Woke ‘Supergirl’ Bombs Badly : The Other McCain

Posted on | June 29, 2026 | No Comments

Helen Slater (left, in 1984) and Milly Alcock (right) as ‘Supergirl’

Let’s start by stating the obvious: Sixty-six-year-old grandpas are not the target audience for super-hero action movies and, even when I was part of the target demographic, age-wise, I really never was much of a fan of movies about comic-book characters. Like, I vaguely remember going to see the 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman movie, and I’ve seen at least one Batman movie, the 2002 Spider-man and 2008 Iron Man, but that’s about it. Just not the kind of guy who lines up for whatever DC/Marvel project comes out the Hollywood assembly line.

So now we have the latest franchise-killing “woke” failure:

Supergirl didn’t just flop at the box office this weekend; it is a flop of epic proportions, an abysmal failure that will be remembered only as a failure.
With a disastrous $38 million domestic opening and an even more humiliating overseas take of $30 million, Supergirl is a bigger domestic flop than The Marvels ($46 million), The Flash ($55 million), Black Adam ($67 million), and Morbius ($39 million). . . .
The production and promotion budget for Supergirl is right around $250 million. That makes the break-even number at $450 to $500 million. Supergirl will be lucky to hit $200 million worldwide. Warner Bros. is looking at massive losses.

Much like when the anti-male 2016 Ghostbusters remake flopped, the defenders of Vaguely Queer Supergirl are blaming right-wing “backlash” and “toxic masculinity” for this box-office catastrophe.

Had to screencap that Variety headline just so no one would suspect me of inventing it. Much of the problem with Supergirl is the decision to cast Milly Alcock in the lead role. She is perhaps best known for playing Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in a 2022 prequel to the popular Game of Thrones series. Whatever her merits as an actress, however, she doesn’t have the bombshell vibe that, for example, Gal Gadot brought to the successful 2017 Wonder Woman. Keep in mind that the canon backstory of Wonder Woman is a heckuva lot more “queer coded” than anything known about Supergirl, who made her first appearance in a 1959 edition of Action Comics as Superman’s cousin from the planet Krypton.

Leaving it to film critics to assess Milly Alcock’s onscreen performance, perhaps the bigger problem is that, off-screen, the actress simply couldn’t stop running her mouth in publicity interviews:

[A]pparently bizarre comments and financial failures are what the [producer] James Gunn era at DC Studios is all about. Because the latest pre-release tracking data on this weekend’s “Supergirl” release has gone from disastrously bad to monumental failure. And the film’s star, Milly Alcock, is sure to shoulder some of the blame.
Alcock, as a reminder, implied in a March interview that she’d been receiving criticism for being a woman starring as a…female superhero. Which makes little sense.
“It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on,” she told Vanity Fair. “We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies. I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”
When reaction to those remarks was generally negative, Alcock got defensive and doubled down.
“I didn’t even say ‘men’ — I said ‘people!’” she said in a profile for Variety. “And they got so angry. I was like, ‘You’re proving my point. You’re proving my point!’”
Apparently unaware that those remarks then proved she had, in fact, been referring to unknown male fans who supposedly criticized her for playing “Supergirl.” But that wasn’t the only odd statement she made during that portion of the press tour.
Alcock said much of the criticism came from those who said they were a “dad” or “Christian.” Which apparently disqualifies them from having an opinion about a movie or casting decision. Or means that any comments are supposedly hypocritical.
“And it’s from a lot of people whose profiles have no photo, who are burner accounts,” Alcock said. “Or someone’s name and then ‘Dad of four, Christian,’ which is hilarious to me.”
As if that wasn’t enough, just a few days ago, Alcock addressed the sexuality of the “Supergirl” character in a response to a question from Queerly Radio. When the host asked whether that was something Alcock had “explored” her character’s supposed “queerness” in preparing for the role, she answered, “It wasn’t, but in honor of ‘Pride month,’ as I’m getting all these questions…I don’t know. I think that what makes this film beautiful is that it’s not centered around a man, it’s not centered around love at all. I don’t really know. I don’t know. I don’t know. She probably goes both ways.”

“Look! Up in the sky! It’s SuperQueerGirl!”

Apparently, Executive producer (and DC Studios’ executive vice president of production) Chantal Nong Vo is part of the DEI Management Layer at DC, and a true believer. pic.twitter.com/ZLODxshafi

— Wíñchéstër Cölt (@scorpio8675309) June 28, 2026

“Our longterm strategy is to lose money while we alienate fans.” https://t.co/hwRCevoD7s

— Amy Curtis (@RantyAmyCurtis) June 28, 2026

The people making movies — and making decisions about who gets hired to make movies — in Hollywood don’t ask my advice and, as I say, I’m not the target audience here, but permit me to offer just a few observations on what went wrong with Supergirl:

1. People don’t want politics in a summer blockbuster — So far as I am aware, no one has detected any overt political message in Supergirl, so why was Milly Alcock out there turning the pre-release publicity tour into a Gender Studies lecture?
2. Respect the audience — If you’re making a comic-book super-hero movie, maybe you should think about the fandom of comic-book super heroes. Just throwing that out there. Instead of viewing the original fandom as a hostile force to be insulted, perhaps the alleged geniuses running Hollywood studios should try to appeal to this pre-sold potential audience.
3. Respect the source material — Just glancing at the plot summary on Wikipedia, Supergirl begins with something close to the original backstory. But did the filmmakers try to match the spirit of the old D.C. comics character?

Some research into the Action Comics catalog might yield many possible suggestions for a movie plot, but one idea that occurs to me is the contrast implicit in the difference between the character titles: Superman and Supergirl. Why not scout around for a teenage actress to play the lead and write a script that has a coming-of-age theme, the ingenue super-hero, as it were? She’s got her Kryptonian powers on a learner’s permit and has a girlish awkwardness about her? Or maybe make her sassy, getting lessons in humility as she learns from her mistakes?

There are all kinds of fun possibilities in the basic concept, and shouldn’t movies be about fun? Isn’t that what the kids want while they’re munching popcorn and slurping their overpriced sodas?

But what do I know? I’m just a 66-year-old grandpa.

There was no “campaign.” Your star made stupid and moronic comments she did not have to make, and people simply reacted to her stupidity. https://t.co/h69iwxLAdi

— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) June 28, 2026

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