Supergirl (1984) Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxXbvzOdj-Q

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

It is one thing to introduce the world to many heroes out there to inspire generations of the good we’re capable of, but sometimes they’re not ready to be told immediately otherwise the end result would be bland


PLOT


1984’s Supergirl is a spinoff to the Christopher Reeve led Superman franchise. Taking place after Superman III, the film follows Kal El’s cousin Kara Zor El, who lives in Argo city that has been isolated from Krypton’s destruction due to being transported to the pocket dimension, Innerspace. The community’s wizard Zaltar shows Kara a powerful object that he borrowed without their government’s permission, the ‘Omegahedron’. When Kara gets carried away playing with it, it punctures a force field protecting the city and gets sucked out into the vacuum of space. While Zaltar punishes by excommunicating to the Phantom Zone prison, Kara goes to search for it. The Omegahedron reaches earth and gets in the hands of would be witch Madame Selena and her assistant Bianca (Brenda Vacarro); the former tends to break up with the warlock Nigel (Peter Cook) who is also a local school teacher in National City. As Selena unlocks true magic from the artifact, Kara would settle in under the alias ‘Linda Lee’ while searching for it. She would enroll to an all girls school where she’d befriend Lois Lane’s sister Lucy (Maureen Teefy) and become enamored with the groundskeeper Ethan (Hart Bochner). The latter also gets Selena’s attention who instantly makes a potion for him to fall for the first person he sees, but he only wanders the streets on his own the moment he regains consciousness. This leads to her lashing out by summoning a construction vehicle to retrieve him, but Kara saves him and he falls for her instead. This angers Selena only more to the point of seeking her out. As Kara tends to Ethan at an amusement park, the witch tries to attack in person, but the Kryptonian is able to overpower her enough to trap her in wires. As she later frees herself, she gets Nigel’s help to capture Ethan again in order to trap Supergirl and send her to the Phantom Zone. The prison dimension would make her powerless and would nearly drown an oily bog until Zaltar saves her. He helps her find an opening to escape, but he sacrifices himself when being caught by a whirlwind within. As Kara escapes, Selena has solidified herself to be a princess in National City and summoned mountain fortress with the Omegahedron where Ethan is her consort. The witch summons a shadow demon to face the Kryptonian, but she overcomes it quickly by crafting her own whirlwind that traps her and Bianca with the demon. Nigel escapes freely as he told Kara how to turn the demon against Selena. With the mountain vanishing, Ethan becomes free from Selena’s spells and professes his love to Kara as he has deduced her secret identity. The film would end with her reciprocating with a kiss, but leaving with the Omegahedron to save Argo City.


THOUGHTS


You know it’s always creative for a spinoff to an iconic adaptation comes about when the source material makes most sense. This is not the case here because this one makes the mistake of distancing himself from said material to force originality, only for it to be just as boring as Superman III, The Quest for Peace and even Steel. I really don’t want to come off instantly negative, but if Reeve himself ain’t gonna bother canceling as the Man of Steel, that’s a really bad sign. No matter how cool the set pieces are and no matter how solid of a score to get from Jerry Goldsmith, Writer David Odell & Director Jeannot Szwarc struggle to match the energy Richard Donner left behind with the first two Superman movies. There is a visible dynamic when you get to follow Helen Slater as the bright Kara and Faye Dunaway as the arrogant Selena that shows the danger of unchecked power & importance of taking responsibility for mistakes, but it feels very lifeless since they’re trying to force a resemblance to Kal and Lex Luthor. Even the decision to world build is forced for Kara to meet Lucy, Ethan and even Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure) within 24 hours. Those are just crazy odds if you ask me. Peter O’Toole does appropriately play Zaltar as a imaginative mentor who teaches Kara to own up to mistakes, which is why she heads to Earth the moment she loses the Omegahedron, but his sacrifice feels pointless compared to the loss of Krypton since that doesn’t seem to motivate her when she escapes the phantom zone. I don’t even really care for Becky and Nigel since they feel like replicas of Otis and Eve Tessmacher. I don’t exactly feel the same with Lucy and Ethan, but I just don’t think Kara immediately needs an inner circle to root for her, which is why I don’t care for these relationships as they happen. With that being said, so much happens that feels highly out of place when they shouldn’t. Like it’s one thing Kara shouldn’t be surprised Zaltar still has guilt over putting Argo City at risk, but it’s absurd how she already has the costume and is far more clueless in how earth acts when she knows her cousin has lived there for so long. And if Selena can’t stand Nigel anymore, she should’ve casted a spell to get rid of him by the time she gets the Omegahedron. What is dumber than her beefing what she thinks to be a teen? I would say Nigel being dumb enough to still fall for her as things got worse. So by the time he tells the protagonist how to win, I didn’t even care. To get this over with, Supergirl is one of DC’s weak links for not getting anywhere close to what made Superman work the first time around. In comparison, the 2020s reboot is a masterpiece and I’d rather stick with that than this.