The next big DCU movie that is coming to theaters in 2026 is Supergirl, based on the comic book series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely. Of course, everyone who saw Superman saw Supergirl show up at the end of the movie, and many were confused by her personality. This should all be explained in her solo movie.
The explanation makes plenty of sense based on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which explains why Supergirl and Superman have such different personalities. The first Supergirl trailer had a unique feel, as it looked at times like a sci-fi movie, and at other times like a Western. That is because the Supergirl story is loosely based on a John Wayne movie.
Supergirl Is A Loose Remake Of John Wayne’s True Grit
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow tells the story of Kara Zor-El as a down-and-out superhero, feeling beaten down by her past and her life up to this point. However, Supergirl meets a young girl named Ruthye Marye Knoll, an alien who wants justice after a man named Krem of the Yellow Hills arrived on her planet and killed her father.
Ruthye then hires Supergirl to help her find the man who killed her dad and seek her revenge. If this sounds familiar, that is because Tom King based the story on True Grit. In that John Wayne movie, a little girl named Mattie (Kim Darby) asks a down-and-out U.S. Marshal named Rooster Cogburn to help her find the man who killed her father.
In an interview with WordBalloon about the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic book series, Tom King said that he pitched the comic story as a version of True Grit. However, at the time, he had Supergirl playing the young girl, and she went to Lobo to help her find revenge. King’s editors suggested making the change to Ruthye.
“That book [“Supergirl: World of Tomorrow”] began as me pitching a Lobo/Supergirl book, and it was my editor[s], Brittany Holzherr and Jamie Rich, who were like ‘No, take Lobo out and make Supergirl the Rooster Cogburn character.'”
As a result, the comic book ended up making Supergirl the Rooster Cogburn character and Ruthye Marye Knoll as the Mattie character. They are hunting down Krem of the Yellow Hills, who is the Supergirl movie’s version of True Grit’s Jeff Corey as Tom Chaney.
Milly Alcock Is A Perfect Representation Of Rooster Cogburn
In True Grit, Rooster Cogburn is a one-eyed U.S. Marshal who is an aging alcoholic. Mattie wants Chaney brought back to Fort Smith to hang, and Rooster agrees to help her find him to seek her vengeance, likely knowing that she won’t be able to pay him what she promises. He is doing it to help her find her own justice after he had a tough time in life.
This is precisely what Supergirl sounds like, except not old and with both eyes still working. She is from Krypton, but when the planet exploded, her city was able to survive thanks to an enclosed dome. It floated in space until a leak caused people to start dying of radiation poisoning.
Unlike Superman, who was shot off Krypton as a baby, Supergirl grew up in her city and watched everyone she loved die in front of her before her dad sent her to safety. She is full of hate in her heart and sees the darkness that Superman never witnessed. She is Rooster Cogburn, and she sees the evil in the world as he did.
A lot of people seemed to want to compare Supergirl to Guardians of the Galaxy based on the trailer, but that was highly unfair. If anything, the opening scene at the bus stop and the scenes inside the bar show this is more of a sci-fi Western in space than the space epic from the MCU. Supergirl looks more like Firefly than GotG.
While people did see the similarities between the Brown Coats and the Brown Coats in Firefly, this is also something that was on display in True Grit. From her anger and the fact that she is beaten down, she looks and acts a lot like John Wayne in that classic Western masterpiece.
True Grit Was John Wayne’s Only Oscar Win For Acting
Tom King couldn’t have picked a better Western movie to base his story on than True Grit. John Wayne called it the best movie role he had taken on in 20 years. It was also a landmark role for Wayne. After 40 years of lead actor roles, this was the first movie for which John Wayne won an Oscar for his performance.
John Wayne was in some of the Western genre’s best movies, but he was only nominated for three Oscars. His previous nominations were for the war movie Sands of Iwo Jima and the only movie he directed, The Alamo. He wasn’t even nominated for the best film of his career, The Searchers.
The Coen Brothers also remade True Grit in 2010, where it was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. That made it a bigger success than even the John Wayne original. If Supergirl can match the brilliance of either of those movies in this superhero retelling, DCU fans are in for a massive treat in 2026.
Source: WordBalloon
