Supergirl is a fun roller-coaster of a movie. Part True Grit, part Mad Max, it’s pacing keeps it moving even through emotional moments and flashbacks, the needle drops and score keep the emotions high, and the direction makes the action gritty and exciting. Milly Alcock makes a wonderful Supergirl. She brings the “true grit” aspect of the movie, the down-and-out drunken fighter who befriends a youth (Ruthye) and ends up traveling with her in search of revenge and justice.

I never owned the toys as a kid. I knew of them and had friends that did. I’d watched some of the He-Man cartoons (and the rebooted shows, and the excellent recent Kevin Smith reboot on Netflix). The Dolph Lungren 80s movie. In other words I’ve enjoyed He-Man/Masters of the Universe, but it wasn’t “my” franchise. This is relevant. But boy, did I love the 1980s Flash Gordon movie. It was vivid, exciting, campy in the best way, solid special effects for the era, and had an absolute bangin’ soundtrack by Queen that elevated the movie.

George Lucas named the old 1930s Saturday morning Western adventure serials as one of his main inspirations for the original 1977 Star Wars movie. The initial text crawl labeling it “Episode IV” and catching the audience up on an ongoing story were designed to evoke that same feeling of going to the theater to catch up on the adventures-in-progress of your favorite action hero. The world building and operatic sweep of Star Wars propelled the franchise to be far more, and the movies (especially the post-Lucas movies) left that initial inspiration behind.

Let’s start with the positive: Fantastic Four: First Steps is, in my opinion, the best Marvel movie to come out in a long time. It creates a living, breathing alternate Jetsons-style future-reto 1960s and it’s gorgeous. This isn’t an origin story; the origin story is shown in newsreel footage and interviews, when our story begins the Fantastic Four has already been active, and is beloved by earth. I like that; we’ve seen enough of the hero’s journey in superhero movies already, let’s get to the story.

(title a play on the tagline of the 1978 Superman movie: “You’ll Believe A Man Can Fly”) If you’ve read my blog, you already know that Superman is my favorite superhero. You know that I was excited about this movie. Given James Gunn’s previous track record with the Guardians movies, The Suicide Squad, and Peacemaker, I expected him to get Superman. So as not to bury the lede: he does.