Never Laugh at Live Dragons!

GOD, she does not want to do this. She does not want to force him into that ship. But unlike Grace, she doesn’t have the luxury of collapsing, because somebody still has to act. Somebody still has to make the impossible decision and live with it. And Sandra Hüller plays this so brilliantly because she never makes Stratt’s suffering loud. She keeps it all so restrained and controlled, but you can still see every tiny crack in her composure. She has to hold herself together while her entire world is falling apart.

And the thing is, for YEARS Grace was probably the closest thing she had to a friend. Someone she trusted, relied on, someone who actually understood the unbearable weight she had to carry every single day while the entire planet waited for extinction or salvation. And instead of meeting her halfway and carrying that burden together with her, Grace leaves her alone with it. Grace gets to unload all of his fear, anger, and panic onto her, and she STILL has to be the one who is held responsible. THAT is what makes me lose my mind every time I watch this scene. Because yes, from Grace’s perspective, Stratt betrays him. But from Stratt’s perspective? Grace betrays her, the mission, years of work, and honestly humanity itself. And on top of all that, she is of course also heartbroken for her friend. She has to sacrifice someone she deeply cares about, become the villain in his story, and still keep going. As Sandra Hüller’s character says in Sibyl, “Sometimes having a breakdown is a luxury.” And damn well it is for Eva Stratt.

he could be an interesting representation of the first child of a mixed family, however he's always presented as Superman's son

and he's perpetually used to replace kon when kon wasn't even clark's son ?????

in a way he's the continuation of geoff johns' attempt at turning kon into superman's son

and the fact that jon is being used to replace kon feels like a sort of sanitization ??? of the character of superboy ???

i don't think that's the correct word here

as i expected a pretty bad movie overall (not much worse than most modern superhero movies, but really not good either), but there were some things i really liked:

i really loved all of the flashback scenes on argo city! i'll need to watch those specific scenes again but i thought the whole thing was really well done. it was really cool how they actually spoke kryptonian (/kryptonese) the whole time instead of it just being in english, and i actually didn't hate the designs for the architecture and clothing (although i'll always prefer more colorful design choices for kryptonians). and it was also just cool to see argo city's survival like that on the big screen, i really love that they went with kara's pre-crisis origin (although i know a lot of people have been complaining about that. couldn't be me!!)

more from the argo city scenes: absolutely loved everything to do with zor and alura... the scene where they're playing around with little kara was SO cute :') i actually thought this was an improvement from how they were depicted in WOT—i'm not a fan of the reserved / emotionless / john byrne-ian depiction of kryptonians. every scene with kara and her parents was just too good (alura's last words to kara + zor explaining why kara's life was so important in particular!)

there's not exactly a lot of competition lmao but david krumholtz is definitely the best live action zor there's ever been—i'm still partial to laura benanti's alura from the supergirl tv show tho (emily beecham was still very very good as alura, i'm thankful she got a little more focus here than she did in the comic)

okay moving on to other parts of the movie: there were some really cool practical alien designs which was a pleasant surprise! i feel like most of the aliens we saw were played by people in costumes + make-up rather than completely made up in cgi and i really loved that.

milly alcock was so good as kara (barring some writing choices which i'll talk about) and such a great actress, she deserved a much better movie than this. eve ridley was also really good as ruthye—i've seen complaints about her but idk i though she did a fine job + i had no problems with ruthye as a character here.

okay moving on to shit that pissed me off:

this movie is so fucking hideous it's insane. there were so many scenes that could've been fun and engaging to watch but were completely bogged down with how ugly everything looked. there's really no excuse for how bad it looks—it's not a requirement for superhero movies to look this bad (superman (1978) is a visually beautiful movie that had the same cinematographer as 2001: a space odyssey, but if you want superhero movies to not look like shit in 2026 people will say you're expecting too much). i just don't know how you can look at bilquis evely and mat lopes's work for WOT and butcher it SO BADLY.... literally jail for 1000 years. and i understand what the director's intention was! i do! he wanted all the alien worlds to look gritty and dirty and crime-ridden—but that doesn't mean everything literally has to look like shit! whatever man.

i thought the way kara fought was cool, but the actual action scenes themselves were poorly shot. it just all looked really bad.

lobo did not need to be in this movie. i'm so fucking sick of lobo being in my supergirl shit. ENOUGH PLEASE ENOUGH.

that final needle-drop was just as awful was people were saying it was... literally FUCK these shitty ass needle-drops, whatever happened to FILM SCORE

i found the change to krem + the brigands to be really distasteful. in WOT the brigands are a group of pirates who commit senseless acts of violence across the galaxy, leaving mass amounts of death and destruction in their wake—which is something kara fully understands the scope of. she spends time with the victims of the brigands' violence, helping each of them in whatever way they need (caring for those who are severely wounded, digging graves so the survivors don't have to bear the brunt of that labor, physically working through anger and grief). through all of this she is confronted with her own trauma from the loss of her people—something she's been trying to avoid and forget about from the beginning. the movie throws all that out and changes the brigands into a race of men who kidnap young girls to keep as their "brides" so they can continue their race. this is unrelated to anything kara goes through and not explored in-depth—it's just a change made to show how ~~evil~~ these people are. the girls were ultimately secondary to kara's mission (saving krypto) which, considering the subject matter (trafficking and sexual assault) is awful. young women and girls are being stolen from their homes and raped but the most important thing to kara is her sick dog? and the whole brides plot is literally just taken from mad max: fury road (2015)—except instead of centering or giving focus to the women in question, they're just props to be chased around and terrorized by the men. they don't even get the luxury of having their pain mentioned by kara when she kills krem at the end ("this is for my dog and for what you did to that little girl [ruthye]" that's it? there's no one else you think you should mention? not the shipping container full of young girls stolen from their homes?) just terrible. it was really like the thought process was "well, supergirl is a woman, what do women have to deal with? sexual assault and trafficking!" as if kara having her specific trauma reflected back to her as she chases down the brigands isn't poignant enough.

i know i already mentioned this but this movie was just so fucking ugly oh my god why did they do that.................

there's probably other things i liked/disliked that aren't coming to mind, but for now in conclusion:

So currently I answer to my full first name (which I usually introduce myself with) as well as two nicknames/diminutives plus my last name when people mistake it for a first name. There are two or three other nicknames I've also gone by in the past. I'm perfectly fine with this, or neutral at minimum-- I have a common name and have had to be flexible with how I'm distinguished for my whole life. I also don't feel a deep and fundamental connection of my name with my identity, though I think going by another name entirely would confuse me.

A number of friends have been appalled at me being called names I don't say are my name. Which is really weird to me, although I'd go to battle for anyone else who was getting either deadnamed or called something they didn't want. But this perspective seems surprisingly common!