A Casual Review of Supergirl, Season 1

The previews for Supergirl had me afraid of the worst. However, I have a soft spot for the character, so I gave the pilot a try, and it was much better than I expected. I ended up watching the whole season and then began anxiously awaiting news of Supergirl’s cancellation or renewal.

 

But Supergirl wasn’t always good, so let’s get the bad out of the way. Episodes focusing on the Department of Extra-Normal Operations taking out a one-off baddie were formulaic, some special effects were awful (Red Tornado, anyone?), and a couple actors in minor recurring roles were torture to watch. Thankfully, however, the core cast and many others were excellent.

Which brings us to the good. The core cast always impressed, but no one was better than Melissa Benoist. As Kara Danvers, she’s dorky and lovable, and as Supergirl, she’s tough and inspiring. Somehow, Benoist (and her costume and makeup wizards) achieve a compelling distinction between the two. When J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter shapeshifts into Kara (“For the Girl Who Has Everything”), Benoist does a good job mimicking the way he walks and talks. And when she turns into Bad Supergirl, she demonstrates fifty shades of wicked that’s pure joy to watch.

This last was in “Falling.” After a dose of Red Kryptonite, Supergirl develops a nasty attitude. She rebels against her boss, gets a co-worker fired, claws her sister’s emotions to shreds, and eventually goes full supervillain, torching a police car, laughing maniacally, and aspiring to godhood. The episode is an example of why I insist the superhero genre has more to offer than much supposedly highbrow art. When Kara finally returns to herself, she’s in tears over what her dark side has done. It’s heartbreaking and insightful. Anyone who has ever behaved horribly and regretted it later knows this shame.

 

Many other favorite moments are sprinkled throughout the season. I especially like it when Supergirl has a typical Superman moment but does it better. Kara has a background story nearly identical to Kal-El’s, rescues a crashing airplane, faces baddies from the Phantom Zone, works in mass media, is coworkers with Jimmy Olsen, talks to a hologram of a lost family member, loses her powers, adjusts her glasses nerdily, rips open her shirt to reveal the big S, and even has her own Bizarro. In fact, Supergirl does a lot that has been done by Superman, but the execution is such that it’s never as annoying as it tends to be for Superman and never feels anything less than wholly her own.

It helps that the Big Boy in Blue, while not far away in Metropolis, gets shunted aside every time he tries to step into the spotlight. He’s got a bad case of backlight in the intro, and when he does come to National City to save the day in “Myriad,” he’s still a distant blurry dot in the sky when a psychic attack incapacitates him and he divebombs into the city. He spends the rest of the season lying on a gurney with only his boots visible!

But who needs him anyway? Supergirl saves the world without him, and I enjoyed watching it happen as much as I’ve enjoyed the best of Superman on the big screen (Man of Steel, parts of Superman II) or the small screen (Lois & Clark), and a great deal more than the worst (Superman I-IV, Superman Returns). When director Zack Snyder can’t make a sure bet like Batman v Superman perform to industry expectations, maybe it’s time to give Superman a rest and let his cousin take over.

As I write this, however, the future of Supergirl is uncertain. As I understand it, the show did all right ratings-wise, but only all right. CBS has announced plans to renew all its freshman series but has been oddly unforthcoming on specific plans regarding Supergirl, so there is speculation it could move to the sister network The CW. I don’t care which network it’s on, I just hope Supergirl gets another season. It deserves it.

 

Proof that 2016 Was the Best Year Ever for Movies

A little while back, I ran across some click bait claiming 1999 was the last great year of movies. The author compared such medium-expanding greats as Fight Club, American Beauty, Magnolia and Being John Malkovich with the sorry profusion of superhero films today. I was surprised a whole genre could be so slighted, and then when the first photos of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman appeared, I realized something must be said, preferably with some hyperbole:

We live in the Silver Age of Hollywood.

In 1989, I was all about Tim Burton’s Batman. Before it came out, I caught teasers on a little black-and-white television with rabbit-ear antennae. I had the movie comic. My dad, who knew Purple Rain was among my earliest music purchases, bought me the soundtrack by Prince on cassette. My friends and I all agreed that Kim Basinger, who played reporter Vicki Vale, was “hot.”

Batman was a big deal. Until then, superhero movies had been a lot like Shakespeare in the park: men in colorful tights, stilted dialogue, occasional fighting. Batman and Batman Returns changed all that by turning the tights into armor and shrouding everything in a lot of shadow. Suddenly, actors--and big names like Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer--could look like the larger-than-life figures from the pages of comic books, and the movies could be cool.

New-style fan trailer for Batman:

 

After that, the Batman films trundled on, but superhero films on the whole languished until X-Men in 2000. Perfect casting, emotional subplots, and more stylish costumes set a new standard that director Sam Raimi quickly met with Spider-Man in 2002. Big budgets, new technology, and artistic vision were making the bizarre and tacky worlds of comic books--and fantasy (The Lord of the Rings) and science fiction (The Matrix)--possible for the silver screen in ways that weren’t cringe-inducing. Thus, 1999 wasn’t Hollywood’s last good year, it was the beginning of a better Hollywood.

Now we have the glory that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more. The Avengers in particular showed that Hollywood can pull off a superhero ensemble wearing costumes that resemble the traditional ones, make it appeal to a broad audience, and rake in a fortune at the box office. It’s the apotheosis of Stan Lee! Someone go commission a painting!

As a lifetime reader of comic books, this is a dream come true.

Cynics might insist that for all their success, for all their dazzle, superhero movies are still fluff, but don’t buy it. That’s only on the surface. Underneath, there are powerful, universal themes of justice, responsibility, morality and identity. Along the lines of that last is the nature of masks: what they hide, what they reveal, how they represent the different sides of a single personality, how they spice things up. A lot of that can be found in the iconic scene in Spider-Man when Spidey kisses Mary Jane in the rain.

I don’t expect many people to agree, but I’ve long felt genre flicks and comic books are where the true edge is in art today. Literary fiction and whatever’s winning Academy Awards are largely playing it safe, no matter how serious their stated subject matter. Comic books, by hiding what they’re really about under easily dismissible manifest content, can be much more effective, moving and subversive.

Director Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (previous post) is a great example of how superhero films can be arty and deep, and with Man of Steel (previous post) director Zack Snyder finally delivered a Superman with dramatic potential. Henry Cavill, one of the highlights of The Tudors, plays a Kent/Kal-El who is pretty, sympathetic, gritty and not a putz, so I’m glad he will be reprising his role in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Which brings me back to Wonder Woman, whose Amazonian costume revealed recently recalls some of my favorite designs from the comics:

 

If you had told me in 1989 that in 2016 I would be able to see a movie called Batman v Superman and it would also feature Wonder Woman, I would have started paying a lot more attention in Science so I could make a Hot Tub Time Machine. The uses are obvious: quality time with Kim Basinger and traveling to 2016 to see The Bat, Supes and Princess Diana tear it up on the big screen.

And that’s why 2016 will be the best year in movies that ever was. Superhero movies aren’t what’s wrong with Hollywood today, they’re why Hollywood is bigger and better today and looks only to improve for a while to come.