Transcription
Supergirl is exactly the kind of movie Hollywood keeps making and audiences keep rejecting. The crazy part is that I don't even think Warner Brothers understands why. Well, when critics and audiences and the box office all agree on something, you probably made a piece of [ __ ]. Nobody came rushing to defend it. Nobody's out there pretending it's some hidden gem that'll be rediscovered in 10 years. It came, it went, and most people seem perfectly content pretending it never happened.
You know what I say? Good, because this movie sucks. And what's funny is I don't think Supergirl is special. I mean, obviously it's not. It's shitty. But in fact, amongst all the other garbage, I think it's painfully ordinary. Every modern blockbuster indulgence you can think of shows up somewhere in this movie. From bloated spectacle to weightless action to characters who barely resemble human beings. Not enough for you? How about some crappy dialogue that sounds like it was focus tested by 12 executives sitting around a conference table trying not to offend each other? You've seen it all before, and that's the problem. We've seen this movie before. Different costume, same [ __ ].
Every time one of these things crashes and burns, the studio starts pointing fingers everywhere except The Mirror. Superhero fatigue, bad marketing, toxic fans, the release date, the economy, Mercury must be in retrograde. Or maybe people just don't want to spend 20 bucks in 2 hours watching another creatively bankrupt assembly line production wearing the skin of a character they used to love, or in Supergirl's case, never cared about in the first place. Imagine that.
Today, we're not reviewing Supergirl. I already did that. Now, we're going to perform an autopsy on this mess and see how exactly it fell apart. How a character with 80 plus years of history became the star of yet another expensive Hollywood disaster. But before we start pointing fingers, let's establish one thing. Hollywood will come up with all kinds of cute little PR terms for it. And I'll save them the trouble. Hollywood has a funny way of dressing up failure with corporate buzzwords, but numbers don't have feelings, and they sure as hell don't care about PR statements.
Supergirl opened to $37 million, well below the likes of even Morbius and the Marvels. These are numbers that would have been nightmare news for a mid-tier superhero movie 10 years ago. Never mind the supposed launch of a brand new DC universe. And from there, things only got worse. Anti-word of mouth materialized. Stay away was the go-to phrase. So, the second weekend fell off a cliff. And by the time the dust settled, the film that needed Superman numbers to break even hadn't even cracked a h 100red million yet.
Now, here's where people always get tripped up. They'll see a movie make $100 million and assume it turned a profit. No, that's not how it works. Reported production costs at around $185 million, and that's before you even touch marketing. Global advertising campaigns for movies this size routinely run another 100 to 150 million, sometimes more depending on the push. Studios also don't keep every dollar from ticket sales. Theaters take a cut. International markets take a different cut. So when you hear people throwing around the phrase break even point, they're usually talking somewhere around two and a half times the production and marketing budget. By that math, Supergirl wasn't even playing the same sport.
All that said, compared to recent superhero disasters, it lands in familiar company. The Flash imploded. The Marvels became Marvel Studios lowest grossing movie. Even films that technically made more money still lost tens of millions once the full bill came due. Hollywood's been stepping on the same rake for years now, and every summer they're shocked when the handle comes flying back in their face. You know, the same industry that keeps making the same mistake and expecting audiences to bail them out.
And one decision surrounding this movie has completely baffled me from the start. Why would you even make it for one thing, and second, why would you budget it like you did? Hear me out. Superman is one of the most recognizable fictional characters on Earth. You can show his logo to someone in a country that doesn't even speak English and they'll probably know exactly who he is. Supergirl. Ask the average person what they know about her. You'll probably get she's a girl Superman. That's just reality. So why in the world are you spending almost the same amount of money on both movies? If Superman costs roughly $200 million, that's one thing. He's the flagship and the face of DC. He's the character you're trying to build an entire universe around. Supergirl is not, never has been.
That's why this feels like Hollywood confusing its own enthusiasm with audience demand. Studios spend so much time around these characters that they start believing everyone else is just as invested when they're absolutely [ __ ] not. So, in this instance, if you're launching a niche character, you don't give them the budget of Batman or Superman. You scale the movie to the audience. Hell, that's exactly what Marvel used to understand. Iron Man didn't cost what Avengers Endgame cost and Ant-Man wasn't budgeted like Civil War. Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't handed a blank check because no one knew if people would show up. These movies earned the right to get bigger. Supergirl skipped that step entirely. Warner Brothers spent like they had already had an audience instead of earning one first.
