Three Lessons from the Screenplay from ‘Supergirl’

This article will include major spoilers for Supergirl.

Supergirl is the latest film in the new James Gunn-led DC universe and tells the story of Kara Zor-El, played wonderfully by Milly Alcock, best known prior to this for her role on the first season of Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon. Based significantly on the comic book /Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and with art by Bilquis Evely, Supergirl, with a script by Ana Nogueira, tells the story of a Supergirl having a hard time adjusting to the loss of her parents and home, opting to drink herself numb rather than feel. She spends her time on planets with red suns where her super powers are nullified, allowing her to actually get drunk—something not possible on Earth under its yellow sun.

On a far flung planet, we meet her celebrating her 23rd birthday. There, she encounters a young girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley). Ruthye's family has been murdered by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), leader of the Brigands. Ruthye seeks aid in her quest for revenge against these powerful foes who killed her loved ones. One thing leads to another and Kara, despite her protests, finds Ruthye attached to her hip, begging for help in her thirst for revenge, in a plot reminiscent of True Grit (more Hathaway than Coen Brothers).

In the film, Kara Zor-El refuses to get involved, but when Krem steals her ship and poisons her beloved dog, Krypto, she has only three days to retrieve an antidote from Krem or Krypton will die. Together, they travel the galaxy two steps behind Krem, searching for the antidote and with Kara working to talk Ruthye out of her need for revenge.

Along the way, through flashback, we learn of the differences between Kara's upbringing and that of her cousin, Kal-El (David Corenswet), and we meet Lobo (Jason Momoa), an intergalactic bounty hunter and total bastich. By the end, Kara and Ruthye discover that the Brigands aren’t just marauders, but sentient traffickers, stealing young girls from across the stars to create a forced breeding program for Krem’s entire cadre.

The film is an exercise in contrasts and cognitive dissonance. It’s as cynical as it is hopeful; it hews to the source material as much as it strays from it; it sticks to the themes it establishes as much as it betrays them; it feels as though it's the product of one artist and writer’s vision and plagued by studio interference all at once. It contains multitudes.

The screenplay offers a number of things to teach screenwriters who take the time to do some close reading and pay attention.

The film gives us a superb visual introduction to Kara Zor-El and her living situation, tracking through the mess of her home, showing us the empty bottles of booze, trash littering her floor, and the general state of disrepair. Krypto, her dog—the one who stole the show in James Gunn's Superman (2025)—even takes the time to urinate (mostly) on a newspaper. The choice of newspaper, the Daily Planet, replete with a headline and photo of Kara's famous cousin, even does some storytelling.

All of this, plus Kara’s crumpled Supergirl suit lying on the floor tells us about her feelings about her cousin, her state of mind, and her feelings about her life as a superhero on Earth, all without her having to say a word. Being able to give us a sense of a character visually by describing their environment is a classic technique and something screenwriters and your other storytelling collaborators should be aiming for as you look to tell visual stories.

The technique might be most famously and elegantly done in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. In that film, the camera pans around to show us how hot the summer is, the dramatic photograph, framed above a broken camera, that must have been the one that broke the leg of our hero, whose cast we pass over that reads, "Here lie the bones of L.B. Jeffries.” The camera moves further through the apartment to set the scene and give us a sense of Jeff, the character played by Jimmy Stewart. We know it's a hot summer, we know he's a professional photographer and that's how he broke his leg. We learn he also takes photographs in the world of fashion photography and that's why it's not so surprising when Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly) turns out to be his girlfriend.

In the case of both Supergirl and Rear Window, we get an excellent sense of who the main character is and what makes them tick in their current circumstance, all while they’re still sleeping. It's excellent visual storytelling that allows the audience to start by getting engaged and adding equations about the character on their own before the film’s even really started.

The themes of Supergirl revolve around Kara Zor-El's attempt to prevent Ruthye from taking a life in revenge. The film asks us to weigh the difference between justice and revenge and the damage revenge does to our hearts and how it weighs on our souls. Kara lives with an anger inside of her, a heaviness that she seeks to numb and a way to lighten it for herself. She wants Ruthye to live a life free of that weight. Other characters eschew that system of revenge and justice, other characters seem ignorant to the theme entirely. Jason Momoa's Lobo, although highly entertaining, stealing every scene he’s in, is completely agnostic to it, adhering instead to his own twisted love of money.

For Kara and Ruthye, this vengeance is present in most scenes that drive them, but it gets twisted in ways that could be confusing to the theme or actually betray it. In one scene, Krem seeks his own lethal justice against a family that failed to subdue Kara Zor-El for him as they agreed to. He gets ready to kill them, not knowing that Ruthye has snuck up behind him, sword raised, ready to take his head. Instead of swooping in with her super powers to take out Krem, Kara, focused on preventing Ruthye from killing anyone out of anger or lust for vengeance, whisks Ruthye out of the fray at super speed. This allows Krem to kill the entire family with impunity.

