Lady Justice, Pt. 2 — Supergirl | The Next Picture Show

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits See any standard 2D movie anytime with no blackout dates or restrictions Sign up now on the Regal app or at the link in our description and use code FILMSPOT26 to receive 15 % off It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being? We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

0:45Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a movie that we podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Keith Phipps here with... Tasha Robinson. And Scott Tobias. Our regular co-host, Genevieve Kosky. We're sorry your report is currently suffering from a kryptonite-related illness. We're hoping for a speedy recovery. In our last episode, we discussed True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Charles Portis' novel about a girl seeking vengeance or justice, and the drunken lawman who reluctantly helps her in her search. There's a lot of True Grit DNA in Supergirl, Woman of Vengeance, a comics miniseries written by Tom King with art by Bilkos Eveli that's the primary inspiration for the new film Supergirl.

1:23In both, Superman's cousin, Cara Zorale, best known as Supergirl and played in the film by Millie Alcock, is roped into aiding a girl named Ruthie, played by Eve Ridley, after a barbaric outlaw named Krem, played by Matthias Schoenertz, kills Ruthie's family. Directed by Craig Gillespie from a script by Anna Nagraria, Supergirl turns outer space into a cosmic version of the American West to tell a familiar story in a new way. Does it work? We'll talk it over after the break.

1:55Here's the thing. My cousin and I have very different ideas about what it means to be a hero.

2:13He sees the good in everyone.

2:18And I see the truth. the brigands brought destruction to every corner of the universe the galaxy must be defended

2:38you cannot give up on me all right so i'll ask again does it work are you supergirl i don't think it does that well I think it's fine I think it's okay I actually I think my my daughter kind of nailed this better than I did was like it's it's like an okay later MCU film right uh where it's like yeah it's fine you know but it's almost like but it's disappointing in relation to how fresh Superman felt and how much like oh it's a whole different take on this genre whereas this try some interesting new things or some new things or newish things but it doesn't feel in any way like it has like a fresh take on the superhero film is sort of my main thing there's things i like about the film ultimately i gave it like three stars out of five but it's also one of the films where you're like oh that's pretty good and then you spend the next few days thinking about all things that didn't work about it that's my experience anyway what about what about you guys i mean that that pretty much nails it uh as far as it doesn't work i think it works fine as kind of shaggy dog story about uh a a couple of gals in the galaxy you know punching some guys and being punched by some guys.

3:48As anything else, like maybe as a sort of an origin story for the new DCU version of Supergirl, it works fine. As a story about vengeance or justice or superheroism or ordinary heroism or, you know, helping people through difficult times or grief, You know, all of these things that specifically King and Everly's version were doing, the movie does them broader, dumber, and often in very self-contradictory fashion. So, you know, in the end, the word that I hear people using to describe this movie more than any other is okay. As in, yeah, it was okay. And that was kind of my take too. Yeah, it was okay.

4:35and then as you say you start thinking about it and you're like well okay except for this part that doesn't make much sense or this part that doesn't really land or this part that kind of comes out of nowhere or wow this part that's actually really pretty damn ugly when you think about it scott i think you are on the less than okay uh side of this i mean i think i mean i would say maybe on the fence leaning backwards kind of it would be where i go it's fine it's fine and i I think, you know, Keith, your daughter, great insight there. I think kind of in that later MCU feel. But I also think more damningly, specifically in the late MCU mode, in that you worry that James Gunn, who is hired to kind of take DC into a new direction, is kind of injecting that formula into DC rather than kind of take it to somewhere new.

5:27This feels very rote to me, this film, this adventure. And nothing just, it doesn't, you know, I think, one, I think, Ruthie does nothing for me as a character. I think that character needs, in the performance too, frankly, needs a lot more juice than it has. I think it's a very passive character. And I think that hurts the film because you need somebody who's going to be, for Supergirl, really paying off. And that doesn't really happen. And like really, to Millie Alcock's credit, she certainly has plenty of charisma and gravitational force. But I think that the film doesn't have the balance that it needs in that regard.

6:06And I think there's just kind of a missed opportunity there. And I think Manuela Dargis' review kind of hits on this too. It's like Supergirl kind of hits us at a good time tonally because we feel superhero fatigue. and that is the defining characteristic of this character who is just like, do I have to do any of this? Can I just drink and just ignore all of this burdensome stuff? And I think there's almost a meta connection that we have with that character, but it's just not exploited as effectively as you would want. All across the board, I think her brief appearance in Superman carried more punch than I think is delivered in this movie.

