Have you noticed all the debate about the trailer? By some measures, CBS and Warner Bros.-Televisions' Supergirl is the no. 1 most digitally discussed new TV show of the Fall season. The 6-minute trailer was viewed 10 million times on YouTube in its first week. Even CBS's scheduling executive Kelly Kahl admitted this is new territory for them, telling KCRW, "[ Supergirl] may not work, but it already feels like it was worth the effort." Now the full pilot has leaked in non-watermarked, full-HD quality. Considering that Constantine and The Flash's pilots also leaked last year, the theory is that this new leak might be part of WB-TV's new marketing strategy to generate online buzz for some of its DC shows.
I have now watched the pilot after resisting the urge with prior high profile leaks, e.g., Flash, Doctor Who and Game of Thrones. I'm here to let you know that there is very little in the Supergirl pilot which is not already spoiled in the 6-minute trailer.
Similar to The Flash last year, the trailer pretty much gives away the basic plot, introduces all of the characters, highlights the big set pieces and clearly communicates tone. That leaves the actual pilot to merely fill in a bit more information about the villain-of-the-week (a formidable foe whose identity I will not spoil) and use the final scene as a surprise to set up future storylines for the rest of the season (both Arrow and Flash did the exact same thing). It does [mild spoiler] also introduce its equivalent of Smallville's meteor shower/ The Flash's particle accelerator explosion, i.e., that thing which explains where all of the show's villains of the week come from. Ultimately, though, the main thing I took from it is that this debate which has been happening in response to the trailer is not going to really change once the pilot officially debuts on CBS in November.
On one level, the ongoing debate is completely expected. The show altered Supergirl's origin story from the comics. In the traditional telling, "Kara Zor-El was a teenager when her cousin, Kal, was sent to Earth by his Kryptonian parents. Kara managed to escape as well, but for one reason or another, arrived on Earth years behind, finding Kal a full-grown man (and superhero)." That's all there in Supergirl, but they aged her down so that she arrives on Earth at the age of 12, greeted upon her arrival by a full-grown Superman (never shown up close) who instantly delivers her to a foster family where she grew up with a foster sister and hid her powers from the world. This is all communicated to us through voice-over and montage before the show jumps to Kara as a 24-year-old, coming off as your standard TV version of an awkward girl, working as an assistant for a CEO of a media conglomerate played by Calista Flockhart, who is clearly channeling Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada. The show uses Kara's choice to finally embrace her powers as a metaphor for finally finding a purpose in life. It's an old-fashioned coming of age story.
That's not the version of Kara you'd know from the comics unless maybe you go back to when she first popped up back in 1959 and spent the first three years of her comic book life living in an orphanage under the Earth name Linda Lee, acting the dutiful daughter to Superman's Father-Knows-Best, not letting anyone know that the Man of Steel had a cousin. However, even then she arrived on Earth as a teenager, and over the years she became more of an outsider, struggling to understand and/or relate to Superman's deep love to inhumanity. He'd gone native, but she was still an immigrant, given to fits of anger and searching for a place to belong.
She was not a Felicity Smoak from Arrow type, but that's what the TV show has made her, although probably even more generic than that since she doesn't really crack any jokes the way Felicity does. She also has some similarities with Grant Gustin's Barry Allen on The Flash, i.e., equally awkward around her boss and hopeless in love, but she's nowhere near as fully formed as he was the first time we met him on Arrow or Flash. He already had the heart of a hero and the driving force to discover who killed his mother and framed his father. Kara is far more of a likable, but generic shy girl whose dreams have been deferred and whose tragic backstory has left her more aimless than emotionally scarred. Her powers are pitched more for "Let's see if this works out" (e.g., Will bullets bounce off of you like they do with Superman?) than pure fun, although her first flight and subsequent rescue of a crashing plane is quite joyous. Her heroic resolve is repeatedly tested, and instead of a mentor figure like Harrison Wells from Flash in her ear saying, "Run, Kara, run. You can do this. I believe in you!" she has her sister. She looks pretty much like a character in a pilot which is giving us the broad strokes of everything before aiming for more shading in future episodes.
Benoist's somewhat big performance is the type which will likely register well with young viewers, particularly those who will pick up on the Elsa/Anna Frozen influences, Kara as the repressed, powerful sister and Chyler Leigh's Alex as her loving normal sister (although Alex is otherwise quite a bit different from Anna). The two practically break out into "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" during one sequence.
