umoray

Absolutely! I'm more naturally drawn to imagining my men to be submissive, however with Cecil it feels like a must.

I get that he's got some (used very lightly) control freak history, but it's been shown for his morals, which are gray, but nonetheless trying for good.

Essentially, isn't it only right to make him bottom?

I like the actors and the visuals. Millie Alcock especially, she's excellent and captures Kara's charisma. My biggest gripe is the monotony of the planets in the film, the fact that they're all gray and dystopian

And now for the main thing I didn't like. The plot. I like the theme of alcoholism in Supergirl, I'd like to see more of it. I like the idea that Krypton didn't die right away, although I'm not a big fan of the versions where Kara is younger than Clark. For me, the older cousin offers more emotional themes, about how first lose everyone love, and then have to protect what's left, but in the end, when arrive on the planet, the baby you have to look after is already grown and older than

Ruthye and her backstory seem illogical to me. Wasn't the antagonist willing to agree and leave, and everything was ruined by a misunderstanding?? The brother thought he was attacking his mother, and died, and the mother couldn't take it anymore and attacked too. Isn't this all a big misunderstanding? The antagonist didn't touch Ruthye, even though he could have. Either I didn't understand this part of the plot, or the filmmakers failed to convey the antagonist's lack of principles

There's too little journey and too many action scenes (which were all in the trailers). Isn't this film supposed to be feminist? So why does Kara get beaten up time and time again, even in avoidable situations? Not to mention that Lobo "rescues" her several times in the film. What was the point of that?? To show that Kara can't do anything without a man??? Why is Lobo even in the story? He plays no role in the plot, doesn't contribute any important lore, and doesn't even work as a gag. It's as if he was added just so he'd randomly come to Supergirl's aid and create a potential "ship" between them

I won't even mention the villain. He's as flat as possible "I'm evil because I'm evil." Although there could have been an interesting contrast between Kara and Krem, they even have the same first letter in names! They're both from a dead planet, but while Supergirl copes with it through alcohol, the villain is trying to reclaim what was lost through violence. It would have been a good subplot and would have tied in with the film's ending. Speaking of the ending, why did she decide Earth was her home? Kara spent most of her time with Ruthye, and there was simply no movement toward accepting Earth as her new home. I understand what they were trying to say, but they didn't quite nail it

So I’ve only seen it once, and could be wrong about some things (anyone with a clarification is welcome to correct me ofc!), but here’s what I think happened.

So for the first point, Ruthye’s brother was in his bedroom on his headphones, so he missed any chance of getting the fact there was a supervillain in the house and maybe he shouldn’t make sudden movements.

He saw Ruthye outside of his room just staring and thought — oh, that’s weird. And in usual sibling fashion, wanted to jumpscare her. I’m assuming this is something they did often because it seemed he was accustomed to doing that.

So it was Ruthye — not the mother — he was “attacking” and this was just a sibling being a sibling, nothing nefarious. And Ruthye looked scared when he did that because she knew that was the wrong time to be doing that.

And yeah…Krem heard this and immediately threw a knife (ax? Weapon, idk) into his back, because he wasn’t even facing him. That’s how oblivious the brother was to the situation.

The mother, seeing that, had enough and I believe that’s when she blows up the weapons shed, destroying what Krem was there for in the first place. I do think she lunges for him too — because again, he just killed her son with no provocation — but I’m not sure if or how well-armed she is.

Either way, she’s doing this out of desperation. And that’s when Krem kills her as well. The father? Same fate, though he gets a few blows in and some last words IIRC. Then, Krem sets the house on fire.

So yes, Ruthye doesn’t get “touched” by Krem. He does, however, kill her entire family and then set her house on fire in front of her. The only reason he doesn’t go after her is because he didn’t see her. Or if he did, decided she wasn’t worth the trouble for whatever reason

The rest of the movie makes it clear the Brigands, which Krem is the leader of, traffics girls. That is their thing. He definitely is not the good guy here.

Also, throughout the initial interaction, Ruthye’s mom and dad are the ones asking him to leave. Sure, they’re reluctant to give up the weapons — because that’s their livelihood — but he doesn’t just leave when he gets the chance.

I remember the mother clearly says “ok, you have what you want. Now you can leave.” And he just stares at her. This makes me wonder if he wasn’t planning to kill the family the whole time.

