Let's start with the number that tells the story DC Studios doesn't want to tell: $38 million. That's Supergirl's opening weekend in North America, against a $170 million production budget and roughly $120 million spent on marketing. Superman, the DCU's debut film, launched to $125 million last summer and ended its run at $618 million globally. Supergirl isn't going to do $618 million. It might not get to $200 million.
The cruel irony is that the film's main problem isn't the thing most people were worried about before release. It's not Milly Alcock — she's genuinely excellent. It's not the character concept — a darker, more jaded Supergirl who's lived a harder life than her cousin is an interesting premise. It's not even the visual effects, which are better than many recent superhero efforts. The film's central failure is the script, and the script is supposed to be the thing James Gunn fixed at DC.
What Supergirl Is Actually About
The film adapts the 2021-22 comic book miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely — one of the more critically acclaimed superhero comics of recent years. Kara Zor-El (Alcock) is Superman's Kryptonian cousin, but her origin is grimmer. While Clark Kent was raised on Earth by loving parents and bathed in sunlight that gave him powers, Kara grew up on a chunk of Krypton that survived the planet's destruction, watching everyone around her die slowly. She's tougher, angrier, and more fatalistic than her cousin. As producer James Gunn put it, she's an "antihero" rather than a straightforward hero.
The story begins when Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), a young girl seeking vengeance for her father's murder, recruits Supergirl to help track down the killer — Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), the leader of a gang of space pirates and human traffickers. The two embark on an interstellar journey that takes them through various alien environments, building an odd-couple friendship while hunting their target.
Jason Momoa appears as Lobo, a fan-favourite bounty hunter character from DC Comics, in a supporting role. David Corenswet reprises his role as Superman in what amounts to a brief but effective cameo.
What Works: Milly Alcock Is Carrying This Film
Milly Alcock has had a remarkable rise. She was extraordinary in House of the Dragon as the young Rhaenyra Targaryen before Olivia Cooke took over the role. Here, given the lead of a major studio blockbuster, she does everything the role asks and more than the script deserves.
Critics across the spectrum who found the film disappointing made the same exception: Alcock is terrific. She finds a genuine sweet spot between fiercely menacing cosmic force, genuinely funny protagonist, and deeply vulnerable young woman — sometimes within the same scene. There's a physicality to her performance that makes Supergirl feel different from Clark Kent's inherent goodness, and an edge that makes her more interesting as a character to watch. The film's best line — "He sees the goodness in everyone. I see the truth" — lands because Alcock delivers it with the exact combination of pride and sadness it requires.
Eve Ridley as Ruthye is also good, a fresh face who holds her own against Alcock and provides the emotional anchor the story needs. Their dynamic is the film's genuine highlight, and in a different film with a stronger script, the Supergirl-Ruthye relationship could have been as memorable as Thor and Valkyrie, or Tony Stark and Peter Parker.
David Corenswet's brief appearance as Superman confirms what Superman established last year: he's a strong casting choice, and the film does enough to set up Supergirl's involvement in the upcoming Man of Tomorrow sequel in ways that generate genuine anticipation for where her character goes next.
What Doesn't Work: The Script Problem
Here's where the honest assessment gets difficult, because the problems are significant and they're the problems Gunn specifically promised DC wouldn't have any more.
When Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios in 2022, Gunn made a point of emphasising his commitment to "a script-first approach to franchise management." Superman was written by Gunn himself and worked. Supergirl was written by Ana Nogueira, and based on the reviews — which are averaging around 58% on Rotten Tomatoes and range from negative to tepid praise — the script didn't work.
The specific criticisms that appear in almost every review:
The villain is empty. Matthias Schoenaerts is a fine actor — he was excellent in Bullhead and solid in Rust and Bone. Here he's given almost nothing to work with as Krem of the Yellow Hills. The character has no real menace, no memorable scene, no lines worth quoting, and no interesting relationship with the protagonist. Villains make these movies — Gunn knows this, has talked about it at length, and still delivered Supergirl a flat adversary.
The second half loses momentum. The setup works. The early portions of the film establish Supergirl and Ruthye's dynamic with real energy. But once they reach the planet where Krem is hiding, the film starts spinning in circles: same locations, same beats, scenes that feel repetitive rather than escalating. What should be building to something epic instead contracts.
