Supergirl (1984) Is Peak '80s Backlash Cinema, and Dumb as Hell
I do wish Faye Dunaway and Brenda Vaccaro worked together more!
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With the new Supergirl dropping soon (and my review for it dropping next week) I figured it was worthwhile to watch the first time the female heroine rocking the big red "S" on her chest was on-screen. The 1984 Supergirl was held as an example for years on why female-fronted superhero movies didn't work, and thus shouldn't be made. It was also meant to be representative of the worst '80s cheese impulses, a blatant cash grab made at the expense of art and talent. Is any of this true?
Supergirl 1984 is dumb as hell, and certainly is indicative of the nadir of '80s cinema. It's loud, it's got very little plot, and the backstage shenanigans leave audiences with a movie that despite a hefty two-hour runtime makes little sense. But I'd argue that much of the flaws with regards to its heroine are just part of the decade. Yes, we're knee-deep in the world of "Backlash cinema."
The 1991 book Backlash by Susan Faludi posited that many 1980s and 1990s movies were fueled by a desire to counter the gains of Second Wave Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. This included crafting false narratives from women weren't having enough babies, there was a shortage of men, and a lot of other silly media blasts that ended up being untrue. Because film is a dialectic – where the films influence the culture and the culture influences films – movies responded in kind and the mid-1980s was the beginning of that.
But what does that have to do with Supergirl 1984? Well, let's get into it.
The film starts in Argo City, a Logan's Run-esque city that (after doing some Googling) survived the destruction of Krypton from the first Superman (1978) by being placed in some inner space location called Inner Space. We meet the wide-eyed, bad wig wearing Kara Zor-El (Helen Slater) at the feet of Zaltar (Peter O'Toole), whose name I will continually have to correct from my original spelling of Zoltar. Zaltar is a wizard who, using a McGuffin ball called the Omegahedron can craft anything he wants and thus is the sole architect of Argo City. (I'm also convinced O'Toole provided his own wardrobe. He heard "futuristic" and went with just a California blue linen shirt and pants.)
The Omegahedron is also responsible the air on Argo City – kind of irresponsible for Zaltar to know that and still run off to play with it around town – and when Zaltar loses it the entirety of Argo City is doomed to die. This includes Kara's mom and dad, the former played by Mia Farrow who I hope got a big check for her thankless scene. Thus, Kara goes off on a mission to Earth, not to find her cousin Superman, but to find the McGuffin and save her home.
Supergirl is one of countless in-universe movies that, because of an actor not wanting to come back, just dances around the person you expect to see. In this case, Kara travels to....somewhere between Illinois and New York, and discovers everyone knows and loves her cousin. Initially, the script heavily favored a Superman/Supergirl team-up with Christopher Reeve reprising his role. But, because no one decided to sign him into oblivion with spin-off roles in his contract, Reeve declined. And, thus, outside of one prominent poster placement, Superman is a non-entity here.
What results is a movie that's interminably long and aimless. There's a three-minute scene of Helen Slater just flying and twirling in the air because apparently someone thought "girl Superman is probably an air figure skater." Unlike most superhero origin stories Kara becomes Supergirl with absolutely no effort, literally spit out of the bottom of a lake – makes sense cause she came from above the Earth? – fully dressed in Superman regalia. Even funnier is how everyone looks at her costume, complete with giant S across her breasts, and doesn't connect her with the other guy.
A major casting call went out for the role in 1983 with Demi Moore and Brooke Shields auditioning but director Jeannot Szwarc – the man behind another great Christopher Reeves movie, Somewhere in Time (1980) – wanted an unknown. Slater is nondescript and okay. You can't fault her too harshly because the script is trash. The entire movie does her dirty, down to the inability to blend her blonde wig with her hairline. There's also just zero awareness on what a teenage girl with infinite powers would do. In this case, the script answer it with "she'd just go to school." So, Kara enrolls at the first girls private school she sees, masquerading as alliterative student Linda Lee. She soon meets the equally alliterative Lucy Lane (Maureen Teefy), yes, the sister of that other chick from the Superman universe.
This is easily the script's biggest failing: in how stupidly interconnected everything is. Kara just happens to go to the same school where Lois Lane's sister goes so we can talk Superman. Cub reporter Jimmy Olsen (played by Marc McClure, pushing 30 by this point) pops up to make out with Lucy because he's clearly the only returning cast member. Narratively, though, the coincidences are off the charts in order to make the plot sensical. The film's big bad is Selena (Faye freaking Dunaway), a witch (?)...wealthy woman with too much time on her hands (?)....I'm going with witch, who finds the Omegahedron and wants to use it for omnipotent power. Her former lover/warlock mentor Nigel (a very bitchy Peter Cook) can't warlock full time and so is a math teacher at the same school, you guessed it, Kara enrolls in.
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If there's one saving grace to Supergirl it's in Faye Dunaway's performance as Selena and that of her Girl Friday (potential lesbian life partner, who knows), Bianca (Brenda Vaccaro). The two live in a funhouse/carnival ride that apparently has plumbing, electricity and a working doorbell. Part of the fun is just watching them snipe at each other, Selena as the over-the-top extravagant once to Bianca's more rational audience surrogate. They have such a fun chemistry that it's a shame they didn't do more movies together.
It's in Selena that the backlash elements of the movie bear fruit. Where Kara has laser vision, and a back apparently strong enough to turn a lacrosse ball into dust, she doesn't utilize it outside of immediate plot concerns. She's meant to find everything wondrous while having zero social skills or really any desire to interact with those on Earth. She has zero motivation in a movie meant to focus solely on her. Contrast this with Selena, a power-mad narcissist who literally uses the Omegahedron to make everyone love her but particularly one 30-odd landscaper played by Ellis from Die Hard (Hart Bochner as Ethan). Selena is vain and only interested in men (and with that coms sex) and power. Kara is sweet and innocent, all that's good and pure in femininity.
By the third act, the movie is solely focused on Selena and Kara fighting over the lackluster landscaper, Ethan. Never mind that Kara's a teenager and this guy isn't. It's not surprising for the time period, but it is disappointing that in a movie wherein female power is contained in two different women the (male) screenwriter can't figure out how to turn it away from a love triangle and the old adage that two women in the same movie must be enemies. What's funnier is that the emphasis on this pushes everything to the side: the Omegahedron, even Kara's newfound acquaintances because, let's be real, they'll never be friends.
It's been a minute since I've had such an unpleasant viewing experience as watching Supergirl. It's a movie that knows it's running on fumes. Three years later Superman IV: The Quest for Peace would put the nail in the coffin of Kara Zor-El's cousin. I have to believe whatever Craig Gillespie gives audiences on June 26 is a helluva lot better than this.
(Also, how long is one day on Earth vs. Argo City? Because in all that time Supergirl spent twirling in the air I'm assuming her family are dead?)
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