But you know one thing Hollywood deserves credit for? They are unbelievably consistent at learning the wrong lesson. Every time a movie becomes a massive success, the studios sprint to the whiteboard and immediately start copying the most obvious thing they can find. Barbie makes a billion dollars, the lesson must be femaleled blockbusters. No, I'd say Barbie makes a billion dollars, the lesson must be toy movies. Top Gun Maverick becomes a phenomenon. Guess audiences just want legacy sequels. Deadpool prints money. Better make everything R-rated. That's as deep as the analysis goes. It's like watching someone stare at Michael Jordan, decide the secret to becoming the greatest player of all time was wearing Nikes, and still wonder why they're still getting their ass kicked at the YMCA. Hollywood copies the paint, but never studies the blueprint.
Barbie actually worked because it had a clear creative vision. Top Gun respected the character people showed up to see. Deadpool understood exactly what made that character fun in the first place and refused to sand off the rough edges. No, they didn't succeed just because of those single bullet points, but that's how Hollywood treated it. Instead of asking why people love something, they ask what they can copy as quickly as possible. That's how you end up with movies like Supergirl, another giant budget, recognizable IP. You know the drill. Hollywood wishing to launch yet another franchise, simply convinced that if they throw enough familiar ingredients into the pot, audiences will mistake the recipe for a good movie. Guess what? It doesn't work that way. People don't buy tickets because a movie checks enough boxes on a corporate strategy document. They buy tickets because they think they're about to have a good time. Somewhere along the way, Hollywood forgot that making a movie and manufacturing a product aren't the same thing.
So, here's where this whole thing goes off the rails. The conversation always gets dragged into gender demographics because Hollywood's become obsessed with telling us who a character is before giving us a reason to actually give a [ __ ] about him. Poor Millie Alco got dragged into this by some entertainment reporter who just had to ask the big modern audience question of the day. Is she great for female representation? Does she swing both ways? Does she support LGBTQ rights? Good lord, the poor girl never stood a chance against the guy who asked if the acolyte was the gayest Star Wars ever. This is, I would say, arguably the gayest Star Wars, I think, by a considerable margin. >> Millie was dragged into the culture war, whether she liked it or not.
Let's humor these questions, though, and stop and think for a second. Think about the most memorable female heroes in movies. Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Clarice Starling, Furiosa. They weren't memorable because they were women. Nobody walked out of Alien saying, "Man, that female representation sure was something." They walked out saying, "Ripley kicked ass." She spent most of Alien trying not to die. Sarah Connor starred Terminator as a waitress who wanted absolutely nothing to do with saving the future. Furiosa spends half of Fury Road trying to outrun mistakes she'd already made. They weren't icons because Hollywood told us they were. They earned it.
Now, compare that to so many modern blockbusters. And I know you guys have heard this argument before. It's so [ __ ] annoying to have to do this again and again. Before the movie even comes out, the marketing starts reminding you how important the character is because of what box they checked instead of what kind of person they are. It's like Hollywood wants a standing ovation before they even walked on stage. That is a hell of a sales pitch. And Supergirl falls right into that trap. Instead of introducing us to someone we're excited to spend two hours with, the movie feels convinced the audience already owes the character admiration. The script never really earns it. It just expects it.
Charisma can't be focus tested, guys. You can't spreadsheet your way into creating another Ripley or Sarah Connor. Those characters became iconic because the writing came first and everything else followed naturally. That's what Hollywood keeps missing. People don't fall in love with demographics. They fall in love with characters. And who would give a [ __ ] about a party girl who, well, doesn't give a [ __ ] People fall in love with characters who are funny, conflicted, selfish, broken, or capable of surprising us. Supergirl is literally none of those things. Well, selfish, I guess, but really, she doesn't even feel like a person. She feels like a product designed by committee, assembled from traits executives thought audiences wanted instead of being someone a writer genuinely understood.
But here's the part that really caught my attention. After Supergirl bombed, The Hollywood Reporter published a behind-the-scenes look at what happened during production, and it's truly some kind of incredible. The article answers a question I didn't even know I had. Just how early did they realize this thing was in trouble? First, filming wrapped in May of 2025. By that fall, according to the report, both the studio and director Craig Gillespie already knew the movie wasn't working. Think about that. They already knew. Then came the test screenings and the scores never got out of the 60s. Eventually they clawed their way into the low7s and Warner Brothers decided the solution was to make two different cuts of the movie. One from Gillespie and one from the studio. They tested both and hilariously the scores actually went down. You can't make this [ __ ] up.
