Supergirl

Warner Bros.

It’s not a great look when just the second-ever film in your burgeoning superhero universe arrives with a poor Rotten Tomatoes score. That’s just happened to Supergirl, which currently has a 57% from almost 150 critics.

Those Supergirl reviews put it well below the 83% of Superman, and it is entering a market where there are exactly three rotten-scored MCU movies out of three dozen or so, Captain America: Brave New World, Eternals and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, if we’re comparing it to DC’s direct rival. To be fair, the DCEU, the preceding web of films, had nearly half of its movies land rotten scores. Though the idea was that the DCU would be better than the past universe, which unceremoniously fizzled out.

Box office returns are not projected to be much better, and Supergirl will be lucky if it makes half of what Superman did, perhaps around $300 million, perilously low in the genre. Now, some are turning toward James Gunn and, even after just two movies, questioning his ability to lead the DCU as its overall architect, whether that’s fair or not.

Is it? Well, I certainly think we can say that James Gunn knows how to make quality superhero movies/shows himself. His resume:

• Guardians of the Galaxy (directed and co-written) – 91% critic score
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (directed and co-written) – 85% critic score
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (directed and co-written) – 82% critic score
• Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (directed and co-written) – 95% critic score
• The Suicide Squad (directed and written) – 90% critic score
• Peacemaker (completely written and majority directed) – 93% critic score
• Creature Commandos (created and completely written) – 95% critics score
• Superman (directed and written) – 83% critic score

Audience scores for most of these are high, if not higher. Gunn has the golden touch, but the keyword there is “touch.” Supergirl is his first “supervised” movie that he neither directed (that was Craig Gillespie) or wrote (that was Ana Nogueira). And it’s the lowest-scored of the above by a significant margin.

The question not is not whether Gunn’s ability as a filmmaker is in doubt, but whether he’ll be making the right calls on projects he doesn’t directly have a hand in writing or directing. Quotes are resurfacing in which Gunn says he will only move forward with a project if the script is “rock solid.” Many would say that is far from the case with Supergirl, and now there’s an additional concern that Gunn has Supergirl writer Ana Nogueira writing both Teen Titans and the all-important Wonder Woman to come.

Then there are further flashbacks to 2023, when Gunn praised the DCEU’s The Flash to high heaven, even calling it “one of the greatest movies ever made.” The Flash arrived with a 63% critic score, spawned a number of memes, and lost more money at the box office than almost any other superhero movie ever. Then, Gunn hired that movie’s director, Andy Muschietti, to direct the DCU’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold. So, uh, you might be able to see the concern.

It’s too early. That’s the conclusion I draw despite all this. We can’t be two films into the DCU and write off the entire project because of one miss. There are more tests to come, many of them imminent, like the HBO Max Lanterns series and the upcoming horror project Clayface this fall. No one expects the R-rated, niche horror Clayface to be some sort of box office blockbuster, but the next film after that is Gunn’s own Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow, where that won’t test his “outsourcing abilities,” which we may not see again in earnest until 2028, whatever that year brings.

The Supergirl reviews are not good. The box office is shaping up to be not good. I do understand the concern about Gunn’s decisions and past opinions, which seem to contrast with the quality of his own work, but we need to see more before rendering an actual verdict. Though it’s unclear how much time Warner Bros. may give him, especially if the Paramount takeover comes to pass, and they want better results. But we’re going to see how this all plays out over the next few years, and before that, this weekend.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.