THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Supergirl — More Superhero Slop?

Related: The new Supergirl poster is trying too hard.

I’d like to preface that the poster itself isn’t the worst (nor is it the best). Featuring a trench-coated Supergirl against a spray-painted logo background, it’s a fairly inoffensive design. With her tousled hair, sunglasses and wired headphones, it’s clear DC are going for a laidback ‘cool girl’ vibe that I feel comes across a little forced, but I can suspend my disbelief.

Well, I could. That was until I saw the new tagline: “Truth. Justice. Whatever.” A quote befitting of my teenage Tumblr blog, the attempt at an edgy tagline simply comes across as a desperate attempt to capture a young audience. It’s giving ‘how do you do, fellow kids?’ in the worst way.

It also seems like a way to goad the right into giving the film a little free extra PR, given that it reads like a callback to the 2006 Superman’s infamous slogan, “Truth, justice and . . . all that stuff,” and Gunn’s own earlier efforts to tweak Superman’s motto to be more woke: James Gunn Doesn’t Just Omit “The American Way” In ‘Superman’ – He Changes It To “The Human Way.”

As the Drinker notes, after going through all of trailer’s myriad and exhausted cliches, “the party’s over, James. It’s been over for like five years now. You’re just too wrapped up in your own PR to realize it.”