CHRISTIAN TOTO: Woke Supergirl Movie Belly Flops in Theaters.
The semi-sequel to last year’s Superman stars Milly Alcock as the hard-partying Krypton cousin scrambling to find the antidote to her drugged dog Krypto.
Yes, that’s the film’s plot, and the dog in question was obviously CGI. That may partially explain the film’s tepid reception. This failure is far from an orphan, though.
Let’s start with the main character, a minor player in the DC Comics universe. Alcock, a relative unknown, introduced the character via a boozy cameo at the end of Superman.
Since then, Alcock has played the victim card in the media, saying that her work on HBO Max’s House of the Dragon taught her that “simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on. We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies.”
The online backlash was swift and predictable, and the starlet doubled down by singling out “Christian Dads” in the process. Later, she claimed her Supergirl character was likely bisexual.
Week by week, those Supergirl box office predictions drooped.
Alcock’s woke media interviews didn’t help. The tepid trailer hurt the film’s potential buzz, and the fact that last year’s Superman didn’t crush the box office as some expected also mattered.
At USA Today, Derek Hunter adds: Why the Supergirl movie provides us a cautionary tale.
Asked about negative online reaction, Alcock went further: “And (the backlash) is from a lot of people whose profiles have no photo, who are burner accounts. Or someone’s name and then ‘Dad of four, Christian,’ which is hilarious to me. But I mean, whose opinion do you really care about? If you’re pissing the right kind of people off, you’re doing OK.”
Why take a swipe at Christian dads – or anyone – when your career hinges on how many people you can get to buy a ticket to your movie?
The Hollywood press did the movie no favors, asking questions largely unrelated to the film itself. But Alcock took the bait nearly every time.
Asked about dealing with “House of the Dragon” fans in the context of her new role, she said, “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on. We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies. I can’t really stop them.”
It was a clinic in how to irritate half the country.
Milly Alcock is no Bruce Springsteen, ‘The Boss’
If you’re Bruce Springsteen – who punctuates his live shows with anti-Trump political commentary – you can get away with it. If you’re a 26-year-old Australian actress on the cusp of the biggest break of her career, you can’t.
To the baby boomers who grew up on “The Boss,” his politics are baked in. That he’d lecture them about it is almost expected at this point.
It also costs him nothing. The tickets are already sold by the time he opens his mouth, and the loss of future airplay doesn’t touch him ‒ he sold his entire catalog to Sony Music Entertainment for $500 million in 2021. Lost royalties from fewer streams or less radio play are of no consequence to a man whose income now comes from concert tickets, not the catalog.
“Supergirl,” on the other hand, doesn’t come with fond high school memories for millions of baby boomers, or the loyalty that comes from being the soundtrack to someone’s adolescence. In the comic book world, she was always a second-tier character ‒ Superman’s cousin, about as popular as Alfred or Jimmy Olsen.
Springsteen’s far left politics actually do cost him revenue, though. As “Miami” Steve Van Zandt told the London Times in 2024, “‘When Bruce got vocal behind the Democrats, we probably lost half the audience. There’s nowhere we can’t do business.’ But some places feel like enemy territory now? ‘A little bit, yeah. We’re ten times bigger in Europe. We might play six stadiums in America and sixty in Europe.’”
Besides the strange choice in which story to tell (the making of Nebraska? Really?) Springsteen’s politics also very likely helped to doom his biopic at the movies last year.