Supergirl’s PG-13 rating mentions smoking, but not human trafficking?
Supergirl is rated PG-13 for “strong violence, action, language, and smoking.” It also has a child sex trafficking plot. A ScreenRant writer took her young daughter and wrote about regretting it. The movie’s box office hasn’t recovered either.
Supergirl is rated PG-13 for “sequences of strong violence, action, language, and smoking.”
It also has a child human trafficking plot.
Smoking made the list. That didn’t.
A ScreenRant writer took her daughter and regretted it
She wrote it up last month under the headline “I Took My Young Daughter To Supergirl And I Regret It.”
Her complaint wasn’t that the movie is bad. It’s that nothing told her what was in it.
Superman had the same PG-13 last year, she pointed out, “along with countless other hero movies, which had violence and action and difficult themes but did not depict anything like child sex trafficking.”
She also wasn’t dunking on it. She wanted a female superhero movie for her kid, and she said straight out that some of the backlash is just people who don’t like women-led movies. That’s not her.
She just wanted the label to say what was in the box.
What’s in it
The parent guides all landed in the same place, fast.
Common Sense Media flagged “significant themes of violence, including human trafficking and abuse,” and said the film “lacked sufficient warnings for parents.” It describes Kara as “impulsive, self-destructive, and prone to heavy drinking.”
Parent Previews called it “almost two hours of non-stop violence” with “themes of sexual trafficking and planetary destruction.”
Australia’s Raising Children guide put a hard floor on it: not suitable under 16. Grief, death, alcoholism, human trafficking.
The plot: Kara’s drinking her way across the galaxy on a birthday pub crawl when a 13-year-old girl walks into a bar hunting the man who killed her family.
Good setup. Not what the poster sold.
The rating did nothing
Every parenting site in the world figured this out inside a week. The MPA had a screener and gave parents four words.
One of them was cigarettes.
It didn’t help at the box office
Supergirl opened to $38 million on a $170 million budget. Third weekend it did $3.56 million, down 59%, and fell to No. 8. Theaters pulled it from more than 1,000 screens.
It’s at roughly $66 million domestic, $115 million worldwide, against a break-even north of $300 million. Projected loss: $100 to $120 million. Warner Bros. is reportedly rushing it to digital as soon as July 28.
Plenty of that is the reviews, the competition, and Kara not being Superman. Those are the real reasons.
But sell a family movie and hand families this, and they don’t come back for weekend two. They also tell the other parents.
Nobody’s asking for it to be softer
The movie’s allowed to be what it is. It’s adapted from Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and it’s faithful, and adults who wanted a hard story about grief and revenge got one.
That’s a defense of the movie. It’s not a defense of the rating.
The MPA had four words to warn a mother and spent one on smoking.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
ScreenRant (June 2026), the originating piece “I Took My Young Daughter To Supergirl And I Regret It,” verified for its author’s argument that Supergirl carries the same PG-13 as Superman and other hero movies that “did not depict anything like child sex trafficking,” her acknowledgment that the film adapts Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and her note that part of the backlash “has almost certainly been tied to the fact that there is frequently pushback to women-led movies”
Common Sense Media, Parent Previews, and Raising Children (June-July 2026), verified the content assessments — the MPA’s PG-13 rating for “sequences of strong violence, action, language, and smoking,” Common Sense Media’s report that parents flagged human trafficking and abuse and that the film lacked sufficient warnings, its description of Kara as impulsive, self-destructive and prone to heavy drinking, Parent Previews’ assessment of non-stop violence and themes of sexual trafficking, and Raising Children’s guidance that the film is unsuitable under 16 due to grief, death, alcoholism and human trafficking
Forbes, Variety, and Box Office Mojo (June-July 2026), verified the $38 million opening against a $170 million budget, the third-weekend $3.56 million down 59% to No. 8, the pull from more than 1,000 theaters, totals near $66 million domestic and $115 million worldwide against a break-even north of $300 million, projected losses of $100-120 million, the reported accelerated digital release as soon as July 28, and the verified underperformance factors of mixed reviews, lower character recognition than Superman, and July competition