“Supergirl” screenwriter digs into major comic-to-screen changes, including that dark ending

Key Points

• Supergirl screenwriter Ana Nogueira unpacks the major comic-to-screen differences.

• On the villain’s new backstory, she says, “It’s a crazy change.”

• Nogueira also explains the big change to the ending and why a certain Super-Horse isn’t in the movie.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Supergirl.

Ana Nogueira, the screenwriter behind the new Supergirl movie, has a general philosophy around adapting these heroes from the pages of DC Comics to the screen: Find what’s interesting about the character if they had no superpowers whatsoever.

In the case of Kara Zor-El, Westerns came to mind. The original comic, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, from writer Tom King and artist Bilquis Evely, was heavily inspired by True Grit. A young girl (instead of Hailee Steinfeld’s Mattie Ross, it’s Eve Ridley’s Ruthye Marye Knoll) charges a powerful but boozy warrior (in this case, Milly Alcock‘s Supergirl) with tracking down the outlaw (Matthias Schoenaerts‘ Krem of the Yellow Hills) who killed her family.

“A comic goes all over creation and there are so many sci-fi elements, there’s so many Easter eggs,” Nogueira tells Entertainment Weekly. “True Grit is a very contained story. So I was trying to almost marry the two and go back to this feeling of a Western. When I was writing the script, I was taking elements of the comic and then also watching True Grit. I watched Unforgiven, which is such an excellent movie — these very simple stories about this grizzled, older character finding justice, even if that is the justice of the Wild West.”

Writing the movie’s script also coincided with a transformative personal event. In 2022, prior to James Gunn and Peter Safran coming aboard to lead DC Studios and launch an entirely new slate of interconnected movies and TV shows, Nogueira had a baby girl.

“It’s not in any surface way a movie about that, but it is a movie about these daughters,” she says. “It’s a movie about daughters who don’t have their parents and who are left on their own to navigate a vicious world without the direct guidance of their parents. I have a daughter. I don’t know if I could have written this exact movie without having had her.”

As with any Hollywood adaptation, changes were made to the source material’s narrative—some small, some so massive they redefine these characters for the new DC universe. Below, Nogueira unpacks some of the biggest shifts, including the villain’s origins and the ending.

Krem and the Brigands as sex traffickers

Krem of the Yellow Hills is the primary antagonist of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, depicted as a muscled, red-headed space pirate with full red hair and beard. More Outlander, less Mad Max. The Krem of the movie is the reverse: shaved head, a single long braid, metal studs adorning his face, chrome armor — someone who could fit nicely alongside an Immortan Joe, let’s say.

Nogueira confirms she was inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road, “one of my favorite movies,” she says.

Krem’s origin for the film has also been reimagined as the leader of the Brigands, an all-male group of space pirates that are, essentially, sex traffickers. In order to procreate, they kidnap young girls (often underage) from across the galaxy as their “Brides,” who are held in captivity.

“It’s a crazy change,” Nogueira acknowledges. “In the comic, Krem’s just a guy and he’s not even a Brigand, but all of that for a movie is too complicated. You have two hours, you have to make everything one idea.”

She characterizes what came next as “boring writer stuff.” Part of the comic’s storyline involves the city Maypole on the planet Coronn, which has a dark history. Long ago, the blue-skinned inhabitants committed genocide against a race of purple-skinned aliens and buried their bones beneath the earth, an event in which Krem was involved.

“We couldn’t have Krem be a world destroyer because we wanted to keep it all within the same story,” Nogueira explains. She also felt she couldn’t use the mass genocide point “because it was so far in the past, it didn’t feel immediate to the story.” But the darkness of that material gave her credence to explore another unsettling backstory for Krem.

“I wanted something that could have our girls specifically be threatened,” she says, “because otherwise I don’t know why the Brigands would even get caught up. And then it all clicked together: The Brigands are all men, so how do they continue to be Brigands? There’s something that they need. So it was this thing that checked all of those boxes and felt connected to the characters, rather than having to create something that felt far off and hard to hold onto.”

The Supergirl ending and death of Krem

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow ends with Ruthye slaying her literal demon by killing Krem — but that happens years in the future. She locks away the brute in the Phantom Zone, and by the time she lets him out when she’s an elderly woman, he’s repentant. When he’s on his knees before her, she delivers a quick, fatal blow with a blade.

From the very beginning — it was part of Nogueira’s pitch for the movie — it was always going to be Supergirl who kills Krem after their final battle.

It becomes a defining moment for this character, who will next return to the DCU in 2027’s Man of Tomorrow. “It never changed,” Nogueira says of sticking to her guns (or swords, in this case) on that particular plot point. “I was like, ‘We gotta kill the guy. You can’t let the little girl kill the guy.’ After that whole journey, having him die accidentally or something didn’t feel strong enough for what I was doing for the character.”

Nogueira didn’t know initially how she was going to end the movie. It wasn’t until she was performing mundane day-to-day tasks — a common environment for most epiphanies — that she thought of the two lines that would end up completing the story. “‘This is for my dog,’ and ‘This is for what you did to that little girl.’ I was like, ‘That’s the movie,'” the scribe says.

Kara delivers those lines of retribution as she drives a sword through Krem. The choice was a resounding yes from Gunn and Safran, as well as director Craig Gillespie and their star. In Kara’s mind, it’s one last way for her to shield Ruthye from the darkness of this world.

“Milly was never like, ‘Why does she do this?’ Milly was always like, ‘She has to do this,'” Nogueira says. “She has to define herself differently than Superman. She has to say, ‘I have my own morality. I have my own sense of goodness, and actually, my ability to discern when I’m gonna take somebody off the map is a power I have. I don’t have a rule that you have. I have my own guidance, and I know this is the right thing to do. And the fact that I’ve been through it all gives me the ability to do this.'”

No Comet?

One character is noticeably missing from Supergirl: Comet the Super-Horse.

In the canon of DC Comics, Comet is truly a bizarre character. The white equine with a red cape originated as a centaur who was transformed into a full horse and given enhanced abilities through witchy ways. He became Supergirl’s animal companion, and they went on many adventures together. There was even one where Comet became human for a brief period, and he romanced the Kryptonian before reverting to horse form.

In the context of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Krem banishes Kara to a distant planet, and in order to thwart his efforts, she connects with Comet, who’s able to fast travel to the edge of the galaxy.

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“I love Comet the horse,” Nogueira says. “It’s a lot to ask of a general audience to bring in Comet the horse, but I know people love Comet…. There’s so much that the general population would go, ‘What? There’s suddenly a horse?’ And then for comics [fans], they’re so happy Comet showed up, but anybody else going to see the movie would be like, ‘I don’t understand.'”

It’s also “a lot of animal,” she adds. Much of the movie involves Krypto, including flashbacks to their first meeting on the decaying Krypton and traveling to Earth together. “I couldn’t do a horse and a dog,” Nogueira says.

Supergirl is playing now in theaters.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly