Supergirl's box-office failure has threatened to become the story that defines the movie. Released theatrically in late June and now streaming on HBO Max as of September 10, the second feature in the rebooted DC Universe finished with roughly $126 million worldwide after an opening far below expectations.

That industrial story is dramatic.

The movie's more interesting story is Milly Alcock.

Across an unusually divided critical response, she is the closest thing Supergirl has to a consensus strength. TheWrap calls the film messy while identifying Alcock as its emotional center. Rolling Stone sees her Kara as evidence that the DCU can successfully explore stranger and more damaged corners of its mythology. Even the far harsher reviews from Variety and RogerEbert.com acknowledge her commitment and screen presence.

This Kara has no interest in being another Superman

Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Ana Nogueira build the movie around a useful distinction between the surviving Kryptonians.

Clark Kent came to Earth as a baby. Krypton is an inheritance to him, a lost home he understands through fragments.

Kara remembers it.

She remembers her parents, her world and the process of losing both. Supergirl turns that difference into behavior. Kara drinks, keeps moving, avoids responsibility and weaponizes sarcasm whenever emotional proximity becomes uncomfortable.

On paper, that risks becoming the familiar shorthand of the supposedly complicated female action hero: alcohol, anger and a refusal to care.

Alcock keeps finding the younger, frightened person underneath it.

Ruthye gives the journey its moral shape

The film adapts Tom King and Bilquis Evely's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow with significant changes, but it preserves the most important dramatic relationship.

Eve Ridley's Ruthye wants revenge on the man who murdered her family. She treats that desire less like an emotion than an obligation.

Kara understands the impulse immediately.

What she fears is where it ends.

The movie is at its best when the superpowers recede and Kara is simply trying to stop a younger survivor from allowing murder to become the final definition of her grief.

Their relationship gives substance to the film's repeated distinction between being nice and being good. Kara is abrasive, irresponsible and often unpleasant. None of those qualities automatically prevent her from making the harder moral choice.

The cosmic western is more interesting than the superhero machinery

The Guardian responded positively to the film's relatively straightforward structure and its willingness to step away from the heavier continuity burdens associated with earlier DC movies.

Supergirl moves through dusty planets, strange bars, interstellar transit systems and settlements that feel far removed from any functioning authority.

The influences are not subtle. There is Star Wars here, along with Mad Max and the bones of a western revenge story.

That familiarity can make the world feel derivative, as Variety argues, but it also establishes an important difference inside the new DCU.

This does not feel like another movie that happens to take place in Metropolis.

It feels like a separate genre operating inside the same universe.

Then the fights begin and the filmmaking gets considerably less precise

This is one of the most consistent weaknesses across the mixed and negative reviews.

TheWrap criticizes action that becomes muddy through flight effects, loose tracking and framing that often follows the edge of a fight rather than its physical center. RogerEbert.com similarly finds the spectacle noisy without being especially imaginative or emotionally forceful.

The problem is not a shortage of action.

Supergirl is constantly moving.

The problem is that movement rarely develops convincing weight. Kara can cross a set, smash through an opponent and launch back into the air without the camera making the force of that sequence especially tangible.

For a character whose body can function like a projectile, the film is surprisingly inconsistent at making impact feel like impact.

Krem gives the story a destination, not a great villain

Matthias Schoenaerts plays Krem as deliberately vile rather than misunderstood.

There is value in that simplicity. Not every superhero antagonist needs a sympathetic ideology.

The difficulty is that Krem rarely develops beyond the function he serves.

Variety is especially hostile to the character, describing him as a collection of post-apocalyptic leftovers. More favorable reviews do not generally identify him as one of the movie's strengths either.

That becomes a structural problem because nearly everything points toward him. Ruthye wants him dead. Kara needs what he has to save Krypto. The entire road movie exists because they are chasing him.

The hunters remain far more interesting than their target.

Krypton's tragedy is essential, but the movie sometimes explains too much

Kara's memory of Krypton is the foundation of this interpretation, so the flashbacks are necessary.

The film distributes them across the story instead of front-loading the mythology. TheWrap finds the approach uneven but credits Alcock with giving those scenes genuine emotional force.

The weakness is repetition.

The more explicitly Supergirl explains Kara's trauma, the less space it leaves for Alcock's present-day performance to communicate the same history through behavior.

Some images of Argo are haunting.

Others feel like the screenplay making sure the audience understood something the actor had already made clear.

Lobo is entertaining enough to expose why he does not belong here

Jason Momoa is exactly as enthusiastic as expected.

His Lobo gives the movie an immediate jolt of vulgar, chaotic energy.

He is also one of the clearest examples of franchise logic interrupting character logic.

TheWrap argues that his inclusion feels shoehorned into a story that does not require him, and that criticism is persuasive. Lobo feels less connected to Kara and Ruthye's emotional arc than to DC Studios' desire to demonstrate another character waiting in the wider universe.

Momoa is fun.

That does not automatically make the detour necessary.

The reviews are genuinely divided

The movie's critical reception cannot be reduced to a simple consensus that it failed.

Variety delivered one of the harshest responses, attacking the screenplay, derivative world-building and emotional flatness. RogerEbert.com was similarly negative about its noisy action, thin humor and what it saw as a shallow conception of female complexity.

The Guardian landed at three stars out of five, praising the movie's energy, accessibility and relative freedom from excessive DC backstory.

Rolling Stone went further, finding the adaptation largely satisfying and arguing that it points toward a DC Universe capable of supporting more eccentric stories.

TheWrap sits somewhere between those positions: technically and structurally messy, but emotionally effective often enough to survive those mistakes.

That middle ground fits the movie best.

On HBO Max, it almost plays better as an extremely expensive pilot

Streaming does not fix muddy action or flatten Krem into a stronger antagonist.

It does change the stakes around the viewing experience.

In theaters, Supergirl arrived with a reported production budget around $170 million and the responsibility of proving that the new DCU could sustain momentum after Superman. Under those conditions, a movie this visually uneven felt especially disappointing.

At home, the simpler question is whether this Kara is worth 108 minutes.

She is.

The movie around her is inconsistent, sometimes generic and less formally assured than Craig Gillespie's name might suggest. But Alcock, Ridley and the decision to define Supergirl first as a survivor and only later as a symbol give it enough identity to outlast its weaker blockbuster instincts.

The theatrical audience largely stayed away.

HBO Max now gives Kara a second chance to find them.