To the second point. Kara does get beat up a lot in this film, but whether that’s good or not might be a matter of preference.

I, too, thought that was kind of counterintuitive at first, until I really thought about it. In Superman (2026) he gets beat up a lot too. He’s losing battles for the first time. People hated that film for the same reason, but I don’t! I think it’s good to show that people, even superheroes, can lose. I would rather see a film with that moral than one where the superhero wins every time, because otherwise, how can we be shown growth?

But for Kara, I think the reason she’s shown to lose a lot is because a) at first, she’s fighting on a red sun. She prefers the red sun, because it’s like her home. This references the fact that she’s running away from her “fate” as Supergirl. Which leads me to point b) even when she gets to the yellow sun, she still loses a lot of battles. But why?

I haven’t seen a lot of discourse about this (I could be wrong) but the fact is, that even though Kara has the costume, she hasn’t taken up the mantle of Supergirl yet. She’s likely fought in a few easy battles, Clark has put her in the newspapers to get her name out there, but she’s not experienced yet. That’s probably why her flashbacks on Earth only show her confused (with Clark) or depressed at this being home (by herself).

She knows she’s supposed to fight for good and she likely has fought a few battles before, whether with Clark or on a red-sun planet before, but I’m willing to bet they were either in self-defense or just very easy (like a one-punch win). She’s never had to go up against villains like Krem. She’s only been “Supergirl” for the better part of five(?) years, maybe a bit longer?

Added to that, Clark is probably the one who taught her fighting and he likely taught her to go easy on people when on a yellow-sun planet (which we can also talk about how she never WANTED these powers in the first place why does she even have to fight or “go easy”—), so her technique is definitely off. She’s able to go full-ham on these guys, but that doesn’t mean she’s good at it just yet! That’s what I think, anyway.

She’s headstrong and willing to believe she can take on 10 bajillion guys at once because she has the raw potential for it, but she hasn’t entirely learned how to handle the technical aspects of it (which I wish we would talk about more, tbh. It’s very subtextual).

I’ll admit, I’m biased towards Lobo. I think he’s funny in the animated Superman series and that was enough to carry me here. He’s not for everyone.

As for why he’s here, narratively? Several people have pointed this out, so don’t think I’m original on this one — Lobo is supposed to be Kara’s narrative foil.

I think the wires may have gotten crossed here as well, because while we’re here I should also add: the Brigands (as far as I recall, but I don’t care if they did because they suck tbh) didn’t lose their planet — LOBO did. He’s the last survivor of his planet. And that’s why he’s important and forms a connection to the two heroes.

He’s what Kara could be — no remorse, a killing machine for money. No real sense of right or wrong. He does have a “code” but it’s skewed. I haven’t read the comics either, but I’m willing to bet he didn’t have the same support system Kara did before his planet got destroyed. No promises to be good, no plans for what to do with his power of immortality afterwards. All he does is drink and kill — which could be Kara, if she keeps on the track she’s going down. Unlikely, but the thought is there.

Ruthye at one point tells him her family was killed for no reason and he asks the reason. She admits it was money, and he says “that’s a reason.” No sympathy, just matter-of-fact.. Logically he’s not wrong. It is a reason, but any normal person would be horrified and sympathetic to hear someone’s parents were killed for money. If that tells you anything about his moral reasoning, yeah. The death of his planet has warped him to be numb to anyone else’s pain

In fact, that’s the way Kara was when she saw Ruthye’s sword being taken. She heard that the kid’s parents had been killed and she was hurt. So she helped her. Because she’s keeping her promise to her mother to be good.

Now, I don’t think Lobo is a total bad guy necessarily, but he’s not good. He does whatever he wants for his own reasons. You can’t trust a guy like that.

More than that, he’s not afraid to drag others down to his level. When he hears Ruthye’s revenge plan, he not only supports it, he goes out of his way to make it happen. Ruthye killing Krem would not solve the pain she feels (which is the main theme of the movie!), but Lobo doesn’t care about that. He cares about seeing others kill.

He does contribute to the fighting but he gets incapacitated at some point too! He, the immortal, gets incapacitated and captured by the Brigands! That’s when Kara (and Ruthye too!!) has to step in and save him. So it’s a two-way street. And I honestly don’t think he’s being that helpful…because he’s not doing this to help the women lol. I think there are probably others who have more deep dives on the foil thing.