Ruthye and Kara both blame themselves for this senseless death. It also leaves Ruthye carrying a weight of guilt and resonsibility that tells her that if she would have ended up committing her murderous revenge, she would have been rewarded by saving those lives and made Kara wrong to stop her. It was an odd misstep that undercut the lesson Kara was trying so hard to teach Ruthye. Perhaps the screenwriter was trying to chalk this up to a failure on Kara's part, which is possible, but it only ends up being confusing when taken with the ultimate ending of the film.

By the end of the film, Kara has subdued Krem and Ruthye brings out her sword to take his head for her revenge. Kara allows her the choice and one more monologue about how killing him for revenge won't help anyone or bring her peace. Ruthye agrees, and walks away. And when Ruthye walks away, Supergirl takes Ruthye's family sword and runs Krem through herself. Out of revenge. And stabs him twice, killing him, saying that once was for her dog that he poisoned, and the other time was for what he did to Ruthye.

In a film where the theme revolves around how much these damaging actions weigh a person down, having Supergirl teach that lesson to another character and then fail to take that medicine herself felt like a severe betrayal of theme. It smacked of the same misunderstanding of character Zack Snyder having Superman snap General Zod's neck in Man of Steel (2013), though at a much lower level. Interestingly enough, both of those story points could have been solved by relying a little more closely on the source material—we'll talk more about that in a moment.

As far as writing to theme, do your best to stay consistent and create questions and dilemmas for your characters that test them in ways that challenge their beliefs about the theme. Have the antagonists act in ways that represent other facets of the theme. Lobo could have very easily added to the theme in other ways, with half a page of dialogue or another quick story beat about revenge in his story, making his inclusion earn its running time for something more than Momoa's obvious charisma. Also make sure that the theme you set up remains consistent through the body of the work—I’m not quite sure what the theme of Supergirl is by the end of the film. Though I was greatly entertained, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to feel like revenge is fine as long as I'm over 23 and not a kid or not? Or if they hurt my dog? It's all a bit muddled.

Which brings me to the last point:

The film made two major departures from the source material (among many) that we’re going to discuss, and one could be for the better, but might cause more problems for the narrative than it solves.

The first major departure involves Krypto. Even if you've only seen the trailers, you know that Krem poisons Krypto and gives him only three days to live. Kara has a sudden time limit before she has to be back in time to save her dog. It works well enough in the film to create a sense of urgency, but its use in the comic book fits the theme of the story better.

In order to prevent Ruthye from staining her soul with the specter of revenge, Kara lies about the nature of Krypto's ailment. Instead of being reluctant to go on the quest to catch Krem, as in the film, she invents the timeline and poisoning in order to force herself on Ruthye's quest in the hopes that she can teach Ruthye a lesson about vengeance along the way. Although this is much more selfless, it doesn't necessarily fit with the more cynical, hard-drinking version of character that was introduced in last year’s Superman. In order to give this version of the character an arc, and to create a sense of urgency for the plot, this change is for the better. And it would have created a better moment of decision and change for Kara, had she not chosen revenge at the end of the narrative as well.

The other major departure from the source material we’ll talk about is also the most baffling. It comes at the end of the film, when Ruthye swoops in to take her revenge against Krem. Ruthye is finally convinced to turn the other cheek and give up her revenge and Supergirl steps in. As stated before, in the film, Kara murders Krem anyway. The result is the same, but Kara takes on the weight of revenge instead of Ruthye.

In the comic, however, hewing close and consistent to the theme of the film and the source material, Supergirl opts for justice rather than revenge. Instead of murdering him, she banishes him to the Phantom Zone. Oddly, this is the same punishment often used for General Zod—instead of snapping his neck with impunity. It’s a common way for Kryptonians to banish their foes in the comics, used for decades in their four color adventures and even in previous film versions.

I'm on the record stating that we should allow filmmakers the leeway to make their own interpretations of stories, not to hold them to slavishly adapt the original media into their own artistic interpretation. On the other hand, this one change still has me scratching my head, only because this change didn’t improve anything and would have added very little screen time, if any, and would have sold the theme better. It also would have made what the film was trying to say and mean clear, and created a more solid arc for the protagonist. My biggest advice here is to make changes to source material only if they benefit the narrative and the media, rather than create more issues and muddy the narrative and pollute the waters of theme.

Having said that, despite the clarity issues and quibbles of theme, Supergirl is still immensely entertaining. It's playing in wide theatrical release worldwide.

You can find out more about Bryan Young at his website.