6:49I was disappointed that Crypto, who is absolutely one of the highlights, if not the highlight of Superman, gets injured and is not in the movie for a long stretch of the film. We're not going to agree on that one, Scott. Sorry. You don't like the dog? I love the dog. There was so much Crypto in Superman that I think if he had been nearly as front and center here, it would have stopped being the DCU and started being the KCU. Beethoven? like bay two oh yeah exactly oh kcu i thought she said maybe canine cinematic universe i don't know it does not start with a k i think the one thing we're all kind of agreeing on those is millie alcock's really good in this oh she's great she has a better sense of who the character is than the script does and like what consistency there is to that character from scene to scene comes entirely from that performance.

7:44And yeah, I think she's terrific in this. And just, you know, all of the draw towards the character. You know, there's a kind of like, there's a party girl energy and also a weary exhaustion and like layers of grief and frustration and anger that I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here a little bit. But one of the things I was talking about with True Grit, the Coen's True Grit, is a sense that you don't need to know too much about any of the three main characters to know a lot about the history of the three main characters. You can see their histories in the way they interact with the world. And I think she brings in a lot of that as well.

8:27So maybe it's a little bit of a shame that we spend quite as much time as we do detailing all of that backstory. But she's the only one that comes with that weight. Like literally everybody else, including the other character whose backstory we see play out, is just kind of a one note, one element thing, you know, a prop for her to interact with. And watching this three-dimensional character interact with a two-dimensional world just isn't always very interesting. As Scott says, she needed a better world to ping off of, and she does not get it here. and ultimately too this is again important when you're when you're really trying to assert yourself as a brand as a personality or something it's just is to get a director who can give you that i mean what is it craig gillespie film folks what is it what are we looking at i mean you look at this guy's filmography he you know it's he's kind of pretty good at doing you know he does kind of this real life to screen thing with like i tanya and with pam and tommy which it was a t was the a TV show that our friend Rob wrote that he was directing.

9:37So he's going back between the two mediums. He did Cruella, Mr. Woodcock or whatever. What is he giving you stylistically? He's giving you a lot of attitude. He's not giving you a whole lot of distinctive style. I will say Cruella. It's fine. I mean, I think Cruella is okay. It's a wall-to-wall music, though, if I recall. Cruella is part of why I was kind of looking forward to this movie, though, because it's far better than, I don't think it's a great film, but it's far better than a sort of a, what was the word, brand deposit, live action version of a character that didn't seem to need her own movie was.

10:10It actually has a fair amount of depth to that character. I think the biggest flaw is I like that Cruella enough that I don't want her to turn into the Cruella from 101 Dalmatians. Yeah, that's true. But it's kind of an interesting take on trying to, how to work with a character like that. And I don't really get that from Supergirl at all. I mean, this is also the director of Lars and the Real Girl. And I think I, Tonya actually is like a movie with a stylistic point of view. I kind of feel like he got sucked into the Hollywood machine. And, you know, this, this movie to me is just ersatz James Gunn.

10:46He uses a lot of same visual tricks, camera tricks, especially the, the 360 spin camera during a battle scene, which we get a bunch here, which is a big gun signature. so i feel like he's evolved from a much more distinctive filmmaker into you know somebody who's producing stuff for the machine that uh the machine wants it reminds me a little bit of you can't help but think of the mandalorian and grogu from earlier this summer in the sense that you have yeah with james gunner craig did that movie come out it sure did i definitely can stop myself from thinking of it i had already forgotten about that movie completely but i mean i think the idea though is like both scenarios you know with with james gunn and kind of these new dc movies coming out and then and then dave feloni and and that that gang taking over star wars it's just it's just like oh we're gonna clean things up things have gone astray with these you know beloved important franchises we're gonna we're gonna put in a new direction and it's like you feel no extra life at all with something like the mandalorian rogu and here you know that that initial bit of juice you got from James Gunn has just settled into something that feels so familiar and so mediocre and so risk averse and you know I think that was that's kind of just ends up being a disappointment because it was super goal is what it could have been because you have this character at the center and you have an actress who are irreverent and and powerful and kind of cool and have an attitude that i think you might be able to kind of engage with that fatigue that of course we're feeling uh watching these movies but then the reality is that you're given kind of a mediocre adventure in both this case and in the mandalorian and grogu and it's a mediocre adventure with just a lot of the you know as hannah put it with uh this mediocre adventure has all the problems of like the the mediocre late stage mcu movies one of which is a really unmemorable villain um who just does not have a lot going on except grar grar i eat babies and rape children i think it's a bad performance too i i really i don't know what he could have done with that little material that would have stood out like he he's basically an extra from mad max and that's That's all the script gives him.

