Australian actress Milly Alcock soars out of the new Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow trailer in full flight, a high-kicking, fast-running action heroine who may yet turn the highly anticipated Superman spin-off into the action blockbuster of the year.
This is a high-octane reboot of the Supergirl character, who has, for much of her comic book history, been a well-behaved simulacrum of her higher-profile cousin. For local audiences, it’s a double whammy: in addition to Alcock, the film’s director Craig Gillespie is also an Aussie.
We have met Supergirl before: back in the 1984 movie, played by Helen Slater, and in the recent TV series (2015-2021), played by Melissa Benoist. Alcock’s Supergirl also made a cameo appearance in Superman (2025), but this is the time we’ve seen her in detail.
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which will be released in June, is thematically on-brand. “Find your place … in the universe,” is the thread in the trailer, which sits well with the foundation of the Superman mythology: an orphan boy stranded on an alien world. Those themes recur in Supergirl, and in the wider canon of many comic book mythologies.
The trailer sets up the story: Ruthye (Eve Ridley) is in pursuit of her father’s killer when she crosses paths with Supergirl. “Revenge, it won’t take your pain away,” Supergirl warns her. But the killer – space pirate Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) – shoots Krypto the Superdog with a poisoned dart, forcing Supergirl and Ruthye to pursue him for the antidote.
The verdict? The trailer is sharp and inventive, and leans heavily into the film’s action sequences. But it also delves into the layers of a character who, perhaps for the first time, is wholly realised in three dimensions – strengths and flaws, in equal measure – and makes a solid pitch for the film as a companion piece to James Gunn’s brilliant 2025 reboot Superman.
Who is Supergirl?
Kara Zor-El is the cousin of Kal-El, the Kryptonian orphan better known as Superman, alias Clark Kent, the mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet in the fictional Earth city of Metropolis. The character was created by Otto Binder and designed by Al Plastino, first appearing in Action Comics #252, published in 1959, in a story titled The Supergirl from Krypton.
Kara’s father, Zor-El, is the brother of Superman’s father, Jor-El. Kara was raised in Argo City, a fragment of the destroyed planet of Krypton; when it also faces doom, she is loaded onto an escape capsule by her parents, Zor-El and Alura. And like all comic book characters, there is a very classic take on Supergirl, which is not the character you will meet in this movie.
Ana Nogueira’s script is more directly adapted from the 2021-22 comic book miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely.
In it, we meet a slightly messier, modern update of Supergirl. The edges are smudged, and she carries her pain and loss in a very different way to her cousin. More on that presently.
Superman (David Corenswet) is in the new film
In the 1984 movie Supergirl, that era’s Superman was reduced to a poster behind a door, and an affecting riff on the John Williams Superman March. In the new movie, at least he’s walking and talking.
“You know, I’m just worried you’re not going to find your stride here, if you keep going off-world all the time, Kara,” Kal-El says. “I’m worried you’re not going to find your people.”
Supergirl replies: “That’s the thing, Clark, I have no people.”
We get to see Supergirl’s origin story
The key difference is that Kara is sent out of the imploding Argo City as a teenage girl, and not a child, as Kal-El was, when his parents Jor-El and Lara sent him to Earth in the final hours of Krypton.
That sets up the two characters as distorted mirrors of one another: Superman is a well-adjusted, Earth-sensible, square-jawed hero. His trauma is just an echo that seems well reconciled to the upbringing that Smallville residents Jonathan and Martha Kent gave him on Earth.
Kara, in contrast, is the product of a substantially more recent trauma – and shows all the signs. When we met her in Superman, even just for a glimpse, she was all reckless trouble and hectic energy, preferring off-world drinking binges to a more serious, settled Earth life.
This isn’t your mum’s (or your dad’s, or your gay uncle’s) Supergirl
Supergirl’s super-suit gets a prominent showing in the trailer, which is a nice touch in an era where those old-fashioned touches are sometimes eschewed for edgy, more contemporary looks. But make no mistake, this is an edgy, more contemporary Supergirl.
It also sets up the heart of the artistic dilemma of Superman-universe stories: it’s tough to shake the unchanging, idealistic tone of the characters, particularly in an era where comic books have expanded from Batman and Captain Marvel to Invincible and The Watchmen.
Helen Slater’s Supergirl was inoffensive to the point of being anodyne, but endures in the culture largely because of affection for Slater’s performance, rather than for the film itself. The 1984 Supergirl was unduly burdened with a bad script, poorly realised characters and a belief that the brand could make up any shortfall in the story.
Slater is, nonetheless, the antecedent Supergirl, much as we cannot really interpret Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, without understanding Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, and the multitude of things that the first iteration did, to set up the second.
But this Supergirl is far more contemporary, and empowered with a more character-defining story, which explores her as a damaged variant of Superman, rather than an innocent, wide-eyed mirror of him. Throw in Alcock’s energetic performance, and you have a Supergirl who is, indeed, the Woman of Tomorrow.
Michael Idato is the culture editor-at-large of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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