So, now you've got the original writer involved, another writer brought in for rewrites, two editors cutting different versions of the movie, re-shoots, a reworked climax, arguments over music, arguments over pacing, arguments over how much screen time the villain should have. I mean, who exactly was making this movie? Because it sounds like a committee trying to engineer a hit after realizing they didn't have one. [ __ ] a singular vision from a director. The best part, the funniest part is the studios version won the bakeoff by two points. two points on a movie that cost nearly $200 million. Then apparently they straight up stopped testing it altogether and shipped it to theaters. And if that's true, it tells you everything. Hollywood loves talking about trusting the creative process until the creative process stops giving them the answers they want. Then it's rewrite, reshoot, re-edit, rescore, recut. Anything except admitting the foundation might be correct.
The article ends with an anonymous executive saying Gen Z just doesn't care about superheroes anymore. You know, maybe he's right in a way. I don't think they do either, but the anonymous exec makes it out to be their fault. To that, I say no. Hollywood made damn sure they didn't care about superheroes. If you spend the better part of a decade flooding theaters and streaming services with mediocre superhero movies, eventually an entire generation grows up thinking superhero movies are mediocre. Millennials got Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, Logan, Infinity War. Gen Z got Morbius, Secret Invasion, Quantum Mania, Madame Web. [ __ ] yeah. Actually, the Marvel's Joker 2, and now Supergirl. One generation grew up watching superhero movies become the biggest thing in the world. The next generation watched Hollywood beat the genre over the head with a shovel until the body stopped moving. Those are two very different experiences. And if Warner Brothers thinks the problem is simply Gen Z doesn't like superheroes, they're about to learn the exact same lesson Hollywood always learns. The wrong one.
The more I think about it, the harder it is to blame Supergirl for any of this. It's just the latest victim. Hollywood's been stuck looking in the rear view mirror for years now, desperately trying to recreate moments that are never coming back. Marvel built the biggest franchise in movie history, so everybody wanted a cinematic universe. Top Gun Maverick reminded everyone how much people love going to the movies, so suddenly every old franchise needed a legacy sequel. Barbie made a billion dollars, so now every toy on your childhood bedroom floor is apparently getting a screenplay. Nobody wants to be first anymore. Everybody wants to be second or third or 20th. The studios have become obsessed with reverse engineering success instead of creating it. They treat hit movies like math equations, convinced that if they copy enough variables, they'll eventually stumble into another billion-dollar franchise. Shocker, it doesn't work that way.
The audience has always been smarter than Hollywood gives them credit for. People know when they're watching something that exists because somebody had a story they wanted to tell. And they also know when they're watching something because a boardroom decided a recognizable IP looked good on a spreadsheet. Oh, and streaming only made that problem worse. For years, the industry trained people to expect an endless conveyor belt of content. Every month, another reboot, sequel, spin-off, or cinematic universe, begging for your attention. Eventually, the event status of these movies went away, and people started treating them like the background noise they became. That's exactly where Supergirl found itself, as another movie trying to sell yesterday's business model to an audience that's already moved on. Hollywood keeps chasing the audience it used to have instead of figuring out the one sitting in front of it today.
One thing I keep hearing every time one of these movies falls on its face is that audiences just don't care anymore. You know what? I kind of agree. I just think Hollywood left out the part where it spent the last decade making sure they didn't. Nobody just wakes up one morning and says, "You know what? I hate superhero movies now. [ __ ] them." That's something Hollywood had to work at, just like they did with Gen Z. For years, the genre operated on goodwill. Studios could announce almost anything with the cap and on the poster and audiences would eat it up like pigs at a troth. Well, the goodwill from us little piggies is gone. Now the burden of proof sits with the studio. You can only disappoint people so many times before they stop showing up.
So after all that, what actually killed this movie? To be clear, I don't think there's one answer. People are always looking for the magic bullet and want one thing they can point at and say, "There, that's why it failed." But movies almost never work that way, especially ones this expensive. Usually, it's death by a thousand cuts, and Supergirl managed to find damn near every one of them. You had a niche character carrying blockbuster expectations made on a budget that made zero business sense. A script that couldn't make people care about its main character, and a production that, according to the Hollywood Reporter, sounded like it was being pulled in five different directions at once. Then you dumped it into a market that's already exhausted after years of Hollywood pumping out sequel after sequel and superhero movie after superhero movie. And after all that, they're still looking for one neat little explanation. Maybe it was the release date or the marketing, or [ __ ] let's blame Gen Z for not liking our superheroes, as if they owe it to us. Or maybe the movie just wasn't worth 20 bucks. Audiences make that decision every single weekend. They don't care how many rewrites there were or how much money the studio spent trying to fix it. They either think a movie looks worth seeing or they don't. And this time, they didn't.
So, what was the final cause of death, then? It's that Hollywood spent years convincing itself that recognizable IP was a substitute for compelling storytelling. And well, audiences disagreed.
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