The tone is inconsistent. Critics have noted that Gunn injected his characteristic needle drops and tonal goofiness into the material. That approach is genuinely transformative when it works — Guardians of the Galaxy proved that. But the source material (Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow) is a darker, more elegiac story than Guardians, and the tonal clash between Gunn's house style and the source's emotional weight is noticeable. Some passages feel like they're from a completely different movie.
The visuals are murky. This is a complaint that appears frequently enough to be taken seriously: critics described the film's aesthetic as "muddy CG sludge," "murky, dark and gray," with "jerky and disjointed" action sequences. This is puzzling given that the visual effects budget was presumably substantial, but it's a consistent enough observation across reviews to merit mention.
Jason Momoa as Lobo: Better Than Expected, Less Than Promised
Pre-release marketing featured Jason Momoa as Lobo heavily, to the point where many assumed he was a major character. Analysts correctly predicted that his role would be more limited than the trailers suggested — used to gauge audience interest in a future Lobo project rather than as a central performance.
Momoa seems to understand the assignment and brings more distinctiveness to Lobo than he sometimes brought to Aquaman. The concern many had — that he'd simply be playing Aquaman in space — isn't fully realised. There's a different energy to his Lobo, though whether that difference is enough to justify a standalone project depends on whether DC wants to invest in finding out.
What the Box Office Means for DC
Supergirl's opening weekend significantly underperforms Superman's $125 million launch from last year. The comparable that keeps appearing in industry analysis is Morbius — the infamous Marvel spin-off that debuted to $39 million in 2022 and became a cultural shorthand for franchise misfire.
That comparison is somewhat unfair to Supergirl, which is a better film than Morbius by most metrics and has a genuinely compelling central performance. But the box office psychology is real: the sequel comparison to Morbius stings because it positions Supergirl as DC's first disappointment of the Gunn era.
The more illuminating comparison is within DC's own history. Supergirl's opening comes alongside context that's relevant: the character has never launched an event-level blockbuster. The Sasha Calle version in The Flash (2023) came in a film that was itself a bomb. The question Gunn and Safran now face is whether Supergirl can recover through a strong theatrical run — word of mouth is positive from audiences even where critics were harsher — or whether it will become a cautionary tale about releasing too many DCU films too quickly.
Warner Bros. reportedly spent $290 million in total on production and marketing. The film needs to significantly exceed $200 million globally to avoid being a financial writedown on top of a creative disappointment. The second weekend — how much it holds or doesn't — will tell more of the story than the opening.
What This Means for the DCU Going Forward
The situation isn't catastrophic. It's a first stumble, not a collapse.
Superman worked. It generated $618 million and convinced both critics and audiences that Gunn's DCU was a genuine creative restart rather than just a rebrand. Superman 2 (Man of Tomorrow) is already in production, with Corenswet reprising the role. That sequel is now the DCU's most important near-term asset.
Supergirl's disappointing opening doesn't cancel Alcock's future — she's clearly too good in the role for DC to walk away from the character. What it might change is the pacing of DCU releases. The lesson from Marvel's own rocky patches (most recently The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) is that releasing interconnected franchise films too quickly, before public interest is fully established, creates audience fatigue that's harder to reverse than it looks.
"We're entering an era where superhero movies are going to be more selectively produced," as one analyst quoted in Variety noted. That's probably true. And it probably means DC's next few films will be chosen more carefully than Supergirl's placement in the release slate suggested.
The Bottom Line
Milly Alcock: Brilliant. Absolutely worth watching on her performance alone.
The film: A qualified disappointment. Not a disaster, not anywhere close to the best DC can do, and significantly below what Superman set as the DCU's creative benchmark.
The box office: A flop by the standards of a $170 million superhero production. A useful lesson about building franchises too fast.
DCU's future: Intact, but with questions now attached that weren't there six weeks ago.
If you want to see a great performance in a flawed film, Supergirl is worth watching. If you want the DCU at its best, wait for Superman 2.
Director: Craig Gillespie Writer: Ana Nogueira Stars: Milly Alcock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley, Jason Momoa, David Corenswet Runtime: 1h 48m Rating: PG-13 Critics Score: ~58% Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: Considerably higher — audience reception is more positive than critical Opening Weekend: $38–50 million (North America), underwhelming internationally Budget: $170 million production, ~$120 million marketing