Children's Hospital Color Theory

First complaint I see a lot of critics make is that the movie is grimy. It's brown and gray and not vibrant like Superman was which is something people liked. To which I say: yes, the colors follow the character arc

We literally start the movie with the darkest scene in tone and visually. We go through night time scenes in the dive bar, one day time scene where we get the plot driver, and then back to the void of space on beat down public transportation.

This is Kara's red sun bender arc, act 1. This isn't Supergirl, this is Kara Zor-El, the last cultural Kryptonian* and witness to the final, lingering, death of an entire species. She's a mess and you can't blame her for it. People have crawled into bottles and drowned there for less. It's her lowest point emotionally in the movie and the coloring reflects it

Act 2 starts with the literal sun rise, color returns but it's still muted. Kara still isn't Supergirl, but she is a full powered Kryptonian under a yellow sun. She has significantly more agency. She's starting to make choices instead of reacting to other people. She's going out of her way to help where she can even though she's on a time limit

We don't get the full vibrancy of Superman until the third act, kicked off by another sunrise. She puts on the suit. She chooses to be Supergirl, and that act is promise of a better tomorrow if she fights for it.

I'm also going to point out that even in the visually darkest scenes, I could still see everything that was happening. I will say however, that they could have made the third act much brighter to hammer home the point. There was still a washed out feeling to the setting and background elements. Then again, maybe I'm reading too much into it and it was just a happy accident

*Clark gets called the Last Son of Krypton but he really isn't. He's an orphan of Krypton raised on Earth which makes him culturally human. Kara is THE last Kryptonian. This will come up again

The Sound Track Tells a Story

The second complaint I saw a lot of is the last needle drop during the end fight scene. It's Kelty Greye and KidMotel doing a slowed down cover of ‘The Middle’.

This is the perfect choice for this theme. Ruthye is literally in the middle of this fight, trying to stay out of the line of fire. She's approaching the end of her journey, revenge is right around the corner. Kara has been trying to tell her that revenge isn't going to help her heal. This is the lead up to where she decides who she is going to be and Kara wants her to make that choice based on what she wants, not what other people or cultural expectation expect of her

I honestly believe the majority of the backlash here is that it's a much more somber version of the song and it's a female cover*, which makes sense since it's supposed to be Kara talking to Ruthye. While it does reinforce the message and foreshadow Ruthye's decision, I do think it lacked the energy for a beat down scene. You either lean into high octane performance to match the scene or go the other way completely and put the fight to a waltz. Commit.

I think a better way to have pulled this off is with the original song for the fight scene. Cutting to this version when Ruthye goes to kill Krem and Kara asks her to think about what the consequences for Ruthye herself will be if she kills him could have worked. But this version definitely should have been used during Kara and Ruthye's final conversation of what they're going to do next as a reprise.

Overall not an incredible choice but certainly not a bad one either.

*The incels are hating this movie

Good is not Nice

I really do not get this critique. At all. Yes, Kara is mess. She's drunk, a lot. She's cocky. She's rude. She's angry. She's hurting. She's 22. But the movie explains why! Like literally, in your face, you cannot possibly miss it unless you are being willfully obtuse

Once again, Kara Zor-El is the last Kryptonian. Clark does not count. They made that very clear when they show her landing on Earth. Clark doesn't speak Kryptonian. She doesn't understand him, this isn't her world. The person that her father told her was family, that she would be safe with, literally cannot communicate with her

Not only was she born in the ruin of what was one of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy*, she got to watch literally everyone she knew and cared for die a slow death of radiation poisoning. Kara doesn't even want to be saved. She wants to stay and die with her family and her father guilts her into getting in the pod

She is the last piece of an entire species culture, art, music, language. There is nothing left of her home, her people. Not a single touchstone except Krypto. Clark is an earthling with Kryptonian blood. Kara is the Kryptonian that survived an extinction event

The fact that she's even functioning this well is astounding. She didn't want to survive but it was her fathers literal dying wish that she be saved. It's fully understandable that she's drinking to the point of self destruction. She's lost everything. Furthermore, we don't see Clark try to empathize with her about that**. He introduces himself by talking up Earth and how wonderful life there is. He knows, generally, what happened but doesn't understand.