13:14He has no philosophy. He has no point of view. There's nothing about him that's interesting. And that's one of the biggest disappointments from adapting King Neville's miniseries is just that character was so defined and so different and interesting. His motives were interesting. I truly don't know what Krem's motivations are in this movie beyond Burn It All Down. He kicks off the action. Yeah, exactly. He kicks off the action by showing up at Ruthie's father's place to steal all of his like universe class super swords. And then they don't even use any of them. They just kind of hang them up. And maybe that's meant to, you know, indicate a certain amount of like, you know, potlatchian attitude towards towards things like he didn't do this.

14:07so he could be the best swordsman in the galaxy. He did this because somebody had something he wanted. And then, you know, he killed everybody in sight. But that's not interesting. And the Cram of the Comics miniseries has a point of view and has a reason for what he did and only killed Ruthie's father as opposed to massacring her entire family and burning down their farm. And it had nothing to do with swords. It's just, it's a much more interesting and nuanced take on the story and the character. Here, everything is flattened out. up to and including Lobo, who is just a character I have never found particularly interesting.

14:44And here really only seems to be inserted awkwardly into the middle of this story. So we can say, hey, here's this guy. Later, when we have a movie that's just him, you'll know who he is. He's that guy that was in Supergirl. Yeah. And Superman did that much more gracefully. Like, he introduced a bunch of characters that presumably we'll see in later DC movies. but it felt like it was doing it as part of the story it was being told where it's like this he feels so shoveled in and like yeah lobo shows up in the comics for like one issue it's like oh that's kind of lobo's kind of fun but then you know lobo alstace is welcome and that's that's that's yeah that's no good uh basically alstace is welcome by being in this movie i don't really love i'm i'm kind of a jason momoa skeptic i guess in some ways and and uh i just felt like this is like his worst impulses way way too many like beefy dudes who are doing the same thing we got us dial it back dial it back yeah you gotta dial it back and like yeah and i was really excited uh i know tom king's a divisive writer both for what he writes and for uh his background just no way no way to get into that uh gracefully in this podcast but i i do i really loved this miniseries and a part and that was part of why i was excited about this film and then when you look at the changes made particularly to the ending of the film which is basically hey supergirl and pals go off and have a space adventure versus a very interesting bit of moral reckoning uh and so a lot of ambiguity in in the end of the comics miniseries yeah it was it it is definitely felt like something that had been reduced and and also the late introduction of this whole like fury road we're going to uh traffic and these women and they must be saved thing is like that's that felt like just sort of like we got to raise the stakes somehow i i don't know i don't know again it's fine but it's also frustrating it feels like a 90s superhero movie it feels like We've gone back several generations of iterations and developments on what superheroes can be.

16:56And I don't know, there's a kind of 90s nihilism to, I mean, first of all, Lobo, who was created earlier, but kind of became to the degree that he's an iconic figure like that. That all came out of his 90s reinvention. to, you know, Supergirl in the end of this movie consciously choosing murder, which is something that was hugely, hugely controversial when Superman did it in the Zack Snyder-verse to the degree that it took over a lot of the conversation about that movie. And here, to me, kind of is presented almost as proof that Supergirl is not Superman, which we get a lot of throughout this movie, you know, both in terms of her like partying and getting drunk and puking and seeking out places where she's not super.

17:52So she doesn't have to feel any responsibility for being super. And also she can knock herself blotto with alcohol, but also in periodic conversations with Superman. With David Cornswet showing up in these little cameos that initially I thought were going to be just, hey, you liked this guy in this movie. Here's some more of him. But I actually ended up thinking one of the more interesting aspects of this movie is just him trying to reckon with this new thing that's been thrust upon him and him trying to extend his goodness and his Boy Scout-ness to somebody who who went through something so similar to what he's going through and reacted so differently and has come to the same place that he's come to and has reacted so differently to it.

18:44So, you know, I think maybe the conversations between the two of them and her way of seeing Earth versus the way he sees Earth are some of the most interesting things in the movie. And they're just backgrounded for most of the film. so we can have, you know, antic nonsense involving aliens, slimy CG aliens with weird anatomies and see a whole bunch of very young girls who have been trafficked as sex slaves running around being helpless and in many cases dying. Comics, they're not just for kids anymore. All leading up to a moment at the very end where one of them does something just so you can say, girl power.

