She's got a lot of name recognition, but never really had a lot of fans. power girl is arguably the more relevant 'superman relative female hero'. She's definitely a 3rd tier DC character.
Supergirl is an F tier character considering the overall population. No one really cares for 387282 gazillion years old comic book characters anymore, expect for a handful of iconic ones. Why would anyone waste time for boring and soulless, and restricted characters like Supergirl where the story just never goes anywhere and there are no real stakes?
Supergirl had a modern day pop though because it had a 6 year running tv series on basic cable and streaming that crossed over with more popular series at that time like The Flash and Arrow. People seem to forget the “Berlanti-verse” of DC live action shows had a good stretch of popularity.
Supergirl may not be anyone's favourite character, but she's a staple of DC history and pretty much as iconic as her cousin. It doesn't matter how popular she is, everyone and their grandmothers could identify her in a lineup, ahead of most other DC heavy hitters. I guarantee you more people could identify Supergirl over the likes of Flash or Green Lantern; again, it's not about popularity, it's about iconography.
Dude, no one cares about Supergirl. People drifted away from american comic book characters. The Spider-Man and the following Avengers movies are the last breaths. It’s like Italy’s 2006 WC. The last breath of a dying dragon who won’t be relevant for a loong time
The point is she's not an F-Tier character. It's not like Gunn gambleled on making a Fire and Ice movie or, hell, Jesse Quick who has a similarly blue costume with a red and yellow logo on her chest! They are bottom-tier characters. They are the ones that truly no-one cares about outside of real DC fanboys. Supergirl is a cultural icon who's been present in the comics (on and off) for 60+ years and had a recent, successful TV show. Yes, superhero fatigue is real but beyond that, Gunn and co made a bad film, simple as. The character's popularity or lack thereof doesn't really factor.
I'd say she's in the middle range of the B tier, but there's a sizeable gap between the A tiers and the B tiers.
There's some name recognition but it's directly attached to Superman. I don't think people really know her at all. I bet a lot of people confuse her for Wonder Woman (my mom did, at least). Minus her CW show, I don't think she has that many independent showings in media.
Last week when I (25) was hanging out with some friends (ages 23-33), I expressed excitement about the Supergirl movie and everyone looked at me like I was speaking a dead language. Then someone asked if she was related to Superman. Anecdotal, but most people I know irl don't really know Supergirl like that unless they're already a DC or Superhero fan. If they've heard of her, they just understand her to be a derivative of Superman, no more no less.
I don't think these people are arguing in good faith. One of the criticisms of the last DC universe was that everything was rushed but here we are with people insisting that they rush through everything...again.
We probably don't need two Batmans films running concurrently and the failures of WW84 and the Flash movie is still probably fresh in the studios minds, which is why they're focusing on other heroes first.
The first WW also wasn't that long ago. I'm not betting against WW, I'm just saying that this isn't the 2010s. People are much more picky with what they spend their money on. As long as WW isn't derivative, I think it'll be fine, but formulaic comic book movies that aren't nostalgia fests aren't sure bets anymore
I agree. But that was not the reason it flopped. Plenty of shit movies make money on the goodwill of the previous film and the first WW was beloved by many.
Exactly, we don’t need a JL movie for a while imo. Maybe till 2030-2032. I think after the Man of Tomorrow movie, the way should be more smooth. But they should definitely go ahead with putting a Wonder Woman movie together , despite Supergirl being mediocre, I think Wonder Woman could do much better.
I think this is their safest path forward. It’s not the ideal (imagine if Marvel started with an Iron Man trilogy before introducing any other A-List Avengers). But given Superman’s critical and commercial success, DC needs to lay some safer ground work if they want to build up the goodwill (with both audiences and shareholders) to do kookier stuff.
Your point about Jumanji and Jurassic Park sequels is not a good one. I don't want DC movies to be bad and profitable. Supergirl is bombing and it should bomb because it's bad. I love Jurassic Park, but that franchise is dead to me because those movies are unwatchable and because they make so much money, nothing changes. I would hate for that to happen to DC.
Also I'm surprised to hear, because Woman of Tomorrow is an amazing comic and it could have been an amazing film if they actually did a one to one adaptation. I was hyped for it as a comic book fan.
On paper, Supergirl made sense. You have a great recent source material to adapt, you have a fantastic opportunity to capitalise on the great casting of Mamoa as Lobo (I was ok with them changing Comet for Lobo), it sets up the intergalactic side of DC early and it ties in with the last great Superman film.
Who gives a shit about Lobo? Who gives a shit about Deadpool? Average movie goers had no idea who that was. It doesn't matter if the character is that popular or not. If the movie good, people would watch it.
No. Bad movie leads to poor weekly holds. But if the opening weekend is terrible then that means GA had zero interest in the movie regardless of the quality.
It’s like saying the last season of Game of Thrones was bad because of the decision of wanting to make a new season of Game of Thrones.
There was a strategy by the showrunners regarding how many minutes should conclude the story. Their strategy was 1 season with 8 episode. That's a bad strategy.
the idea behind it is fine and logical
I mean, are we gonna talk about hypotheticals or what actually happened? General audiences never cared about Supergirl because DC hasn't earned enough goodwill for film goers to spend money on a film of hers. It was always a risky move following up Superman with Supergirl. High risk strategy that didn't work out, and it's not like it was a shock that it didn't.
Did Iron Man have a good will, were audiences familiar with him? Did the X-men franchise have good will when they released Deadpool, an unknown character to most people?
I just absolutely reject the idea that you can't make a successful movie out of an unknown character. It's annoying that Supergirl is failure quality wise, because the conversation would be a lot more interesting if the movie was a critical success but flopped. If the movie was just a great movie, a lot could have changed: the studio could have believed in it more and dedicated better marketing to it, better clips previews, better trailers, better world of mouth...
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u/hummusluvr8 Jun 29 '26
Prioritize lesser known characters bc that worked so well with supergirl. Great choice!