Supergirl just went Rotten, and the reviews land at the worst possible time
The DC movie opened to a 56% on Rotten Tomatoes when the embargo lifted. Critics love Milly Alcock and Jason Momoa, but a bland villain and murky visuals sank it, right as the box-office tracking was already shaky.
Supergirl needed good reviews to fix a shaky box-office forecast. It didn’t get them.
When the review embargo lifted, the DC movie landed at 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, official Rotten status, on 55 reviews. That’s below the 60% line, and it’s a long way from last year’s Superman, which sits at 83%. For a movie already fighting soft ticket projections, the timing stings.
What critics liked
It’s not a total pile-on. There’s real praise, and it’s aimed at the same two people over and over.
Almost every review, good or bad, agrees on one thing: Milly Alcock is great as Kara. Variety, which hated the movie, still called her “likable.” The Film Maven called her “fabulous.” Den of Geek said she “absolutely owns the role.” When critics who disagree on everything else all praise the lead, that’s a real win for the casting.
The other crowd-pleaser is Jason Momoa as the bounty hunter Lobo. Reaction after reaction calls him a blast, with one critic saying Momoa is “having the fraggin’ time of his life.” A lot of reviewers actually wanted more of him.
People also liked the practical effects, the makeup, and the creature design, the hands-on, built-it-for-real stuff.
What sank it
Here’s where the 56% comes from, and the complaints are remarkably consistent.
The biggest one is the villain. Krem of the Yellow Hills, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, gets called bland and forgettable in review after review. Several critics described him as a generic Mad Max knockoff, and when your hero is great but your villain is dull, the whole movie sags.
The next knock is the look. More than one critic said the action is buried in darkness and lens flares, to the point you can’t tell what’s happening. The Prague Reporter said the imaginative creature and costume work got “buried in hazy post-production effects.” That’s a real shame when people are praising the makeup you can barely see.
And the story itself drew shrugs. The plot is a planet-hopping mission to save Kara’s poisoned dog, and critics found it scattered, with one calling the various planets little more than side quests. Variety was the harshest, calling the whole thing flat and trying way too hard to seem “punk rock.”
The split that explains the score
What’s interesting is how divided the reviews are.
This isn’t a movie everyone mildly disliked. It’s a movie people split hard on. The Mary Sue called it “everything I wanted it to be.” Variety called it “super-horrendous.” Those are reviews of the same film.
When you average raves and pans together, you get exactly what Supergirl got: a middling score that lands just under Fresh. The two leads are good enough to inspire love, the stuff around them is weak enough to inspire frustration, and the result is a 56% that splits the difference.
Why the timing hurts
Now connect it to the box office, because this is where it actually matters.
Supergirl was already tracking soft, with forecasts sliding from $55-60 million down toward a $40-something-million opening. A movie in that spot is counting on strong reviews to create the word of mouth that pulls in everyone beyond the die-hard DC fans.
A Rotten 56% doesn’t do that. It’s not a catastrophe, plenty of people will still see a movie with a beloved lead, but it’s not the rescue the opening needed. “Critics love the star but the movie’s a mixed bag” is a tough sell when you’re also opening against Toy Story 5 in its second weekend.
So the picture’s consistent now from every direction. The tracking is soft, the reviews are mixed-to-rotten, and the competition is fierce. None of it is fatal on its own, especially with a low break-even and a sequel already locked in. But “Supergirl needed the reviews to bail out the box office” was the hope, and the reviews didn’t show up to do it. Friday’s actual number is the next thing to watch.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
Rotten Tomatoes (June 24, 2026), verified for the 56% Tomatometer score on 55 reviews at embargo lift and the comparison to Superman’s 83%
Variety (June 24, 2026), Owen Gleiberman review, verified for the “super-horrendous,” “punk rock,” and flat-script criticism and the praise for Alcock
The Film Maven and The Prague Reporter (June 24, 2026), verified for the praise of Alcock’s performance, the murky-visuals and buried-effects criticism, and the scattered-plot/side-quest structure complaints
The Hollywood Reporter, SlashFilm, and The Cinema Group (June 2026), verified for the rounded-up critic reactions, the consistent praise for Momoa’s Lobo, the villain being the recurring knock, and the wide split between raves and pans
Box Office Pro and Deadline (June 2026), verified for the soft opening tracking in the $40-million range and the Toy Story 5 second-weekend competition