19:29yeah it's fascinating to hear you talk about the movie in detail because i don't remember any of it um it's like oh that happened that's interesting i'm glad good recall on that i i just to kind of reflect i i do feel i agree with you tasha that the that what we do get here with superman uh those interactions are some of my favorite moments in the movie because they do do you feel like they're talking about something important and they do they do come you know have these as you say similar experiences that they've that they've um conclude may come to different conclusions about and reshape their lives in different ways around all that stuff is real drama and real things that you can kind of chew on but i think you know not to harp on lobo here but let's just let's just talk about lobo for a second um like you all have experience with lobo i'm a comics idiot i don't know who this guy is so imagine imagine me imagine me this uh naive fellow who's just going out to have a good time at Supergirl encountering this character what what am I supposed to make of this guy you know you know it does not matter to me it does not matter to me that he he doesn't have a significant important role in this movie it's not it the movie could take him or leave him and you kind of wish that they would leave him but I have no investment or interest in how this character might you know this character needing to be established to be in future movies.

20:55What are we doing here? I'm so tired of these films throwing out some basic storytelling responsibilities in order to extend the franchise in order to link together one film to the next. It's so exhausting and it's so damaging to the films individually to make movies that way. When you say he doesn't have a significant role to play, Scott, I think you're forgetting the very important thing at the end where even though he's a bounty hunter and his only job is to get this guy's head and get the bounty and he does that and in spite of repeatedly telling us that he doesn't care about anything else he still comes back to like witness the end of the confrontation and you know give these girls unapproving nod to make sure that it's clear to everybody that he likes the way they he likes the cut of their jibs you know you almost feel like you can almost read the contract was like mr Mr.

21:50Momoa must be in the film for no less than X number of minutes. Like, oh, crap. How are we going to do that? Oh, yeah. An improving nod. That'll solve it. Yeah. He has a nutritionist, by the way. That was in the credits as well. He had a nutritionist on set for Jason Momoa. That's not surprising. You do not maintain a Jason Momoa body without a team of people helping along the way. Yeah. Yeah, that little like that'll do pig nod at the end just kind of chaps me a little bit, I think, because this is the kind of movie that a certain kind of publication is going to call feminist because there are women in it and their characters and they do stuff for themselves.

22:31and him showing up at the end for for that'll do pig to me is a bunch of of like boy executives saying well like the end is kind of a bunch of girls shoot and kill a bunch of men like we we gotta make sure that everybody knows that like this isn't an anti-men movie like where where are the men at the end of the movie can we bring that back that one guy that's who everybody's going to be interested in what's that one viral tweet i am not comfortable unless this is about me but it's like written written in like bird speak yeah bird bird spokesman is a long-time favorite of mine but i'm not comfortable unless we are about me is yes chef's kiss the the perfection of the form well we should probably move on uh we're not done with supergirl yet we're gonna yeah she can take it she's made up she's superpowers we're gonna beat up on supergirl Well, the film, not the actual character, who I like.

23:29But when we compare it to True Grit, we'll be back after the break with Connections.

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25:10i'll tell you when i'll armrest you for her seriously you win and you can have us both i win And you can tell us where the brigands are.

25:29Deal. Deal. Now it's time for Connections where we bring these two films together, talk about all the things they have in common, which is quite a lot. You know, when I first read this comics miniseries, I was like, oh, we got to do True Grit when Supergirl comes out. And I stand by that. Obviously, I stand by it. We're doing it. But it seems like some of the connections have been severed between the source material and True Grit. But there's still plenty to talk about here, starting with children who task themselves with adult responsibilities. I guess it's sort of Ruthie versus Maddie. I mean, you're right.

26:00That's a tough one. Ruthie's pretty passive. She's pretty passive, but she does at least, she does have the True Grit, one might say, to go seek out Supergirl in the first place. She hangs in there. She wants to be, I mean, she has to do a tremendous amount of hounding to get Supergirl to do what she wants her to do. So in that sense, there's definitely a Maddiness to it. But I think there's just a lack of commitment there. I mean, we talked about in True Grit how Maddie is asserted through the narration and elsewhere as being our hero, the person through which the story is told. That is definitely not the case with Supergirl.

