Supergirl review: Milly Alcock soars but the DCU sequel never quite takes flight

Milly Alcock’s hard-drinking, grieving Kara Zor-El anchors James Gunn’s Supergirl, which opened in UK cinemas on 26 June 2026 alongside a shaky global box office start for DC Studios’ second DCU chapter.

TL;DR

• Directed by Craig Gillespie, the film stars Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El opposite Jason Momoa’s Lobo and Matthias Schoenaerts’s villain, Krem.
• It reached UK cinemas via ODEON and IMAX on 26 June 2026, the same day as its North American opening.
• Critics were split, praising Alcock’s performance while faulting the script and pacing.
• Its opening weekend fell well short of Warner Bros.’ projections, according to Variety and Deadline.

What is Supergirl about?

The film follows Kara on a personal quest rather than a planet-saving mission. After her dog, Krypto, is poisoned by the space brigand Krem, Kara has to track him down and secure an antidote within seventy-two hours. Along the way she joins forces with a vengeful orphan named Ruthye, played by Eve Ridley, on a galaxy-spanning hunt for Krem.

The story draws directly from the source material. It is adapted from the comic miniseries “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, which took clear inspiration from the Coen brothers’ Western “True Grit.”

How does Milly Alcock perform as Kara Zor-El?

Reviews agree on one thing: Alcock carries the film. Variety’s chief film critic, Owen Gleiberman, wrote that the character, rather than the spunky Supergirl of legend, is styled as an interplanetary drunk drifting between junk-heap bars on junk-heap planets.
IndieWire’s David Ehrlich took a warmer view, saying Alcock finds both the human dimension and the out-of-this-world charisma needed to make Kara worth rooting for, despite the character being written as deliberately unlikeable.

Empire’s Leila Latif landed somewhere in between, noting the film has good ingredients, including a witty, hard-partying antihero and a moving backstory, but that the fledgling DCU has yet to prove itself. Craig Gillespie, the director best known for “I, Tonya” and “Cruella,” was singled out by several critics for the film’s uneven tone.

UK release, cinemas and ratings

This is a UK-specific news update. Supergirl was released in the UK on 26 June 2026, showing at ODEON cinemas including IMAX screens.
As of publication, the film is still yet to receive an official rating from the BBFC in the UK, though its US rating is PG-13.

Box office and critical reception

Global opening weekend: $62.6 million Source: Variety

US/Canada opening weekend: roughly $37–38 million Source: Deadline / Rotten Tomatoes

The numbers landed below expectations. Warner Bros. and DC spent $170 million to produce and roughly $120 million to market the film, which misfired with $37.1 million in North America and $62.6 million globally in its opening weekend.
By comparison, last year’s “Superman” grossed a respectable $619 million worldwide
under the same DC Studios leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film landed at 57% with critics and 77% with audiences, a split that reflects the reviews above: warmer reception from general audiences than from critics.

The verdict

Supergirl is at its best when it leans into grief and family rather than franchise mechanics. Where “Superman” (2025) was a story of reinvestigating cultural heritage, “Supergirl” is described as a heartbreaking story of grief, trauma and the ways women have been forced to put aside their anger to survive.
Whether that’s enough to launch Kara as a recurring DCU lead now depends on how Craig Gillespie‘s film performs over its second weekend, with “Minions & Monsters” opening opposite it on the Fourth of July frame.