Hollywood has a script it likes to follow whenever a movie flops: blame sexism, blame angry fanboys, blame anyone but the people who made a bad film. The excuses don't hold up against the numbers, though. So why does Hollywood keep reaching for the same tired alibi instead of admitting the obvious?
That movie is Supergirl, and the numbers are brutal. The DC Studios release opened to a domestic box office of just $38 million, a number so low it confirmed nearly every warning sign Hollywood insiders had been waving for months. According to one report, Supergirl is expected to lose $100 million for DC Studios.
I bet there will be a sequel anyway.
Even critics, who typically inflate scores for movies that check the right ideological boxes, couldn't muster much enthusiasm. Supergirl sits at a middling 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Naturally, the backers and fans of Supergirl didn't blame the writing, the directing, or the general over-saturation of comic book movies. They blamed misogynistic fanboys. They blamed critics. They blamed audiences who supposedly hadn't even seen the movie yet still felt entitled to an opinion.
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Let's be honest, here: DC Studios has a quality problem that has nothing to do with gender. James Gunn's Superman reboot was garbage, and the only reason I watched it was that I already had an HBO Max subscription. I haven't liked a single DC Studios movie under this regime.
None of this has anything to do with a female superhero or a strong female lead character. Anyone insisting otherwise is simply wrong. Audiences have been showing up for movies built around strong women for decades, long before Milly Alcock, who plays Supergirl, was even born.
Aliens remains one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, and Sigourney Weaver carried that movie from start to finish. The Hunger Games franchise built a billion-dollar empire around a female lead. Rogue One, which may be the last genuinely good Star Wars film, did the same thing. Most moviegoers enjoyed every one of these films without spending a single second thinking about the gender of the hero.
The actual problem is that Hollywood has become obsessed with the gender of its heroes. Studios market around it constantly, and then, when the box office numbers come in low, they blame sexism before the public even has a chance to render a verdict. Alcock did exactly that in an interview earlier this year.
"It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on," Alcock said. "We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women's bodies… I can't really stop them. I can only be myself."
That's hardly a vote of confidence in her own movie. It functions as a warning shot to the very audience that drives superhero box office sales: see this movie, like it, or risk being labeled a sexist. Accusing potential customers of bigotry before they've even bought a ticket is a bizarre marketing strategy, and it shows in the receipts.
Supergirl failed because it was a mediocre movie made by a struggling studio that found it easier to blame the public than to make something people wanted to watch. The numbers don't lie, and excuses won't change them.
Now I really want to rewatch Aliens.