I won’t say anything about the ship thing because I didn’t get those vibes at all….

As for the villain, yeah he just sucks. He traffics women and is evil. Sometimes people are like that. He’s a flat character and characters like Ruthye or Kara are dynamic. It’s like Jack from Puss in Boots and the Last Wish. Sometimes, you’re just going to get a horrible bad guy. I don’t mind because there are plenty of nuanced villains to see in other films. Just a matter of preference!

For the final point, I also would’ve liked a revelation of Kara wanting to stay on Earth too, but I think the point was threefold:

A) her going to earth is breaking her current cycle of drinking and partying on red-sun planets. It’s a break from the norm, which she needs

B) acceptance of her new situation. Her time spent on red-sun planets has her way of running away from the fact that she’s never to see her family again. She’s coping with that by going to the closest thing to her home (red-sun planets). In fact, I could even see her thinking one of them will remind her of home and she could settle down there. But none of them do, since she moves on to a new one all the time. Staying on earth means she’s accepted her planet is gone, she has new powers and she has a new family now: Clark!

I wrote that the brother saw the scene between Krem and his parents and attacked Krem without understanding the situation. Krem then pointed his weapon at Ruthye's mother, and the brother took it as an attempt to attack. He died at the hands of the villain, and the mother couldn't bear to see her son killed and tried to attack Krem, for which she was killed. And then the father also couldn't bear to see her son killed and died. As far as I remember, Krem saw Ruthye before he left, but left her alive. Krem is a terrible person, but he also has his own strange moral principles (?), such as honoring deals (like when he exchanged Ruthye and Kara for the daughter of those aliens, and he killed them only for breaking the deal). I just think the situation with the deal falling through and the death of Ruthye's family is simply the result of a misunderstanding between the parties, and it doesn't exactly portray him as unprincipled, but rather as someone with a twisted code of honor

I'm also not opposed to a superhero losing. It's just that in the Supergirl movie, it happened too often for my taste. I honestly thought she was hungover for most of the film, which is why she lost so often, but then I remembered that the yellow sun should have cured her by now

As far as I remember, Lobo destroyed his own planet, according to Kara. Which honestly prevents me from seeing him as her antithesis. The Brigands didn't quite lose their planet, it's considered dead, but in fact, it's alive, and I found that quite similar to Krypton and their island. It's like two sides to the planet-loss situation, one good, one bad

Regarding saving from Lobo. My main complaint is that he does it by accident. Kara is at a disadvantage several times, and then Lobo appears out of nowhere and "rescues" her without even knowing it

At what point was Amber being a bad girlfriend? If anything, it was Mark who was a pretty shitty partner during their relationship.

‘’Oh, but she acted like she was more important than saving the world !!!’’ No??? She was not upset at Mark for being a superhero. She was upset at Mark for constantly showing up late (or just not showing up at all) whenever they made plans, and for being dishonest with her about the reason behind this.

‘’Oh, but you can’t expect Mark to tell her about his superhero identity !!!’’ Okay, but you can’t expect Amber to not get upset whenever Mark ghosts her for the 10000000000th time either, especially after she gave him so many chances to correct that behavior or atleast explain it to her. She didn’t know that her boyfriend was being a superhero, she only thought that he was disinterested in her and their relationship.

She agreed to date Mark Grayson, not Invincible. If he knew that he couldn’t manage his superhero life and his romantic life at the same time, then he shouldn’t have asked her for another chance over and over again. There was a consistent pattern all throughout the season of him dismissing their relationship, Amber getting rightfully upset and breaking up with him, Mark trying to get back with her with gifts and false promises of being better, and her taking him back all while he never changes his behavior.

This fandom’s obsession with portraying Amber as the bitchy unreasonable angry black girlfriend and Mark as her poor little victim who need the white female character (cough cough..Atom Eve) to come save him and show him what a ‘’good girlfriend’’ actually looks like is really fucking weird. There was no point in time where Amber was being bitchy or angry when communicating with Mark about her issues regarding their relationship, nor was there a time where she being unreasonable for asking Mark to be honest with her regarding the reason why he kept disappearing. At no point in time was Amber being the ‘’bad girlfriend’’ that the fandom loves portraying her as so much.