So yeah, she's got a reason to be prickly and angry. And still, she tries to do the right thing at every opportunity. Krypto is dying, painfully. Anyone would understand if she put everything to the wayside and just grabbed the antidote. None of that was her fight beyond saving Krypto. And Kara still stepped up. She saved the girls***. She kept saving Ruthye long after she stopped being useful to the quest and in all reality was just putting herself in harms way, she was way outclassed by everyone and everything.

The movie even fucking spells it out. You don't have to be kind. You can be angry. Just be good. Tell over show is always weak storytelling but this movie did both and these dimwits still missed it

*Ok, I know there are reasons for it, namely Brainiac putting the city in a jar (spoiler), but if you can somehow take a city sized chunk of planet, give it normal gravity and an atmosphere, you cannot expect me to believe that the entire city couldn't be saved. The public transportation system in a galactic backwater was moving between solar systems in a matter of 2 or 3 hours

**I know he was just excited to see another Kryptonian in that scene and that he would have been doing everything in his power to help her heal and adjust later. However, we weren't shown that. We were shown Kara and Krypto arrive on a new planet after literally leaving everything she knew and everyone she ever even knew to die a slow, painful, death. I'd drink too

***Can we acknowledge how absolutely fucked this story line was? Those girls were like 13 and basically everyone was referring to them as "the brides". I know it made the villains completely irredeemable. I know it was done so that the audience would support Ruthye's revenge. Still squicked me out. Which was the point so good job?

The Kryptonite Sun

I'm sorry but we've been doing green sun stories since the 60s. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the literal source material for this movie, established that these things are poison to Kryptonians.

Die mad about it*

*Eat shit

Ok so not Everything was Awesome

Nothing is perfect and this movie certainly had it's weak points. Characterization for everyone but Kara was half baked to nonexistent. Ruthye, our audience viewpoint character and supposedly deuteragonist, got maybe three character traits tops. The antagonist Krem was basically built from the ground up to make everyone say "Yeah, a little murder is ok sometimes. As a treat." and have literally nothing else to him whatsoever

And then Lobo...

I like Lobo. Jason Momoa is perfect for this character. This was a very good portrayal of the character and about as true to the source material as you can get.

He also does not matter even a little bit to the plot. Not one iota. You can pull the entire character out of the movie and nothing changes except Kara having to sweat a bit more.

Why was he even here? He had a bounty? On a completely random Brigand? Not even the main villain. Why was this random side character important enough to have a bounty and not Krem, the Brigands leader?

It wouldn't even be a hard fix. Give me another scene showing a Brigand raid, 90 seconds, and a scene of some rich person promising Lobo oodles of cash to go kill that guy in particular and get their daughter back, maybe 2 minutes. Gives an actual motivation connected to the plot

There were plenty of ways they could have utilized him better. It looked like Ruthye was going to get some actual personality and character development with Lobo as reluctant mentor but nope. Swerved right out of that one

I am also going to say that I am not thrilled about having Kara being saved by a yellow sunrise twice. The symbolism of the acts being delineated by sunrises is very good. The sun rises, a new day is born, and we step forward into a brighter future of our own making. After both, Kara is stepping further away from self destruction even if the anger is still present. It's good.

But did we have to do the same scene twice?

Conclusion: The American Education System Has Failed

Zero critical thinking skills, zero textual analysis, possibly negative attention to, not even detail, the entire fucking plot. If this is what our schools are producing for people who are paid to do critical thinking and analysis of films, we are fucked as a country‡. If my plumber was this bad at their job my water heater would have achieved orbit. 1 dead, 17 injured

Ok, that's not quite fair. I'm sure a lot of these critics are either incels that become enraged any time any even remotely feminine gets centered in a story or Snyder* simps who want to gargle the balls of the man who made SUPERMAN a PREMEDITATED KILLER** who wouldn't even save PA KENT***

‡I am aware the country is fucked for other reasons. Let me have this

*Superman is a Moses figure not a Christ figure you absolute numpty. Battinson had better Moses symbolism

**Literally the antithesis of the character. We get Injustice when we go this route

***There is no possible universe where Clark Kent doesn't do everything in his power to save Pa Kent even if it were to cost Clark his life. Eat shit, Snyder

Fight Me

I actually would like to hear other people's takes on this movie. There is a lot here, a lot of emotions, a lot of trauma being processed. This is one of those movies that is going to give a lot of different things to a lot of different people