They've also made Jimmy Olsen, DC's lovable nerd photographer for The Daily Planet, into a dashing leading man played by Mehcad Brooks, who nicely fills out a muscle shirt, has a remarkably smooth way with words and exudes confidence without tipping over into arrogance. Either in appearance (beyond the obvious race change) or behavior, he in no way resembles the Jimmy I know from the various Superman films or TV shows. Jeremy Jordan, who everyone loved on actual Broadway and then hated on fake Broadway (or fake off-Broadway) in Smash, is also around as a version of the character who becomes the villainous Toyman in the comics, the producers repeating the trick they pulled with Danielle Panabaker's Caitlin Snow on Flash by giving the hero a good friend who might someday become a villain. The entirety of his screen time is nearly already contained in the trailer.
And that's all okay. They can do whatever they want, and this show is aimed at a very large audience, particularly young women. They wanted to simplify Kara and shove her into a superhero coming of age story, and they also wanted to add diversity. There's just going to be some inevitable pushback or deep reservation among comic book fans.
On another level, the debate is surprising because the Supergirl trailer caught a lot of people off-guard with how much it reminded them of the already infamous Black Widow SNL Sketch.
Such comparisons annoy The Mary Sue, a feminist-leaning pop culture outlet who are huge supporters of the Supergirl trailer. As they explained:
It's true, much of the body of what the [ Supergirl trailer and SNL Black Widow video] contain is similar; the emphasis on the lead character's femininity, the use of romance to scale their possible relationship arc with surrounding characters, and a general ambiance of pink to drive home the effeminate persuasion. It's a fair comparison at first glance, or at least it seems to be.
And here's the part where I break it up so you're not reading one super long block quote:
Kara Zor-El gets flustered when she meets people she reveres, doesn't quite know how to deal with a mean boss and isn't sure if she's where she wants to be in her professional life. She also needs fashion tips from her big sister, works for a fashion magazine [I can report that's not actually true; she works for a newspaper] and has to deal with her best friend having a crush on her. None of that is in anyway bad, because that's the stuff regular 24-year-olds deal with. Natasha Romanoff and Kara are not the same person, because there are different types of women.
ScreenRant thinks this could be the female-equivalent of The Flash, i.e., the right show with the right tone at the right time:
In an industry (and world) that has become dominated by doom and gloom, a Supergirl TV series is arriving at the perfect time, with a timely message: we don't have to grit our teeth and push loved ones away in the face of difficulty [...] She's on a journey of self-discovery - that just happens to include super-strength and laser vision. It's a relatable story for viewers from all backgrounds, regardless of gender, age, or ethnicity - we don't choose the cards we've been dealt, but we can choose how to face them.
In general, we don't want the Supergirl TV show to be a repeat of the Supergirl movie (or Catwoman or Elektra). We don't want it to fail and turn into an example of why a certain kind of thing won't get made in the future. It's finally a female-fronted superhero show, the type the parents of the world can happily show their daughters (or the daughters can find on their own), delighting in a very basic message of a girl who felt weak but became strong, initially because of her inherent ability but eventually because she believes in herself and leans on family when she loses her way. It's the show co-creator/Executive Producer Greg Berlanti's nieces had been nagging him to make, sick of their uncle having so much fun with all the boys on Arrow and The Flash but giving them no central female superhero to look up to (I know, I know... Arrow does have Black Canary). When he finally pitched it to C BS's Entertainment President Nina Tassler she was reportedly moved to tears.
However, the pilot they made is not a particularly nuanced feat of storytelling (although I'm guessing that beyond the relationship between Kara and Alex their goal was for everything to be big and broad), and all those things which make Superman a bitch to adapt - the goofy "glasses hide his face" secret identity, he has godlike powers, he has few really good villains - all apply to Supergirl as well. That will be a challenge, which they kind of shy away from in their first hour. If you like what the comics have done with Supergirl in recent years then you are several decades ahead of this show, which is far more of a throwback, recalling Silver Age comics, Superboy and Smallville on TV and especially the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie. And if you are kind of on the fence after having watched the 6 minute trailer it probably won't be the pilot but instead the show's second episode which you'll need to see to start making up your mind.
