Is Supergirl a Good Movie Adaptation of the Original Comic?

Last week I posted my review of the new Supergirl movie. In that review, I said that I wasn’t judging it as an adaptation because I hadn’t read the source material. Now that I’ve read Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, I wanted to revisit the movie and compare it with the comic it’s directly based on.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

WoT is divided into eight chapters/issues. I’m not going to painstakingly summarize it since the ground it covers is largely the same, but I will be spending a paragraph talking about each of the eight chapters and how it stacks up to the movie.

Starting with chapter one, it’s the set-up that introduces Ruthye, Krem, and the revenge quest. The biggest changes concern Krem. He isn’t a Brigand. In fact, he works for the king who rules where Ruthye lives. His job is to travel around rooting out traitors. Ruthye’s father is also a rock farmer, not a blacksmith. This means that the sword Ruthye uses as a reward is actually Krem’s that he left behind. Supergirl is still out on a red sun planet celebrating her birthday, and she still intervenes to help Ruthye after someone tries to take the sword from her. However, the culprit this time looks like a regular guy, not an alien. The bounty hunter gets absolutely humiliated, so he tells Krem about the pair and where to find them. That’s why Krem steals Supergirl’s space ship, albeit accidentally. Kara is still reluctant to help Ruthye get revenge until Krem attacks them and steals the ship, which Kara had actually just rented for her birthday.

The set-up is mostly the same, really only differing with Krem and how he encounters the heroes. I definitely prefer him seeking them out in the comic as opposed to the “wrong place, wrong time” coincidental approach of the movie. That being said, the movie does give us a taste of how evil Krem is right from the beginning. Sure, he’s pretty evil in the book, but it takes some time to see it. As for changing the context of Krem and Ruthye’s family, I’m not really sure how to feel about. I think that the movie’s take is fine, but I don’t see why the change was made. It doesn’t diminish the movie or anything, but it is a change that feels meaningless. I know that the family’s story was changed because Krem was changed to be a Brigand from the start, and there needed to be a reason for him to seek this random family out. In that regard, I think the movie actually does a better job giving Ruthye such a strong reason to hate Krem and seek revenge: he killed her entire family vs. just killing her father.

Chapter two consists of the interplanetary space bus. The two girls are simply traveling in pursuit of Krem and leads on him. They grow closer, and encounter the occasional space dragon or ruffian who swore revenge on Superman/Supergirl for past grievances. The time span for this section is also on the scale of weeks and months.

I think that the movie handled the travel section better. I found the book to drag here quite a bit with overly slow pacing. The story beats help to build the character dynamic between the two girls, but at the same time I think it could have done more. It’s also worth noting that at this point, Supergirl is still hunting Krem down because she needs an antidote for Krypto after Krem shot him with a poison arrow. She reveals at the very end that this was just a pretext and Krypto is fine, but I didn’t know that yet. The movie makes it abundantly clear that Kara has three days to get the antidote from Krem. I was led to believe it was the same in the book, so I actually found myself a little annoyed with the meandering plot.

Chapters three and four are where the movie diverges from the book the most. Kara and Ruthye track Krem to the city of Maypole. They try to find more leads on him, but the people are unhelpful. Eventually, Kara discovers evidence of a genocide that occurred there that wiped out the oppressed subset of the population. They also learn that Krem had been captured in Maypole until the Brigands attacked, and he gave the Blues of Maypole the idea to let the Brigands kill the Purples. Krem then joined the Brigands. The next chapter is all about Kara and Ruthye following in the wake of the Brigands’ destruction, seeing the devastation and helping the survivors who needed it.

The Brigands in the book are comically evil. They’re genocidal space pirates who just destroy worlds for fun. They have zero redeeming qualities. The Brigands in the movie aren’t better, but they also aren’t much worse. The impression I got from the Brigands in the movie was that they’re a roving band of space pirates not dissimilar from pillaging bands of history (i.e. the huns, the vikings, etc.). The Brigands of the movie are still evil people doing evil things because that’s just how they live (like kidnapping women), but the Brigands of the book are arguably worse. We see a lot of the devastation that the Brigands leave in their wake in the movie, yet the book is so much more horrifying because of the breadth. We’re treated to so many examples of what the Brigands have done that the only conclusion I could come to was that this band of space pirates is irredeemable and needs to be purged from the cosmos. I’m not sure which portrayal I prefer more. On the one hand, the book Brigands are so despicable that by the end of the book, I was hoping to see all of them obliterated. On the other hand, the movie Brigands feel more realistic in terms of how a savage society such as theirs would operate. I think that each one is well-fitted for their respective mediums, though I suppose the movie Brigands could have been made a smidge more evil.

