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'Supergirl' Movie Criticized for Script, Poor Visual Effects

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2 weeks ago
The Onion joked the new movie Supergirl is about a hero who must single-handedly save the world "after the catastrophic collapse of interest in the genre." Unfortunately, The Hollywood Reporter says the film's reviews "range from negative to tepid praise (averaging a 58 percent Rotten Tomatoes score)." Many point fingers at the film's script, with Variety's line — "a comic-book movie with the worst script I can remember" — going viral... Not to pile on, but there's another recurring gripe from the reviews that stood out: Critics bashed the film as being murky, dark and gray, with poor VFX: "Muddy CG sludge" wrote one. Another said the film was full of "sludgy browns and grays" and "the visual murkiness of the settings makes it hard to follow the already unintelligible action sequences." A third wrote the "VFX is so rough it makes The Flash look like Avatar." Moviegoers increasingly despise murky, dark visuals (often used to hide weak effects), along with obvious CGI and incoherent action. They've seen it so many times they've become allergic. The Bulwark agrees that the action sequences are "terribly lit, incoherently staged, and just generally weightless and ugly... [I]t's reminiscent of the disaster that was The Flash: It's just very obvious during certain sequences that everyone was in a big green-screen warehouse and the camera was whipping around with the knowledge that everything would be painted in later, so who really gives a crap how anything looks on the day of." But they also call the movie "a tremendous slog of a film, a real step backwards for the James Gunn-overseen DC Universe of movies and TV shows" that's "neither fun nor exciting" and "feels empty." The film does have one bright spot: Lobo, who is played by Jason Momoa as something like Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice by way of Jason Momoa's Aquaman. He's blustery and cantankerous and saucy and just a little menacing; it's a perfect piece of casting and a really nice performance. Unfortunately, it's the only spark of life in what is otherwise a deeply dour, deeply boring piece of filmmaking... Supergirl is just a misfire on nearly every level, one that lacks the sincerity and fun of last year's reboot of this universe or the comic pathos present in Gunn's Peacemaker series on HBO Max. Reason calls it "dark, depressive, and dull" and "a downer of a movie in nearly every way." It's not fun. It's barely even righteous. It's just miserable. At one point, Supergirl flat-out murders a guy by pushing a giant sword through his neck. Somehow, I suspect even Zack Snyder would be appalled. Time argued fans of last decade's superhero movies "should be demanding more, not less." Though "Will there be rioting in the streets once audiences get some idea of how lousy Supergirl is? Probably not."

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EditorDavid