Supergirl Has No Idea What to Do With Kara Zor-El's Superpowers

Kara Zor-El, the cynical, surly protagonist of the new Supergirl movie, has a very different attitude than her goody two-shoes cousin, Clark Kent. But Supergirl has all the same superpowers as Superman, including flight, super-strength, laser-eyes, and invulnerability. These fantastic abilities make Supergirl one of the strongest heroes out there saving the day. That's great for the people of Metropolis; it's less great for filmmakers who have to figure out how to make an engaging story that actually challenges such a strong character. All past Superman movies have had to face this problem, and unfortunately, Supergirl can’t overcome it. Ironically, Supergirl's superpowers are the movie's Kryptonite.

The second movie in James Gunn's recently rebooted DC Cinematic Universe, Supergirl follows Kara (Milly Alcock) as she's off on a galactic bender. Unlike her cousin (David Corenswet's Superman), she didn't come to Earth as an infant. Kara grew up in a remnant of Krypton and lost everyone she knew and loved before her escape pod reached her cousin's adopted homeworld. Earth's yellow sun gives her all of the same powers, but it doesn't feel like home for her. So, when the movie begins she's instead off on some alien world with a red sun in the sky that negates her powers and allows her to get wasted on space booze. 

This setup makes for an engaging first action sequence when Kara begrudgingly steps in to stop a hulking alien from stealing a priceless sword belonging to Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), a local girl seeking revenge after some space pirates led by Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) killed her family. Kara can't fly or knock out this dude with one super-punch, and it sure seems like getting clobbered with a giant mace might actually kill her— a powered-up Supergirl wouldn't face this level of immediate peril. That she's leaping into the fray despite the danger only heightens her innate goodness (and recklessness).

By scaling down Supergirl's abilities, the scene raises the stakes and gives her a good fight. The trick works—but only once. The issue is that Supergirl keeps de-powering Supergirl. The next action set piece comes when Kara and Ruthye are on a rickety space bus to another planet. Kara is still under the effects of a red sun when another group of pirates attack the bus, so she must once again fight them off like a mortal might before getting ejected into space and basking in the rays of a yellow sun. 

Even after she regains her powers, the movie finds increasingly arbitrary ways to strip them from her. She effortlessly wails on a group of thugs in a grungy alien dive bar, but by the time Krem and his men arrive on the scene, Kara is suffering from the effects of a poisoned tea. It doesn't paralyze or kill her the way it would a normal person, rather it knocks her off her game so she can’t fight at her full potential. Other than perhaps being a bit tougher than an average guy, Krem doesn't appear to have any noticeable superpowers. A fully powered Supergirl could easily whip the floor with him, so of course Supergirl can't let her be fully powered. Krem wouldn't be able to escape and set up the third act if she were. 

It's during the climax when Supergirl's de-powering gets especially egregious. First she arrives on the planet where Krem is hiding out only to discover that it orbits two suns; one yellow and one green, and the rays of a green sun are like Kryptonite to her. Instead of fighting Krem, she's lying in a cave, dying, and is out of commission. This gives Ruthye a chance to be a hero, but the contrivance of Kara's struggle makes itself clear when she gets better because… the yellow sun rises, almost as if on cue because it's time for her to start the final fight. She's hampered again immediately afterward when Krem shoots her full of Kryptonite-tipped arrows. This seems like it's going to be really, really bad for Kara, but instead she just… pulls them out and is mostly fine, albeit a tad less strong than she might otherwise be and therefore a slightly more even match for Krem. 

This impulse to bring Supergirl down to Earth is, on some level, totally understandable. It wouldn't be much of a movie if everything was a cakewalk for Kara. On the other hand, it's a bummer to see a Supergirl movie that keeps going out of its way to make the title character not be super—especially when it's repeatedly done so inelegantly. It's a catch-22, one that every Superman movie has faced in some way.

The iconic tagline for Richard Donner's original 1978 Superman, "You'll believe a man can fly," helps explain how the Christopher Reeve-led film solved for Superman's powers. Simply seeing his powers in action on the big screen was a huge part of the appeal and although Lex Luthor does weaken him with Kryptonite at the end, most of the drama and the stakes comes from Clark Kent's relationship with Lois Lane. The sequel Superman II, did a logical thing by giving Superman an equally powerful Kryptonian menace to fight in General Zod. Zack Snyder's Man of Steel did the same to destructive ends. This is a viable but unsubtle way of addressing Superman's powers and it's not without its downsides. Watching Superman fight a foe who matches (or exceeds) his strength is exciting, but it also warps the frame of reference. Does Superman feel super if he's fighting an equal? Or are we just watching two gods punching one another thanks to the magic of CGI?

More interesting are the attempts to challenge Superman without weakening him or introducing a comparably strong bad guy. Though Superman Returns is much-maligned (not unfairly so, on the whole), it boasts one of the best action sequences in any superhero movie, a scene where Superman attempts to stop a plane carrying Lois Lane from crashing into the Earth. Superman himself is never in any danger here; the stakes instead come from the peril Lois is in and the tension of whether or not he'll be able to halt the plane in time. Superman is at full power; he's super strong and super fast, the issue is that the plane is not. An attempt to slow the plane by grabbing onto the wing only results in the wing snapping off while the fuselage keeps careening towards the ground. It is a thrilling scene that works because of, not despite, Superman's powers.

Supergirl feints at some of this sort of stakes-raising. Her motivation is getting an antidote for her poisoned dog, Krypto, and she finds herself trying to protect Ruthye on many occasions. These situations are never orchestrated with enough tension, nor do they seem like they should ever be that hard for Kara to deal with. The forgettable villains are not up to Kara's level, either. Rather than rise to the occasion and find an interesting way to challenge Supergirl, the movie instead brings her down over and over again. Almost every other Superman movie has evoked Kryptonite at some point, typically during the climax when the hero needs to be at his lowest and weakest. Supergirl leans on it for more or less the entire runtime.