Chapter five sees Kara and Ruthye finally encountering Krem, but he has a magic ball that sends them to a planet with a green sun. Ruthye then has to protect the weakened Kara from hungry dinosaurs for ten hours until the sun sets and she can regain her powers.

This is another chapter that is very different from the movie, and I know exactly why. Just like with the space bus, the movie has a limited runtime. It can’t waste thirty minutes showing Supergirl and Ruthye surviving on an inhospitable, savage world for ten hours. The movie just has the Brigands parking their ship on a planet with a yellow and green sun. There’s no magic orb that sends them there. Truth be told, I have issues with both portrayals. The magic orb kind of comes out of nowhere and just seems like a contrived inconvenience. I do at least appreciate the explanation of the green sun as being made as a prison for Superman in the past. A naturally occurring green sun feels a little contrived for the movie. It’s also not clear in the book if they were intentionally sent to that planet, or if it was a coincidence. It’s implied that Krem sent them there on purpose, but the magic orb isn’t explained in a whole lot of detail. This is one of those situations where I think it can work in the book, but it would be criticized heavily in the movie. I understand why they changed it for the movie, and I kind of prefer the movie’s version.

Chapter six has Kara and Ruthye facing off against Krem again. He unleashes yet another magic orb, but Kara uses her friend Comet (Superhorse?) to outrun it(?), or at least get back to Krem from wherever it takes her. It’s kind of ambiguous. Meanwhile, we get flashbacks of Kara’s past and how she saw Krypton fall twice–the planet itself, then Argo City.

Again, I think the movie did this portion better. The book is able to play around with its chronology, especially because of how segmented comics can be. For a movie, doing the same thing would be incredibly messy. Kara still tells Ruthye about Krypton, but she does so in passing while they have some downtime waiting for a contact with the Brigands. The other major difference here is that Kara in the book saw Krypton fall while Kara in the movie was born on Argo City. The fall of Argo City was about the same. The movie also explains that Kara found Krypto on Argo City, which in my opinion makes the emotional connection with his injury so much more potent. Both stories align here in terms of narrative content, but I prefer the delivery in the movie because it honestly feels more natural and less like filler.

Chapter seven sees Kara facing off agains the Brigands in space while Ruthye and Comet watch a captured Krem. Kara does a good job agains them, but they eventually gain the upper hand and restrain her. They are preparing to shoot her with a Kryptonite bullet before Comet races in to intervene.

Again, I preferred the way the movie handled the climactic showdown with the Brigands. Watching Kara and Lobo tear them up was super satisfying and cathartic. The comic isn’t nearly as satisfying or cathartic. Truth be told, she’s on the losing side for what feels like most of the fight. First, their ship guns are an even match for her. Then on the ship, they’re able to restrain her with Kryptonite infused hooks. I’m not opposed to Supergirl having a challenge in the fight and needing to struggle, but I kept expecting more from her. The book has already made it unequivocally clear that the Brigands are a pure evil blight on the face of the universe. So why do they just get to leave and lick their wounds afterwards? Why are they not utterly annihilated? Given the same fate they dole out to others? The movie isn’t much better, being pretty ambiguous on the Brigands’ ultimate fate, and that is one major failing of the movie. That being said, at least the Brigands are completely defeated and lose everything in the movie.

Chapter eight is the finale. Ruthye and Krem duel while Comet sacrifices himself for Supergirl. Ruthye overpowers Krem and has him at the edge of her blade. She tries to kill him, but can never bring herself to do it. Supergirl arrives and prepares to kill Krem herself. She tells Ruthye that the reason they went on this journey was to find Krem, and to show Ruthye that killing someone for revenge just isn’t worth it. However, seeing the atrocities of the Brigands has broken Supergirl, and she prepares to kill Krem until Ruthye tells her that she learned the lesson and couldn’t bring herself to kill the pathetic man. Oh and Krem revealed that he killed Ruthye’s father because he was so zealous and supportive of the king that he actually ended up insulting and annoying Krem, so Krem just killed him because he could. The comic ends with Kara returning to visit Ruthye when Ruthye is an old woman, and Kara releases Krem from the Phantom Zone at her feet. He has been stuck in there for three hundred years, and has undergone a complete change of heart. He apologizes profusely to Ruthye for his past actions, and she hits him on the head and leaves.

