If you’ve followed this website long enough, my saying “I really like the 1980s Supergirl movie shouldn’t surprise you. Helen Slater was great in the role, Faye Dunaway made a good villainess who’s in over her head in her pursuit for power, and the effects are as good as…most of the Superman movies from the Salkinds. Plus they did more with Jimmy Olsen in this movie than in all four Superman movies…not that he did much here, either. Poor Mark McClure never got to be as big as Christopher Reeve and Margo Kidder. It might not be a popular opinion on the internet…but when has that stopped me?
Slater would probably be more known for her role in The Legend Of Billie Jean, where she played a girl who grew two spines and told ACTUAL toxic men what to do with themselves, at least from what little I’ve watched of it. Today that movie would come off as intersectional feminist garbage but back then you were on her side. She wasn’t done being tied to Kara, though. She played Kara’s adoptive Earth mom in the Supergirl TV series, apparently played Kal-El’s space mom after I stopped watching Smallville, and she was at least acknowledged in The Flash for what little that crap was worth. Sadly we’ll be coming back to that.
First, our context: this interview with The Hollywood Reporter in which they ask her about the 2026 totally-not-James-Gunn version, her CG cameo, and her time making the 1984 movie. It’s another example of how actors do not approach stories the same way fans do, or she’s just trying to be professional. Possibly both.
Let’s ease in where the article jumped around, and go over her time making her version of the Maid Of Might:
Helen Slater was just 18 when her successful audition led to her acting debut as Kara Zor-El, cousin of Superman, for the original 1984 movie Supergirl…..
After landing the role in the 1980s, Slater underwent a rigorous training regimen that spanned roughly four months and led her to gain 15 pounds of muscle through trampolining, fencing, horseback riding and other exercises. “I was very scrawny when I got the part,” she recalls. “The trampolining was wild. I learned to do backflips on the trampoline, and then there’s an aerial ballet in the Supergirl film, which we practiced quite a lot.”
The initial Supergirl centered on the title superhero seeking an all-powerful orb and was set after the events in Superman III, the Christopher Reeve-led film that hit theaters the year prior. Although a discussed Reeve cameo in Supergirl never happened, Slater got to know the actor throughout production. “I became friends with him, and he was just the loveliest person on the planet,” Slater recalls. “There was no ill will or strangeness — just sweet, very protective, mentor-y kind of person for me.”
Slater had been signed for three pictures, which given that the movie ends rather permanent, with Kara returning to save Argo City (I guess the warp she used could be kept open but if her whole arc involved finding the omegahedron and returning home I don’t know why she’d leave, narratively speaking), I don’t know how you’d make two more movies. Of course, since the movie bombed at the box office, making $14,296,438 domestically in theaters off a budget of $35,000,000 (as estimated by IMDB), there were no more movies. I still liked it. Compare that to the 2026 version’s current IMDB figures: $60,387,231 off an estimated budget of $170,000,000. Still less of a failure than the newer movie, and it wasn’t technically part of a shared universe outside of other Superman movies.
She adds that fame was not something she necessarily embraced: “I felt shy about it. It wasn’t like, ‘Hooray, people recognize me. Isn’t this wonderful?’ It just feels so strange and unusual.”
She left acting for the most part, worked on a degree in mythological studies and “depth psychology”, whatever the heck that means. It kind of makes one of her comments disheartening, but let’s go back for her thoughts on the Gunnian Girl Of Steel:
“I loved the new Supergirl film,” Slater tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I thought Milly Alcock was astonishing — fierce, strong and great comic timing!”
Oh, not that one. More die-hard Kara fans who actually saw it would disagree no matter how “woke” the movie is or isn’t, and I hear our current social climate was only an issue in interviews. No, she says something worse.
“I loved that movie The Flash,” Slater says. “Ezra was so lovely and knew about my graduate work in mythology and wanted to talk about that.” While there was speculation at the time of The Flash’s release that Slater’s appearance as Supergirl was CGI-generated, the actress clarifies that she actually filmed the part: “I was in this very wild machine with 600 eyes around it. But they could have just put a Barbie doll in because I’m de-aged so much. They were so kind to fly me out to London, but I don’t know that they needed to.”
First James Gunn, now someone I hoped had better tastes. Like the 2026 Supergirl rework, The Flash was based on a storyline I don’t care about, if only because it was used to destroy the long-standing DC Universe so that the Editor-In-Chief at the time could remake everything in his own image. Kind of like Darkseid and the Absolute Universe, except with the main universe. Of course we know now that Ezra “The Mad Goose Wizard” Miller’s (yeah, I’m sure the KKK was freaked out when you went after them, Ezra) pure grade A nuts to the wall–ask the random people he attacked or the girl he drew away from her family, so I’m guessing she just liked that he was interested in her interests. I know I wish I had more people I could discuss my interests with. Interesting that she says she actually did film her part and was just deaged. She must keep herself in good shape. Again, this just shows that actors approach movies differently, being more interested in the making of than the end product. “I really liked working with…” kind of thing. No, here’s the part I found sad while defending the movie inspired by Tom King that the director is trying to shift blame to Gunn for it’s box office failure.
Through her studies in mythology, Slater has come to appreciate retellings and evolutions for characters that are core to our cultural experience, and she hopes filmmakers continue taking risks with such projects. “My understanding is that these myths should be changing,” she reasons. “We want reinterpretations. That keeps it alive and keeps it going. It echoes what’s happening in the culture right now. It’s fun that it evolves and keeps developing.”
The idea that “we” want reinterpretations. Maybe it’s the current situation with Nolan’s The Odyssey but that statement really doesn’t work for me. Apparently it’s not even a good adaptation of King’s Woman Of Tomorrow miniseries and I already wasn’t interested in that. I can only blame so much on Tom King and his obsession with broken characters because Kara was already ruined when the New 52 reboot of the comics happened and King was playing off of that, while the movie played off of King’s take. It’s still completely tossing out the Supergirl I grew up with and rather liked. (She’s not in my top five but I don’t care about ranking. I liked Linda Lee/Danvers the way she was and DC ruined her, King ruined her further, and most adaptations since follow the wrong formula.) I don’t want her reinterpreted to an unheroic mess when there are better ways to deal with her trauma and keep her the sweet and caring girl I remember. Superheroes might be a modern version of mythology, but you can both enjoy Disney’s take on Hercules and still find the adaptation terrible.
We like our mythology the way it is. I keep trying to slip into the Odyssey discussion because it’s currently relevant, but people connected to the original Kara Zor-El. I did. I don’t want her reinterpreted to a drunk who can’t even take care of her dog (again, she’s supposed to have the cat but it’s not like anyone at DC Studios knows anything about what they’re adapting). I want something closer to what Helen Slater and even Melissa Benoist gave us. A kind, sort of awkward but smart and helpful Kara who has a chance to do for this new home what she couldn’t for her old one. This nonsense that things that stayed what they were for decades (and now centuries) needs to be modernized despite multiple generations more than will to connect with what was already there confounds me. If you reinterpret the myth, the reason for the myth and the lessons we were to take from it disappear. It’s a new story now, and you might as well take out the names and use new locations because it’s not the same myth anymore. Again, Disney’s Hercules, both movie and show.
The end result: a myth that those who used to connect to it no longer does and because of that myth’s history will not draw new audiences whose tastes go elsewhere. That’s what happened to Supergirl 2026. Helen Slater was given a Supergirl who was heroic and Milly Alcock wasn’t. That’s not just a reinterpretation, that’s a different character. I don’t blame the actresses when the writers and directors involved are to blame, but it’s also not a good thing to defend.
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