They gave me a comic book (Woman of Tomorrow #1) and a sugarless energy drink (although it was room temperature). That’s something.

Quick review: Less than the sum of it’s parts.

Maybe a few more words…

Let’s start with answering some criticism I’ve heard (don’t assume these are common criticisms, but they are something I’ve bumped into):

“This isn’t an origin story”:

Yes and no. First, we’ve seen enough origin stories. Not every superhero needs one. Holland’s Spider-Man has done well without one. On the other hand, this is an origin story. It just happens to be different. Is it Kill Bill where they discuss how Superman differs from other superheros in that the others are people who put a mask on to fight crime, while Kal-El is an alien who puts a mask on to live a normal life. That’s the point of view you should be looking at this. Kara already has her powers. She just needs to find the moral compass inside her to become a real superhero. This actually mirrors Spider-Man. The part where he gets bitten by a spider is not that interesting, but the part where he let’s a criminal go for that man to kill Peter’s beloved uncle, is something cool.

“I can’t follow the action”:

At times you are not meant to. The point of view you are supposed to follow the action is that of a kid who is way over her head and chaotic action is supposed to reflect that.

“Why are there human cultural references in space?”

This is where the Tolkien rule comes in. According to Tolkien, he didn’t write Lord of the Rings. He translated it. This also means that sometimes, in order to make it understandable, you need to choose locally meaningful references. Like, at one point there’s a band in a bar that plays Girl from Ipanema. How you should take this is that they were playing an equivalent of it. Something widely known and chill.

“I don’t like movies where girls are the heroes”:

Well, in that case I would suggest you take the next few years to grow up.

Okay, with that out of the way, it wasn’t a great movie. Was it even good? Maybe. I would say not quite.

The thing is that while individual scenes were cool and I liked the character of Kara much more than I expected, the pacing is off and many of the events just seem a bit forced. Also, I kind of felt that it was so disjointed that you could come in anywhere and understand what was going on.

One thing I kept thinking about was how much darker this is than Superman from last year. Sure, that movie also talked about genocide, but it felt like a course correction after the Snyder era. This is a bit of a throwback. It gets back on tracks near the end, but there is a theme of human trafficking that is quite prominent throughout.

Millie Alcock works quite well in this role. I don’t think I’ve seen her anywhere previously (besides Superman). In that movie she’s pretty obnoxious, but here that is handled in such a way that it works. The behavior feels more earned here.

Lobo? Why? Just an added selling point? He comes in and out of the movie. It almost feels like he was added last minute and just jammed in there.

The action? In general, I don’t really care anymore. We’ve seen enough of superhero action over the last 20 plus years that it’s just boring anyhow, but I think the approach of centering the situation on the kid just trying to follow what’s going on worked well. It was probably a pretty good decision from a budgetary point of view as well.

Okay, was it good? Good enough to have on in the background while you are doing something else and focusing on it when the right track plays.