Yeah the book’s ending is better with two sole exceptions. Once the explanation is given that Krypto is fine and Supergirl’s journey with Ruthye was to dissuade her from revenge, the wonky pacing makes a lot more sense. The duel between Krem and Ruthye is also really good. Ruthye uses her intellect and strategy to fight dirty and beat Krem, and he deserves it. In a fair fight, he would easily overpower her. But also, he’s not one to fight fair, so he doesn’t deserve one. The moral core of the book really shines here. The central theme is about justice vs. revenge, and the last chapter brings it all together. My sole critiques here lie with the inclusion of Comet, and the final page. I feel like I should care more about Comet and his sacrifice, but he comes in as a deus ex machina in chapter six out of absolutely nowhere. I have no real attachment to him, so when he sacrifices himself, I don’t feel much. I can definitely understand why the movie didn’t include him. I think that were he in the movie, it would be derided as contrived and campy. I also don’t like the ambiguity of the last page. Ruthye smacks the repentant Krem in the head and he falls over, and she and Supergirl leave. On its own, that’s a little confusing. It also doesn’t help that Ruthye’s narration talks about Supergirl killing Krem. You see, Ruthye is the narrator of this story, so there’s a lot of narration sprinkled in and it’s revealed to be from a book Ruthye wrote about the adventure, but it’s not all completely true. Also, we don’t see Krem stand up after getting hit in the head, and this whole page is in silhouette. Just to be clear, Krem isn’t dead. And yet the final page is so ambiguous that you can’t tell, which undermines the entire moral center of the comic IF he is dead. I just wish that the last page was clearer about what actually happens. Funnily enough, the movie goes with the narrative of Supergirl putting the sword in Krem’s chest and killing him. It almost makes me wonder if the people behind the movie got confused by the ending like I did at first, or if they just wanted to kill Krem. I also understand why they killed him in the movie from a logical perspective because there’s no established Phantom Zone in the movie, so to introduce it at the last minute for the movie might be confusing.

Now that I’ve walked through the book section by section, I want to briefly break down other ways the movie differs. First and foremost, Lobo is a whole new addition to the movie. I assume that he appeared because Jason Momoa was passionate about the character and playing him, so it made some sense to put him in the movie so he could at least be introduced to the new DC movie universe. Kara’s personality is also fairly different. In the movie, she’s more selfish and wants to track down Krem to save Krypto. Through the journey, she establishes a relationship with Ruthye and realizes what it means to finally have a home as she embraces becoming a hero. In the book, Supergirl is always a hero. She’s always doing the right thing. She goes with Ruthye because she wants to teach the young girl a lesson about revenge. I personally don’t think that one characterization is better than the other. The book has her as this upstanding moral force because that’s just the kind of character she is. I like what the movie did because this is her first appearance in that universe. In the book, she doesn’t need a character arc because she is an already established character with a rich comic history. That’s not the case for the movie. I understand why they changed her character for the movie, especially given her brief portrayal in Superman, and I think that it works. Ruthye is the POV character in the book; Supergirl is the POV character in the movie. A consequence of this is that Ruthye ends up a bit shallower in the movie, but the trade-off is that Supergirl has more depth. The plot order also changes from the book to the movie. The movie is a lot tighter with the pursuit of the Brigands. After the space bus, Kara and Ruthye are always on the Brigands’ trail until the final confrontation. The book meanders a lot more. I think that the book is allowed to do this because it has the luxury of time, and it’s able to use these brief vignettes to really emphasize how evil the Brigands are while showing how good and kind Supergirl is. This pacing would not work in the movie. It would come off as either rushed or too slow and boring. I understand why the movie made these changes, even if it meant the adaptation wasn’t as faithful. I also do prefer how the movie ultimately dispatches with the Brigands.

Turning to Krem, he’s one of the biggest changes. In the movie, he leads the Brigands. In the book, he joins them. He also looks like a normal, red-haired viking-esque dude. Yeah I think his book design is probably a bit better, but also I think I understand his redesign for the movie. They changed his origin for the movie to already be a member of the Brigands, so they changed his design to match. And I think the reason they changed his origin was again to fit with the confines of a movie and its runtime. Let’s use The Lord the Rings as an example. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the books include an episode with Tom Bombadil and these Barrow-wights. That episode is absent in the film because the movie doesn’t have the freedom and time that the book does. The book can add chapters chronicling these side adventurers, but because they don’t directly service the main plot, the movie can cut them with little influence on the trajectory of the main plot. Finally, I think that both stories appeal to slightly different audiences. Yes, the movie is a comic book movie, so it will appeal to fans of comic books, but it will also appeal to the general public who may never have picked up a comic book before. The comic book audience is always going to be a bit more niche. As a result, the movie might need to drop some of the little details (like the Phantom Zone and Comet) because they just aren’t going to make sense to someone who has no experience with the source material.

SPOILERS END

Supergirl is not the most faithful adaptation of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. The movie uses the general framework provided by the comic, but a lot of the details and chronology, especially in the second act, completely change. I can understand why the movie may have made all of these changes. Adapting the comic 1:1 honestly wouldn’t have made for the best movie. I still think that Supergirl is a good movie, at least far better than what the internet discourse seems to portray it as, though I wouldn’t say that it’s a very good adaptation.