26:42you know ruthie feels you know yeah and it doesn't help but it makes it does contribute to that impression of ruthie as being a more passive character a less engaged or an engaging character as she she might have been uh because ultimately our focus is on supergirl and and whether or not she's gonna you know be roused into action and and uh how difficult it is for her to kind of get there um and in order for her to get there it you know makes you know ruthie look kind of like a you know a little pest rather than somebody so rather than a pest that we really enjoy like maddie so uh i don't know uh there's a again that's that's one kind of comparing in contrast uh that really doesn't work in supergirl's favorite and almost kind of underlines some of the foundational problems with supergirl that really aren't present in true grit in terms of just having that strong through line, having that strong presence, really pushing the action forward because, you know, she has truly lost something important, people important to her.

27:46And we don't feel it in the way that I think we need to. I think an interesting contrast here, specifically the way Keith has framed this point as children who task themselves with adult responsibilities, is that Ruthie doesn't have a choice because she doesn't have a family. Her her entire family has been killed and she's the last survivor looking for justice. Whereas Maddie makes it very clear that, you know, her mother and siblings are at home. She just doesn't trust her mother to pursue anything. She describes her mother in probably like loving but contemptuous terms, I guess, as a teenager might, as kind of like ineffectual and indecisive.

28:30And her other siblings is, you know, too young for vengeance. So this is something she's consciously taken on herself. But there are other people that could have done it, including the lawyer that she keeps citing. You know, it doesn't occur to her or she doesn't trust her lawyer to handle the hiring of a ranger to go out and do these things like she wants to be there herself for it. Whereas Ruthie kind of has to go do it herself if it's going to get done at all. And there's, you know, and she unlike Maddie, she doesn't really have much to offer. She has the last of her father's swords, but that doesn't really make a difference to Supergirl, who can punch holes in the sides of battleships and doesn't use or need a sword.

29:18So in terms of the amount of choice going on here and the amount of distrust of adult authority, I think they're kind of notably different characters. But then in execution, I just feel like the filmmakers didn't trust us to realize that Supergirl was the hero of this movie if Ruthie was capable at all. Because Maddie is pretty capable and does a handful of things to prove it. Ruthie, until the cage sequence towards the end, she doesn't have a swimming in the river moment. She doesn't have a pulling down on Tom Chaney with a gun mid-film moment, she just keeps getting rescued over and over and over.

30:02And she's just as bullheaded, you know, so she keeps charging into danger, which means Supergirl has to rescue her more. And one of the things that I found just like a sort of ongoing background irritant in this movie was just the really repetitive loop of, you know, Ruthie's attitude gets her into trouble. Supergirl rescues her. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, which is we have Maddie's attitude to contend with in True Grit, but it takes all sorts of different forms. And she isn't in constant need of rescue. She's maybe in biggest picture need of rescue emotionally. But in terms of, okay, the bad guys are going to kill her again right now if I don't do something, we don't have to deal with that loop a thousand times in True Grit.

30:52Yeah, it's only really toward the very end that she's in like pronounced peril. And part of that has to do with the snake, not the actual bad guys. That's true. And you made a point about the emotional impact of that sequence and just like how hard Cogburn like works to keep her alive. It's also just, it's emotionally impactful because we haven't already seen it 12 times in the movie so far. Yep. Is there something to be said too about the fact that Ruthie actually witnesses the loss of all of her family members, whereas Maddie is at least disconnected from that incident. Because it seems to kind of affect the tone of these movies a little differently.

31:37There's, I guess, a little, you know, I mean, you would feel more trauma, grief, et cetera, if you were to have actually been there in a way that Ruthie is, as opposed to Maddie who is responding to a situation that she wasn't actually there to see on her own. Did it make a difference to you all, those two things? Before we get into that, you're saying that makes me think about something about True Grit because we see her father's body in the opening scene, right? But is that the only moment in the film that's really removed from Maddie's point of view? Like that memory? to that yeah that shot of that of the body because i don't think we leave her side for the rest of the movie do we i'd have to re-watch it with that specifically in mind i wouldn't want to say that we definitively don't and then uh and then be proved wrong yeah well not much anyway but yeah but that's a really good point it is it is stylized it's a story that she's telling us and it's very clearly a story that like lives in her imagination but it has to it has to be part of her imagination because she wasn't there and you know given how capable and headstrong Maddie is and how determined she is that the world will it has not yet been proven to her definitively that the world does not work the way she says it's going to I have to imagine that somewhere in the back of her head is the feeling that if she'd been there she could have fixed things she could have made sure that that didn't happen somehow, you know, whereas Ruthie was there and was completely helpless.