Believe it or not, I watched James Gunn’s Supergirl (2026), starring Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El. Not an easy feat in a country like Egypt, where the film literally didn’t last a day in movie theatres. While overly long and under-plotted, it’s quite good. It has more in common, comparatively speaking, with Conan the Barbarian (1982) than with its 1984 predecessor, starring Helen Slater as Kara. First off, the movie looks great, at the very least.

By Emad Aysha
James Gunn utilises ultra-high-definition cameras to capture the details of the girl’s face and how her body and hair – and tears – float in zero G. The cinematography tends towards yellows, greens, or reds for the suns in question.

TABLE MANNERS: Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts) as the pie-eating villain of the piece, finally getting his comeuppance at Milly Alcock capable (if small) hands.

Red gives her no power, green is deadly while yellow makes her invincible. The physics of the world, then, is comprehensible and helps drive the plot and themes, while the world's look is grimy, lived-in, and realistic.

Secondly, the casting is pretty darn good, from heroes to villains and in between. Milly Alcock is so tiny she convinces you she’s actually younger than she is, and can play her even younger, innocent self in flashback just as nicely.

You can see why her only friend is her dog Krypton, and her only coincidental ally is the ruthless Bounty Hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa). He fights only for money, but is nonetheless a man of his word. More on this moral greyness below.

Third and most important, the themes of the movie are clear as hell. Kara isn’t a happy-go-lucky loser, in contrast to the squeaky-clean Superman. Instead and more substantively she’s a traumatised person who wants to deny her birthright to put her painful past behind her.

She saw her mother die and her world slowly dwindle, growing up in a single city remaining from Krypton. She drinks her life away specifically to forget and doesn’t want to be a superhero.

We’re explicitly told this by her sidekick, Ruthye (Eve Ridley), who is on a quest for revenge against the Brigand Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), who mercilessly slaughtered her family.

BORN BAD: Jason Mamoa looks like he was genetically engineered for this role, but even a bounty hunter has a code worth sticking to.

He doesn’t kill for money but sport, as Lobo tells us. He has no honour, as Ruthye adds. A study in contrasts is going on here, as if it isn’t bloody obvious. And Kara is desperately trying to dissuade Ruthye from revenge because it will stain her soul forever.

The best scenes in the movie are between the two of them, which brings me to both the original Supergirl and Conan the Barbarian. Helen Slater is trying to save her remaining Kryptonian colony, sure enough, but has to travel along the hero’s journey to attain this noble goal.

She has a mentor figure in the bombastic Peter O’Toole, as Zaltar. The scene where he sacrifices his life to help her escape the Phantom Zone reminded me so much of Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness) when he ‘dies’ fighting Dark Vader.

Just as you hear Alec Guinness marshalling Luke to use the Force, you have Peter O’Toole telling Kara he’ll always be with her and giving her confidence in herself. It’s an enigmatic scene, worthy of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).

The only difference with her journey compared to Luke’s is that part of growing up, for a girl, is finding a mate and realising that you are attractive to the opposite sex. That denigrates the story a bit, admittedly, since it turns her quest up against the villainess Selena (Faye Dunaway) into a catfight.

CATNIP COLOURS: A promotional still from 'Supergirl' (1984) with Helen Slater as Kara and Faye Dunaway as the not-so-big bad.

Ruthye is the conscience of the story and the moral mirror for the new take on Kara, and the girl kills it. Equal parts determined and scared. She goes on her own hero’s journey, learning to be resourceful and escape capture. She even impresses and recruits Lobo.

This all reminded me of Conan’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sidekick Subotai (Gerry Lopez), a Mongol archer and thief. In Arabic storytelling, you have similar pairings like Antar bin Shadad, the muscular knight and his sidekick brother; an archer, who is partly there for comic relief.

But Subotai is also a true friend. One of the most moving scenes in the movie is when he cries for Conan’s girlfriend, explaining that Conan is Cimmerian and so does not weep. He weeps for him. (See the 'epic' Full Volume reaction video.)

You also have a wonderful scene where Conan talks about his childhood and the sweet smell of spring, before he was made a slave from infancy to manhood. Subotai had his own tragic tale but refuses to leave Conan’s side because fate would bring him back to the same situation, just with worse companions.

ALTERNATING ARROWS: Gerry Lopez [left] is a Hawaiian surfer dude in addition to his role as morale coach in 'Conan the Barbarian' [right].

That’s essentially what happens in James Gunn’s Supergirl, which is why it’s worthy of praise, not derision. (To date Magic Magy is the only YouTuber who positively loves it.)

When Kara takes up the Supergirl mantle in the end, she kills Krem, and with great pleasure but mostly to protect Ruthye’s soul.

She has a responsibility to fight for those weaker than her, to put her powers to good use. Not to mention freeing the girls his Brigands have been enslaving; his tribe is all male. (Child and sex trafficking, hint, hint.)

There’s lots of cultural hints here in general. Lobo looks like a Biker dude on a Harley, and there are many bar scenes in cowboy fashion, with Krem being everything from a terrorist to a rogue nation to a mini-superpower run amok.

The poor of the world conciliate to him as he invades their homes, delighting in their foods – a pie, a cereal bowl, even prison food. But it does them no good. Better to die fighting.

It’s been said that Gunn’s take on Superman (2025) mentions the Gaza refugee crisis, so you can guess who the ultimate bad guy is. Perhaps that’s why this movie (was) failed and got trashed by the critics. Who knows?

Still, it’s the storytelling that counts more. This is a welcome update to the heroine’s journey and I, for one, am looking forward to the follow-ups - including the soon to be released ‘Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow’.

SIDE-BY-SWORD KICKS: Valeria (Sandahl Bergman), Conan's hubby, also tries to dissuade him from the quest for revenge. Ruthye (Eve Ridley) is likewise Supergirl's better half.

There’s no shortage of antagonists out there, including an orange menace that needs muffling too!