10 Terrible Superhero Movies With One Redeeming Feature
9. Supergirl Was An Early Win For Gender Representation
Like Black Panther, the critical acclaim and box office bucks Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman attracted has challenged preconceptions in Hollywood and paved the way for a new dawn in the comic book genre. Diana Prince's solo debuted ridiculed the notion that nobody wants to pay to watch a female-fronted superhero film.
Although the Amazon is the first DC Comics heroine to do this successfully, she wasn't the first to try. In 1984, fresh off the back of three Superman movies, Warner Bros invested in girl power and brought his cousin, Supergirl, to the big screen.
With Helen Slater in the lead role, the movie was essentially a testbed to establish whether there was demand for superheroines among cinemagoers, and despite its noble intentions, it may have done more harm than good. Hokey effects and the dull, doe-eyed portrayal of the protagonist saw Supergirl panned by critics.
The movie made just $14.3 million against a budget of $35 million, which is the kind of financial blackeye which would no doubt have made the folks at Warner Bros think twice before bringing any other DC Comics superheroines to Hollywood.
Although the execution was poor, Supergirl still deserves credit for attempting to diversify the superhero genre, just like Wonder Woman did all those years later.