
There’s little of the wide-eyed innocence of Helen Slater in the 1984 flick…
Unlike the fairly awful 1984 version, this Supergirl has a bit more attitude to burn and isn’t just a female version of her big cousin…
After the last rather dismal attempt to make Kara Zor-El a movie hero on the same level as her male counterpart, 1984’s Supergirl, crashed and burned despite the best efforts of Helen Slater and a weird Faye Dunaway…
…it plays a bit too much like the cosmic adventure of The Marvels (2023)…
Sure, The Marvels and Madame Web did really badly…
That double-act also recalls the (far superior) The Marvels.
…the pairing did not feel as far-fetched as “The Marvels” when the trio had to pretend that hanging out together was fun for all involved.
Director
Zack Snyder
Critics invoke Snyder by name, and compare Supergirl to 3 of Snyder’s films.
Visuals
On Snyder, rather than any one film
Weirdly one thing that Supergirl does resemble is the discontinued DC Extended Universe of 2013 to 2023, which was largely overseen by director Zack Snyder and which indulged in a particularly bleak and violent take of DC’s typically more upbeat roster of heroes.
Honestly some of the fight scenes are as good as Zack Snyder’s solid early work, not his ugly DC Extended Universe work.
Add in humor that rarely hits and action sequences that seldom pack a punch, and it looks like DC may not be much better off under Gunn and Safran than it was under Zack Snyder.
The opening Krypton sequence from Man of Steel carried more weight.
…a bleaker, more grounded and almost more (gasp) Snyder-like take of the iconic character…
Supergirl is at its best when taking cues from Man of Steel…
It turned a profit but ultimately grossed less than Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (not even adjusted for inflation)…
…a slow-mo 360 of Kara kicking ass to a horrendous soft-girl cover of Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle” like a rejected Sucker Punch track…
Thankfully, it doesn’t reach the overly garish level of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of Justice.
There are also some gonzo The Fifth Element (1997) sensibilities here…
…lighting reminiscent of The Fifth Element…
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And if critics were willing to overlook some of the flaws in films like Thor: The Dark World and Iron Man 2, what is holding them back here?
At its worst, “Supergirl” feels like “Thor: The Dark World” by way of a bargain-bin True Grit imitation.
…even that has shades of previous outings for Deadpool and Terminator 2…
…establishing Supergirl like the MCU's "Guardians of the Galaxy's" Star-Lord with a dose of "Deadpool's" hard partying irreverence…