You Don’t Have to Like ‘Supergirl’ But Writing a Sexist Review Just Makes You Gross

The review embargo for Supergirl was officially lifted on Wednesday morning, ahead of the DC Studios’ movie’s proper debut in theaters this weekend. And if you’ve even remotely been on the Internet since then, you’ve probably seen… some discourse.

At the time of this writing, Supergirl has a 58% positive rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes with a total of 165 reviews — a number that will surely continue to fluctuate throughout opening weekend. (And a number that, either way, is still leaps and bounds higher than some movies released under the DC Extended Universe.)

While the reviews aggregated on the platform have ranged in positivity and outlet size, two takeaways have emerged. The first is that an overwhelming majority of the reviews are being written by men, continuing to prove the points that Brie Larson has been making since the press tour of Captain Marvel in 2019. And the second is that some of the reviews from men have been particularly bizarre, especially in the context of a female-fronted blockbuster.

Some of the reviews just have confusing framing: Clint Gage’s 6/10 review for IGN claims that the movie “almost gets everything right” but “unfortunately, that means it gets everything almost wrong as well.” Others, meanwhile, seem to be personally annoyed at the very premise of a superhero movie, with Jeff York of The Establishing Shot writing “watching alien thugs continually pummel Kara/Supergirl is not my idea of a good time, and I can’t imagine how such viciousness will play with the kiddie crowd this film is targeting with its PG-13 rating.”

While trying to claim that Jason Momoa’s Lobo was only added to the film because “studio executives were worried their target audience wouldn’t want to sit through a movie starring two female protagonists,” Sean Burns of WBUR‘s Arts & Culture added the following aside, which has since gone viral for being pull-quoted onto Rotten Tomatoes: “I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around the young male fan culture’s hostile aversion to seeing women onscreen. Part of the reason I’ve always loved going to the movies is because I enjoy looking up at giant, moving pictures of pretty girls. I thought everybody did.”

And Then There’s Variety…

The centerpiece of the discourse has been a review from Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, in which he claims that the movie is “so flat it’s super-horrendous” and has “the worst script [he] can remember.” Throughout the review, Gleiberman makes choices that have since been criticized heavily on social media: among other things, he misspells the name of Supergirl‘s screenwriter, Ana Nogueira, and devotes an entire paragraph to complaining about (and arguably misunderstanding) the “punk rock” sentiment of Superman. He also needlessly criticizes the names of characters who… already exist in the comics, writing about Eve Ridley’s Ruthye Marye Knoll, “These names! Are they trying to make the Star Wars prequel monikers look elegant?”

But the most frustrating part is when Gleiberman compares Alcock to “Kristy McNichol crossed with the Feral Kid from The Road Warrior in oversize Penny Lane sunglasses.” Right-wing circles on social media have been using screenshots of the Feral Kid (played by Emil Minty in the 1981 film) to body shame Alcock and criticize her appearance for weeks now. Even former Superman actor Dean Cain went viral earlier this month for encouraging the comparison on social media. As many have been quick to point out in the wake of Variety‘s review, Gleiberman is in his late 60s and has developed a reputation for being out-of-touch with certain things. But even if he was somehow unaware of the memes that have been made at Alcock’s expense, that still doesn’t excuse the rest of the Variety staff for letting the comparison run freely in their review.

It is worth mentioning that the role of Variety, and other trades like it, in the entertainment space has already been scrutinized lately. Last year, their coverage of the box office and subsequent awards campaign of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners was called out by many for diminishing the film’s success. And even their coverage of the DCU has been criticized for attempting to fuel certain debates about Superman’s role as an immigrant, Alcock’s response to years of dealing with online trolls, and more recently Alcock’s comments about Supergirl being a queer icon.

(featured image: Warner Bros.)

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